In 2000 Tan Dun was one of four composers commissioned by Helmuth Rilling to write new Passion settings. His Water Passion after St Matthew rewrites the Passion story in music that draws as much on Eastern as Western traditions. In 2018 the Chinese-American composer took the next step, creating a Passion rooted not just musically but spiritually in the East.

The Buddha Passion is another large-scale work, whose six episodes – set in Sanskrit and Chinese, in a libretto devised by Tan Dun himself – all trace a journey towards spiritual enlightenment. Scored for large choir and a quartet of classical soloists as well as two additional ‘indigenous singers’, it’s a challenging piece to programme, making this premiere recording by the Orchestre National de Lyon and the International Choir Academy of Lübeck, conducted by Tan Dun, a valuable resource.

Inspired by a visit to the Dunhuang desert’s Mogao Caves, whose walls are covered with musical murals depicting ‘more than four thousand musical instruments, three thousand musicians and five hundred orchestras’, Dun wanted to translate the images’ essence into sound. Does he succeed?

The Passion is a riot of colour. Voices sing but also slide and yip and shout; tuned percussion blurs the line between sound and sound-effect, creating a halo of resonance; strings slide upwards in calligraphic portamentos; drums pound and scratch. But underneath all the colour and gilding, the flesh of the piece feels surprisingly familiar: a lush, post-Puccinian and – yes – cinematic sweep of strings and brass. It’s attractive, a shifting montage of musical images, but it’s never alien in the way those astonishing cave paintings are.

The structure – self-contained episodes or parables – also denies it much by way of arc. We achieve Nirvana in a glowing ensemble finale, but there’s not enough sense of cumulative momentum or growth through six acts whose tone and dramatic pitch remain essentially constant. The most striking passage – Act 5’s ‘Heart Sutra’ – introduces the indigenous voices: Batubagen, whose Mongolian throat-singing achieves an unearthly, tectonic intensity, and Tan Weiwei, keening and soaring like a human electric guitar. Of the classically trained soloists only baritone Shenyang and soprano Sen Guo come close to their singularity and dramatic impact.

Each section ends with an Ode to Compassion – a sort of moral and musical gathering point. It’s the clearest nod to Bach’s Passions and their punctuating chorales. Elsewhere, the reference point of the Passion form feels all but irrelevant. There are turba-style episodes (including an especially violent one in ‘The Deer of Nine Colours’, complete with a laughing chorus that’s pure Samson et Dalila) and a central spiritual narrative, but the effect is more mystery play than meditation.

This is an attractive work, instantly and uncomplicatedly gratifying. Where the Water Passion wrestles and distils and provokes, the Buddha Passion affirms and entertains. Is it enough? Perhaps. Is it really a Passion? I’m not so sure.