The orchestra will perform at the Cultural Centre Concert Hall next Sunday and Monday, with two separate programmes, including works by Beethoven, Berlioz and Ravel, and then Haydn, Thomas Ades and Richard Strauss.

'I remember conducting them for the first time in 1987, and there was this extraordinary sound which was coming from underneath,' says Rattle. 'It was like nothing I'd experienced before. It's as though you've asked someone to get you a piece of wood and they've gone and got you the whole roots of the tree.'

The legacy of the Berlin Philharmonic would have daunted lesser conductors. Previous musical directors have been enshrined in the pantheon of Germanic classical-music greats. Arthur Nikisch, who held the post for 27 years, is credited with forging the orchestra's reputation for personal virtuosity. 'Every member deserves to be described as an artist,' he said. Herbert von Karajan, who was at the helm for 35 years, continually developed the orchestra's dark sound until his death in 1989. Rattle's approach has been to extend the orchestra's talents into new areas while tending to the proven qualities that made it great.

'There were certain areas of the repertoire that had been played very little in previous years,' Rattle says. 'Strangely enough, it had played very little Mozart and Haydn. It had also performed very little Baroque music, almost no French music, and very little contemporary music.

'The areas around Brahms, Mahler and Bruckner worked very well - they were the big central pieces. But there was also a need to broaden the orchestra's repertoire, to give it more skills - or, more poetically, to put more colours of feathers in the bird.'

Rattle was up to the job. Born in Liverpool in 1955, he studied at the Royal Academy of Music in London. He worked first as an assistant conductor at the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, and then honed his skills with a number of other British orchestras. In 1980, he joined the CBSO as principal conductor, and took over as musical director in 1990. His work with the CBSO - and his energetic promotional activities - transformed it into one of the world's great orchestras. Rattle was knighted in 1994 for his contribution to the arts.

Working with an orchestra so full of virtuosos sounds like a recipe for a difficult life. Isn't everyone battling for their spot in the limelight in the Berlin Philharmonic? 'Sometimes' would seem to be the answer.

'It's like working with a group of actors and they're all Dustin Hoffman,' Rattle says. 'When you have that amount of intelligence and skill going on, sometimes it takes a little longer to sort things out. Everyone has a lot of ideas. That's what gives the orchestra its special flavour.'

The audience affects the way his orchestra plays, too. A work isn't fully realised until it's performed in front of an audience. The listeners bring it to life. 'The music is changed by the audience,' Rattle says. 'When you have a great audience, the performance changes. The audience is often part of the musical experience in a very positive way. Their response affects the musicians. When you rehearse a piece, it's not the real event. You're just building the plane and laying out the runway. The actual performance is where you find out where you're going to fly.'

Rattle is looking forward to playing in front of Asian audiences. It will be the first time he's performed on the mainland. 'Everybody tells me that the audiences in mainland China are wonderfully responsive,' he says. 'This is a new public for us. There's an incredible burgeoning of young Chinese musicians at conservatories around the globe. China is going to be important for classical music. So, it's important that we show audiences in China what the Berlin Philharmonic can do.'

Hong Kong audiences will be treated to classical standards, and some new music. Beethoven's Eroica Symphony (No3 in E flat) and Strauss' Ein Heldenleben are the centrepieces. New music is represented by Asyla, written by contemporary British composer Ades. 'We wanted to play two great masterpieces - the Strauss and the Beethoven. Both have Germanic themes, and are related to each other. But we also wanted to bring one really significant piece of new music that we felt would appeal to audiences very strongly.'

That's where the Ades comes in. 'He's the most gifted of an extraordinary group of talented English composers. He's a master of the orchestra who writes music that immediately appeals to people.'

High ticket prices, rather than the programme, have upset fans in Hong Kong. Rattle admits they're expensive, but says that prices are set by the promoters, not the orchestra. 'The concerts are expensive,' he says. 'But orchestras are very, very expensive things to tour. Rock tours make a lot of financial sense - it's just four people playing in a stadium of 20,000 people. An orchestra is 100 or so people playing to 2,000 people. The logistics of transporting 120 people across the globe are expensive. It actually doesn't make a lot of financial sense to do it at all. But it makes an unbelievable amount of artistic sense.'

Rattle is now in his fourth decade as a conductor, and says he still finds the art form fascinating and mysterious. It's a feeling he can't put into words. 'Music takes over at the places where words stop, where words fail to work,' he says. 'I think there's an entry point for music right in the solar plexus. I love literature, but there's a point where music can go even further. How it does that is one of the great mysteries of music.

'Great poetry can go to a place of astonishing depth. But I think there's a point where words fail - and music is the answer. The greater the music, the more impossible it becomes to reduce its meaning to words. That's why I'm a musician.'

Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, Cultural Centre Concert Hall, Nov 13-14, 8pm, $300, $800, $1,200, $1,600 $2,000, $2,500, Urbitx. Live relay will be broadcast in the piazza