Given their proportions and lack of upright agility on their hind paws, the very notion of giant pandas dancing a waltz sounds, dare I say, absurd.So going by its title alone, any chance of a cheeky lilt in 3/4 time or a nostalgic nod to the Strauss clan in Yao Chen’s panda-themed Waltz of the Rolling Giants, the opening piece in the Hong Kong Philharmonic’s “Chengdu Pre-Tour Concert: Eric Lu Plays Chopin”, seemed slim.Thankfully, though, Chen’s waltz – an HK Phil world premiere written especially for the orchestra’s coming China tour, which begins, coincidentally, in Chengdu, the home of pandas – neither spiralled into a clumsy “polonaise for polar bears”, as musicologist Donald Tovey famously dubbed the finale of Sibelius’ Violin Concerto, nor ended up as an awkward romp among the bamboo shoots.As it turned out, it was the spiralling and moments of playful whimsy that ultimately saved Chen’s waltz from such a fate, offsetting any tendency to layer the orchestral texture too densely along the way.With resident conductor Lio Kuokman at the HK Phil’s helm, Chen’s fragments, which stem partly from a Sichuan mountain song and a Cantonese melody, were lent a buoyant character, soon morphing into a quasi “panda motif” – an idea Chen took from Wagner, drawing inspiration both from the “giants” of his operas and from the composer’s use of distinct leitmotifs.For all its spinning and sliding, not to mention the addition of two extended rainsticks for extra effects, Chen’s “Waltz 2.0” packed a great deal of musical material into a piece lasting less than 10 minutes.