KVT – A Hoa Sua Night at Hanoi Opera House
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You have to applaud the Goethe Institute for its wonderful persistence! Over the past year it has provided a platform, in their courtyard or exhibition hall, for young musicians from the Vietnam National Academy of Music to strut their stuff…providing a vital mentorship. To cap it all off in splendid fashion, Goethe gave 70 plus of the talented players the services of a widely respected German conductor and the concert stage on the Hanoi Opera House. Thus the Young Philharmonic Orchestra tuned up last Wednesday night and Christoph Poppen led them into a really good rendition of the overture from Mozart’s “Magic Flute”.
As I’d approached Nha Hat Lon that evening I was met with invisible, rippling waves of Hoa Sua perfume, that heady autumn aroma that somehow overpowers the stink of exhaust fumes and which, for a long, indrawn moment, drapes Hanoi in exquisite poetry.
Thanks too to the exquisite influence of conductor Poppen, the poetry followed me inside and obviously infected the musicians who played extraordinarily well.

I am usually on tenterhooks when I hear some Hanoian orchestras in case the woodwinds and brass sections drop a few notes here and there but this night, apart from a couple of teeny flinches that didn’t really matter, the winds and brass deserved their singling out for applause after Mendelssohn’s Scottish Symphony finished its majestic fourth movement. The strings, as usual, were strong, and the young lady timpanist was wonderful.
The orchestra was obviously buoyant after its successful overture and smoothly accompanied local pianist, Dao Trong Tuyen, in Beethoven’s “Emperor Concerto”. It was a really good interpretation and Tuyen launched into the long and demanding first movement with a panache that didn’t falter throughout. I mean, how good do you have to be to lead into the third movement without a moment to stop and have a quick moment to say ‘whew!’ and wipe your brow – even if the second is described as calm and reflective? Had I been Tuyen, my stomach butterflies would have been swarming en masse at the thought of playing such a well known work to an audience that was liberally laden with peers and pupils.
It was really enjoyable and left me asking, ‘When will we have the chance to hear him again?’
We don’t get enough Mendelssohn in Hanoi and the “Scottish” went down a treat.
Although it’s called the third it was Felix’s fifth completed symphony and may have began its life when the composer paid a twilight visit to the ruined chapel of Mary, Queen of Scots, at Holyrood. And the fairly somber first movement did evoke for me the travails of that doomed lady who lost her head to a rather blunt axe.
He began the Symphony when he was 20 and completed it 13 years later and a lot of listeners will swear that the music is redolent of Scotland. Even to go as far as Ted Libbey in his ‘A Weekly Guide Essential Classics’ and hear in the concluding movement… ‘a grand, majestic march down from the Scottish Highlands. You can imagine the gathering of the clans, with everyone in kilts.’
Others dispute that, apart from its name, it has anything to do with Scotland, and Mendelssohn’s great friend Robert Schumann who wrote a review of the finished score, called it very Italian. A colleague of mine suggests that had it been called, say, ‘The Welsh Symphony’ or ‘The Albanian’, then listeners who insist their music be descriptive would find it evocative of those landscapes and histories. In fact if it were only ever known as Mendelssohn’s Third, the visions of wind swept moors would never have prevailed.
But, whatever!!!! Enough of me being annoyingly pedantic! It’s a gorgeous piece and Poppen ensured that essential Mendelssohness was perfectly captured in the rustling lightness and energy of the famous second movement.
Because the symphony progresses without pause for its 40 minute duration, the orchestra’s concentration was really stretched and at the end of it all they deserved their thunderous applause.

Afterwards, anyone who had been smoothed by the spell woven by Poppen and his musicians would have stood on the front steps of the grand old house and been, ever so lightly, encased in a gossamer veil of sweetness and wondered about the poetry of that velvet Hoa Sua night.
Kiem Van Tim is a keen observer of life in general and the Hanoi cultural scene in particular and offers some of these observations to the Grapevine. KVT insists that these observations and opinion pieces are not critical reviews. Please see our Comment Guidelines / Moderation Policy and add your thoughts in the comment field below. |