On track: Like pearls falling on jade

By WILLIAM DART

Although Bright Sheng grew up in China during the rigours of the Cultural Revolution, he's been in the United States since 1982. His new opera, Madame Mao, which premiered at Santa Fe last month, is by all accounts a pretty wild, high-octane affair.

A Naxos recording offers the chance to hear a collection of Sheng's orchestral works, played by the Hong Kong Philharmonic, and conducted by Samuel Wong, who made a strong impression with the Auckland Philharmonia in the late 90s.

First up is China Dreams, a spectacular canvas which fires the Hong Kong musicians to give of their best, particularly the strings in the eloquent The Stream Flows. The second movement, a virtuoso Fanfare, reveals its origins as a New York Philharmonic showpiece, written with the orchestral nous that has earned its composer the nickname of the "Chinese Bartok".

Although he's usually cagey about letting people into his back catalogue, Sheng has permitted his 1985 Two Poems from the Sung Dynasty to be recorded with the young Californian soprano Juliana Gondek, an established Harmonia Mundi artist.

These 12th-century texts (including Li-Qing Zhao's elegiac Sheng Sheng Man, which equates the coming of winter with a desperate time in the poet's life), touch the heart. Sheng's music is at its most explorative, and the sound of Gondek's creamy, Western-style classical voice taking on the sounds and techniques of Chinese traditional music is captivating.

Finally, Nanking! Nanking! A Threnody for Orchestra and Pipa, which is the most recently composed score, tells some of the stories around the 1937 invasion and brutalisation of the Chinese city; it was premiered in Europe in 2000 as part of millennial celebrations.

The solo pipa (a Chinese lute) is both onlooker and survivor, and poignantly so. Dramatic may be an understatement for the orchestra when it's going at full steam but, in the gentler moments, the consummate artistry of Zhang Qiang reveals why the instrument's sound has been likened to that of pearls falling on a jade tray.

This is a disc which proves that World Music also happens in the concert hall.

* Bright Sheng, Orchestral Works Naxos 8.555866