This evening's offering comes with a bipolar cultural personality - the Chinese (Zhu Jian'er and Tan Dun) and the Spanish (Tan Dun, Rodrigo and Rimsky-Korsakov). Content-wise, it should have been quite exciting (including an Asian Premiere, no less), if not fascinating - not the least of which (i) there's a high-profile Grammy winner (Sharon Isbin) and (ii) a high-profile Oscar winner (Tan Dun) involved.

But to begin, Zhu Jian'er's The Wonder of the Na Xi Tribe curtain-raiser was a four-movement symphonic suite. Conceptually, as the title suggests, it came with highly descriptive, programmatic content, not unsimilar to, say, Bright Sheng's Postcards. Zhu lived and worked in the Communist regime of the cold-war era, having studied in the Soviet Union and was influenced by the neo-classical Soviet masters. He was (and still is) Resident Composer of the Shanghai Symphony and lecturer at the Shanghai Conservatory, and a prolific composer, at that. Between 1986 and 1999, he completed no less than ten symphonies, the latest to commemorate the 120th anniversary of the Shanghai Symphony.

Wonder comes from 1984, drawing its influence from the aforenamed ethnic group in the Yunnan Province. As expected, this was a sound-world informed by eclectism from composers who lived and worked behind the Iron Curtain. Water dropping into a brass basin was strange, with imaginative (if abtruse) figuration from individual soloists. Bee crossing a river found more of the same antiphony, while Heart-to-heart talk between mother and daughter (it's better if you try to think of these titles in the original Chinese) allowed individual section leaders in the orchestra to engage in dialogue.

Tan Dun (left) is best-known today as the Academy Award-winning composer for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, as well as other potboiling confections (such as the jingoistic 1997 Symphony). It's not as surprising that Cage has described him as "one of the most dynamic voices in today's contemporary music scene." (Call me a cynic but winning an OscarTM will do that for anybody - Anne Dudley, for one, has since gone on to release several albums of her own compositional music since winning for The Full Monty (1997); James Horner's practically printing his own money now; etc, etc.)

Yi² comes as the last of a trio of works, with Yi⁰ for orchestra and Yi¹ a cello concerto. First premiered in 1996 at the Donaueschingen Festival, tonight's Asian premiere should have been an occasion to savour as well. I say "as well" because, frankly, the performance was marred by too, too many restless children and couldn't-care-less parents. While there is a place and time for children to appreciate good classical music, I really don't know about the ones in the deep end like this evening's.

Sharon Isbin, this year's Grammy winner for Best Instrumental Soloist Performance (and the first guitarist to do so since dinosaurs walked the earth), took to the stage in a bolero jacket of glittering lamé and smart pants. The opening rubato was strange - guitarist and conductor clapping in tandem - and frankly, I found the exchange on the Teldec recording (8573-81830-2 with Tang Muhai and the Gulbenkian Orchestra) more compelling than here in real-life.

The programme notes declared that "the conductor's hand clapping would seem to exist from both pragmatism and symbolism. It defines the role of the conductor as more participatory rather than dictatorial" - which is a curious thing to say, as the conductor's job, by definition, includes elements of both. Even worse, a five-year-old kid somewhere in Row E or F found this eclectism funny, and despite the total silence from the somewhat bewildered audience, started screeching his own ad libitum, except that no one else shared his humour.

This wasn't just about kids-will-be-kids, let's-close-an-eye, but outright poor upbringing: if kids don't know any better, then shame on the parents. That includes the ones who dropped the water bottle in the third section, or the ones who brought four kids and had only three seats to share between them. A kid announced to his parents (and the entire hall, by extension) that he wanted to go to the toilet in the middle of the cadenza. Principal cellist Nella Hunkins deserves mention in exhibiting professional restraint, by not leaping off the stage and throttling the little bugger dead, but limiting herself to several fierce but ineffective stares.

But anyway... Lim kept a tight rein on the orchestra, but inevitably instances of ensemble untidiness popped up from time to time. Too much of Isbin's virtuosity went over the heads of the corporate crowd, methinks, and with her volatile, intense reading of the music. Lim and the well-prepared orchestra followed her closely. Individual violin, viola and cello, not to mention the harp, mimicking Chinese pipa motifs, intercoursed seamlessly with Isbin. Interspersed among this were elements of the Spanish flamenco - far be it for me to judge here how successful Dun has brought the cultural twain together, but the final musicality of the product was unmistakable.

Yi2 could have so easily been construed as pretentious - a conductor clapping along with the soloist ? Give me a break. But there is an underlying sense of architecture to the music, over which spontaniety and unorthodoxy thrived. In all honesty, I think I've gained a better appreciation of this music having heard the recording before catching the live version; I'm not sure what I'd have made of it if this had been my first time. Densely textured at times, eclectic at others, Isbin (the dedicatee of this composition) delivered a convincing Asian premiere. A real pity about the humourless audience.

Perhaps the alleged "Rodrigo Anniversary Celebrations" might have had a bit more of occasion; after all, who's celebrating what ? The other Rodrigo guitar work, Fantasía para un Gentilhombre, was aborted due to the soloist's refusal to fly following you-know-what in New York. Neither was Rodrigo commemorated in any particular sense at the recent Singapore Guitar Festival in September. So playing one miserable work and calling it "Anniversary Celebrations" makes it rather a bit of a mockery. Maybe a mini-exhibition in the foyer on the life and times of Rodrigo or some write-up in the programme book or something would have made it more meaningful. (Copland, of course, was famously ignored on his centennary last year.)

Isbin took to the stage after the interval to play the Rodrigo. From the opening syncopated hemiola, she established a firm ostinato against which the orchestra entered. The elements of flamenco could have been more strongly evoked - but perhaps it was the "low fi" quality of the amplification, in which two speakers were placed at the back of the stage, that took a bit off the edge. Lim kept steady accompaniment; unimaginative - to be sure - but not exactly stealing the thunder from the soloist either. You could tell that the audience was visibly more relaxed with this form of ear candy.

Above/right: Sharon Isbin with the late composer, Joaquin Rodrigo. Photo from 1998, from Ms Isbin's website.

The second movement with its famous "elevator-music" theme saw some wonderful playing from Elaine Yeo on the cor anglais, over the soloist's rasgueado (strumming). Instrumentally, they conjured the Sevillian Saeta: the voice of the cantore - a flamenco singer - into which they nailed some perky mordents and twiddly bits. The final movement, in five clear episodes, was more gentile than allegro: again, the soloist-orchestra interplay was excellent, with the guitarist again taking point. Somehow the brass sounded sweeter than in previous weeks. For the encore, Sharon Isbin offered Tárrega's Recuerdos de la Alhambra to a spellbound audience, which I found the most enjoyable of everything she played this evening.

The filler, Rimsky-Korsakov's Capriccio Espagnol, was another five-movement work played without pause. It started off with splendid barrage of noise; the solo violin by Sasha Souptel and solo clarinet by Jean Johnson were fabulous. The dynamics could have been more accented to bring out the festive character of the music, but otherwise, the tempo and balance were fine. A more exuberant conductor would have really brough the work home with a bang; as it is, this was a great performance and a splendid round-off to the evening. Pity that the earlier bits were ruined by audience interaction.

WILLIAM BEH is going back to Huxley's Brave New World and re-reading the bit about children being incubated, raised and conditioned by the state before they join society as adults.

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