LPO/Tan Dun review – a full battery of drums, dramatic inhalations and hints of Mongolian throat singing

The Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Beijing Olympics composer premieres his immediately appealing choral concerto with the London Philharmonic Orchestra

Whether or not you recognise the name of Chinese-born American composer Tan Dun, you have almost certainly heard his music. His score for Ang Lee’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon swept up awards in 2000. He composed the official music for the 2008 Beijing Olympics. His back catalogue includes concertos for classical megastars Yo-Yo Ma and Lang Lang, a full-length work for the Metropolitan Opera and even an Internet Symphony for Google/YouTube.

No surprise, given his track record, that Tan’s Choral Concerto: Nine is immediately appealing. Commissioned to mark Beethoven’s 250th anniversary, the work demands the same orchestra-and-chorus forces as the Viennese composer’s final symphony – plus lashings of extra percussion. Conducted by Tan himself, its UK premiere saw the London Philharmonic Orchestra crammed on to an extended stage to accommodate a full battery of drums, with the combined London Philharmonic Choir and London Chinese Philharmonic Choir arrayed behind.

There were choral sound effects galore, from an initial hiss that moved seamlessly from high voices to low, to neatly synced mouth noises, pitch slides, dramatic collective inhalations and hints of Mongolian throat singing. The more conventional choral delivery featured English translations of texts by Chinese poets Qu Yuan and Li Bai, the vocal blend beautifully calibrated. The LPO provided heavyweight bass pedal drones, Tan’s characteristic mix of diatonic and pentatonic harmony and brief snatches of quotation from Beethoven’s Ninth. Moreish orchestral special FX (dampened pizzicatos, brass players palming their mouthpieces, percussionists clicking pebbles) just about saw off the threat of the anodyne.

There should be no such danger in Beethoven’s Ninth. As conducted by Tan, tempos were fast and rhythms crisp. Yet there was minimal magic and little sense of large-scale direction through the work’s internal repetitions. The so-called “chaos” chord at the start of the finale was deafening rather than dissonant, dominated by overloud brass. The quartet of vocal soloists – Elizabeth Watts, Hongni Wu, John Findon and Matthew Rose – were well matched and Rose thrillingly stentorian in his all-important solo entry with the Ode to Joy. But neither they nor the chorus’s immense vocal wattage could entirely overcome the workaday moderation of this performance.