Third Session Golden Ribbon Concert of China New Zealand International Culture and Arts Festival sounds grand.
It even sounds like something not to be missed.
A good-sized audience at the Dunedin Symphony Orchestra home, Hanover Hall, listened politely to many speeches which highlighted the importance of cultural exchange.
They saw an array of glittery costumes and were treated to a bilingual introduction for each number.
The ranks of phone cameras recording every moment ensured the audience knew their experience was important to the Chinese community.
What ensued was a collection of sounds, some traditional and some not so traditional, some beautiful and some not at all beautiful.
For the sake of brevity, all those songs which relied upon recorded orchestral music pumped out across the small venue were dreadful.
The minute and ingenious but painfully piercing sound of the whistle flute, performing Morning in the Mountains is obviously best suited to being heard from a great distance.
There were some highlights.
The song performed with pianist Mark Menzies, Jasmine Flower, performed by Linjiao Yao provided the single opportunity to really hear Chinese intonation and use of the pentatonic scale.
Instrumental items using Chinese instruments were mostly entrancing.
Numbers which relied primarily upon traditional instruments - the erhu performed by Jeffrey Zhao, the zither performed by Qian Liu, the yangqin performed by Chunyu Du and the pipa performed by Yajun Li - produced a uniformly intriguing sound with much beauty, wit and lyricism.
Special mention has to go to the performer Yunhui Shilu of the suona horn - a sort of cross between a clarinet and a recorder.
His professional-sounding rock rendition and his presentation showed his joy of performing.
The western ''passacaglia'' performed delightfully by violinist Mark Menzie lent validity to an evening which promised cultural exchange.
-By Marian Poole
