After the recent appearance of Joshua Bell and the Academy of St Martin in the Fields in Sydney, the next visitors to the Sydney Opera House in the World Orchestras Program were the Hong Kong Philharmonic under conductor Jaap van Zweden, with violinist Ning Feng. Although the Concert Hall was again pretty nearly full for their single night in Sydney, there was an absence of the palpable sense of excitement which Bell’s appearance had engendered.

Still, with van Zweden (Music Director of the HKP) at the helm, it was a chance to experience a conductor on the verge of breaking into the very front rank, with the Dutch maestro scheduled to become Music Director of the New York Philharmonic in the 2018–19 season. The announcement of his appointment early in 2016 prompted a typical denunciatory salvo from Norman Lebrecht, which provided much fodder for the online chatterati. As Oscar Wilde sagely noted, however, the only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about, and the maelstrom of criticism and defence surrounding his name certainly heightened curiosity ahead of van Zweden’s appearance.