The programme arranged for the Phil's trip to China next week was obviously carefully engineered.
Audiences in Beijing and Shanghai will have one course each of the brazenly heroic, the unashamedly romantic, the Soviet-style courageous and one example from a Hong Kong 'compatriot'.
Nothing except the latter will make them feel uncomfortable, no sounds will jar them, and they will come out with an agreeable opinion of Western culture.
Yes, Victor Chan's work, A Glimpse Of Blue , written two months ago, may trouble them, as it troubled me. Chan is an estimable technician, and he gave the Hong Kong Phil ensemble plenty of notes to play.
The harmonies were dissonant, the motifs angular, the orchestral timbres were varied enough (albeit giving no particular indication of any shades of blue).
But aside from some possible intervallic relations (which I could not identify at a first hearing), it was difficult to find where Chan was going.
He finessed the problem in his programme notes, confessing that the work was 'an experience of taking part in the changing states of the composer's mind' instead of ordinary development.