The knee-jerk reaction of Tan Dun’s detractors will be to accuse the composer of recycling his Oscar-winning score to Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. And Tan seems to court that comparison himself, with tracks like ‘Spirit Flight’ echoing the same floating groove as Crouching Tiger’s ‘Farewell’ and the Japanese drum ensemble Kodo pounding a rhythmic pattern in ‘Swift Sword’ barely distinguishable from Dragon’s ‘Night Flight’.

But just as Zhang’s cinematic account of China’s first emperor arguably owes as much to Kurosawa, Wong Kar Wai and even Greenaway as to Ang Lee’s groundbreaking martial arts epic, Tan looks well beyond his earlier score. The music for Hero retains the northern Chinese edge of Zhang’s stylised filmmaking, much as the Crouching Tiger score reflected the lyricism of Lee’s narrative approach.

Few composers today write more effective melodies for bowed strings, and Yo-Yo Ma’s much touted presence in the earlier soundtrack is smoothly replaced here by violinist Itzhak Perlman. Additional solos are performed by Tan himself, but the two are easy to tell apart. Any moments of genuine soloistic presence are definitely Perlman. Anything that requires alternative tuning or earthy playing technique is most certainly Tan – and as such, his playing rises up from within the orchestral texture rather than reaching down to it from above.

Partly for this reason, Hero makes for a more thoughtful listening experience than Crouching Tiger. Much of its freshness also stems from differences in the way the directors treated music in their respective films. Where Lee often used grand visual panoramas to accompany large uninterrupted stretches of the score, Zhang’s visual stylisations barely have time for music even as an afterthought. As a result, the Hero soundtrack retains a few surprises, even to those who’ve seen the film.