"The sounds of traditional Chinese musical instruments are very different from Western musical instruments, which were totally new to me. The music pieces are also new to me. The whole process of doing rehearsals was very challenging, and a very interesting experience that I never had before," says Lyu, a classically trained musician, who has been leading the NCPA Orchestra for 10 years. "Those musicians are very sensitive to the sounds of their musical instruments and they helped me understand the music works as well as their musical instruments."

Like their names suggest, traditional Chinese music works are very poetic, conjuring up pictures such as mountains and clouds, Lyu says. It took him weeks to study the background information of each music work he was going to perform with the orchestra.

Besides Cloudy Mountains and Glimpses of Geese, he also performed the second movement of Ode to the Sun composed by Wang and Moonlight over the Autumn River composed by Hao Weiya, both contemporary pieces.