KVT – A Dress Rehearsal for the States

Images are from rehearsal and performance in the USA by Mr Cong Luan

Last week the VNSO played in New York and Boston. KVT attended their dress rehearsal at the Au Co Art Center before they flew out and shares his impressions of that focal performance:

They began as they’ll do in the States and we heard a  symphonic rendition of ‘Tien  Quan Ca’ and then an elegant one of ‘The Star Spangled Banner’ which should make the spines of the Americans tingle delightfully and make them so glad they don’t have to listen to yet another Britney or Whitney Houston, or similar, pop mangled version.

The string section of the VNSO is really good and they started the performance with an exceptionally moving interpretation of American composer Samuel Barber’s ‘Adagio for Strings’. A lot of people emotively remember this as played in tribute to the victims of 9/11 (and more recently in Japan in memorium to earthquake victims). Thus it’s going to have to be played magnificently in New York if it is to win the audience over. If they played like I heard them on Tuesday, the VNSO will have succeeded admirably.

Once the Adagio starts to weave its slow and somewhat melancholy spell you start to remember where you’ve heard it before….after all it is one of the most famous pieces in the string repertoire. Mine came in the early 1980’s when it featured in Oliver Stone’s anti-war movie ‘Platoon’ and allowed a new generation to come to terms with the horror that was the American War and know empathy for the Vietnamese.

And then there is the latter day mob of youngsters who know it through versions like this

And there are those with a new age, or hyper-romantic bent, who can’t go past something in this vein

Then there are those like me who agree with music historian Barbara Heyman that ‘there’s a big kind of sadness and poetry about it. It has a melodoic gesture that reaches an arch, like a big sigh….and then exhales and fades off into nothingness’ and who’d have liked nothing more than to hear Toscanini’s 1938 broadcast with the NBC Orchestra in New York.

But you’d have to go a long way to match Honna’s interpretation with the VNSO. Very beautiful!

The Adagio was followed by Vietnamese composer Dam Linh’s violin concerto, ‘Thang Long’ solo-ed by willowy and wonderful Le Hoai Nam (whom I’m sure set some US hearts aflutter with his dep trai looks and his playing that sort of grabs your heart strings).

It’s a very lovely concerto as it evokes so many Vietnamese themes and places, not necessarily the grand and dramatic, but often the homespun and poignant. For me, in one magic place there was a fluttering of dragonfly wings above a limpid pond.

The Gershwin-flavored, brassy crescendos are attention grabbers.

It’s a winner and is a great choice as it takes the listener slowly from the meditative space of the Adagio’s final moments and into a new listening experience that will showcase the ‘Vietnamese’ character of music played by the VNSO…a sound that makes them a distinctive world orchestra. I wish I could pick a few links out of the internet ether so that you could hear it. But no such luck!

And it’s this Vietnamese tone that Honna pulled out of Dvorak’s Eighth Symphony after interval when the orchestra returned to the stage, ao dai replaced by formal, black evening gowns.

Some may ask why Dvorak’s ‘New World Symphony’ wasn’t chosen instead of the lesser played 8th? That would have been too clichéd.

I’ve heard the 8th described as an exciting piece full of breathtaking beauties, blazes of joy, and dark shadows filled with pain. It has ribald jokes, noble gestures, and passages of yearning sensitivity.

What strikes me most is the feeling of joy it emanates as it plays around with some folk tunes of Dvorak’s native Bohemia. The first movement has a delightful tune that is brought in bird-like by the flute and expanded on until the  crescendos build on each other, showcasing just what all sections of the VNSO can do, until you are shivering as the flute and horn revisit that bird song and a crescendo of  joy swirls you to its conclusion.

The brass in the second movement comes to the fore again and, my word, how well they played.

The third makes you want to get up and waltz for a delightful 7 minutes and then sit and fan yourself while you wait expectantly for the grand last movement, best described thus: it ‘ begins with a bracing fanfare in the trumpets, is made up of a series of wild variations on another children’s tune initially stated by the cellos. The theme’s first eight bars are a summing up of everything in the symphony so far- an ascending triad (the same notes as the flute theme in the first movement) and a descending sequence. After another raucous climax, the original version of the theme returns one last time for another series of variations, again led by the cellos. Now the music has turned deeply inward and profoundly bittersweet. Though staying firmly in major, this is Dvorak at his most heartbreaking- one gets the feeling that Dvorak is facing the prospect of letting go of something very dear to him in this music’. (source from this website)

The VNSO has a couple of encores up their sleeves in case the American audiences demand more and, why won’t they! After the applause for the 8th more will certainly be demanded.You may call the choiceclichéd but I call it brilliance. The two short Vietnamese compositions, one for strings and one, ‘The Rice Drum’, for full orchestra certainly bought more than a few tears to my eyes.

For those listeners virgin to the 8th, just follow these links :

Dvořák – Symphony No.8 (Mov.1/4)

Dvořák – Symphony No.8 (Mov.2/4)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CIt4gWEzoBU&feature=related

Dvořák – Symphony No.8 (Mov.3/4)

Dvořák – Symphony No.8 (Mov.4/4)