The Guangzhou Symphony Orchestra is now one of China’s leading orchestras and has toured all over the world, but never before in Britain. On the evidence of this concert with its music director Long Yu, the last of its brief visit to the UK, it is certainly a highly accomplished band, with a bright, forward sound and plenty of tonal depth to back that up; there is no obvious weakness in any section.

Those qualities were easiest to judge in the works that framed the concert – Britten’s Four Sea Interludes from Peter Grimes and the 1919 suite from Stravinsky’s Firebird ballet. Yu, who is also music director of the China Philharmonic and the Shanghai Symphony, is a brisk, businesslike conductor. If anything, the first of the sea interludes, Dawn, would have benefited from a bit more expansiveness (and slightly crisper rhythms), but the sheen on the strings was impressive from the start. The Firebird worked up a tremendous head of steam, and if the crowning horn solo that launches the finale didn’t have quite the transcendent effect it can have in the finest performances, it still worked its magic.

In between, the GSO included two of its commissions. Xiaogang Ye’s Cantonese Suite is a set of four accomplished but utterly straightforward orchestral arrangements of Chinese popular songs; but Lin Zhao’s Duo for sheng, cello and orchestra, with Jian Wang and Lei Jia as the soloists, is more interesting. The idiom is still essentially neo-Romantic, but the way in which the reedy, metallic timbre of the sheng (a kind of bamboo mouth organ) adds piquancy to the textures and contrasts with the cello’s loose-limbed, melodic lines makes for an effective dialogue.