There’s an energy and freedom which takes the work away from its sometimes strait-jacketed perfromances.

Superb clarinet playing from the Philharmonia soloists, as in the two subsequent games, where the tension mounts (screaming woodwinds really tell) and Salonen marks the mandarin’s arrival with gutsy accents and powerful brass…[he] keeps this highly graphic and emotionally potent music on the move…this performance is more compelling than most. It generates a genuine sense of theatre

Salonen and the Philharmonia relish the rhythmic barbarity, which rivals that of The Rite of Spring — the strings digging deep in the furious allegro. Salonen is in his element in Bartok’s hardcore modernism, but the more accessible Dance Suite is superbly played, too.

the now-or-never concert adrenaline is palpable. There’s unflinching attack in the savage pantomime The Miraculous Mandarin, deadpan wit in the gentler Dance Suite, and it’s all delivered with that unnervingly meticulous, steely focus that conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen gets from the Philharmonia.

the Philharmonia’s playing vibrant with nightmare scenarios – not least the stabbed, refusing-to-die Mandarin, and the whole is a compelling theatrical experience and a musically striking one.

a performance bristling with energy, colour and, entirely appropriately, lust.