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KVT – Truly Truly Tuyet Voi at Nha hat lon

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KVT-2012

KVT has a night to remember

Friday night and who’d want to be anywhere else but at the truly excellent 50th Subscription Concert by the Vietnam National Symphony Orchestra at Nha Hat Lon, led by Tetsuji Honna!

They had one of the world’s best harpists on tap. Naoko Yoshino is a real coup for a concert by the VNSO (this link says it all) and as she must have agreed not only to solo with the orchestra but to join in as a colleague, it must have been a challenge to come up with a program that had harp parts.

And what a program it was with Naoko soloing brilliantly in a Handel and a Debussy and playing along beautifully in a Tran Manh Hung and a Shostakovich

Vietnamese composer Tran Manh Hung (born 1973 and looks ten years younger) has a good body of musical work to his name and I hope I’m still around when the VNSO plays a concert of his compositions….the sooner the better. This year they premiered his very moving symphonic poem ‘Bach Dang Giang’.

The Bach Dang river emptying into Ha Long Bay near Hai Phong figures strongly in Vietnamese imaginations, not least because it was where Ngo Quyen had a decisive victory over an invading Chinese fleet in 938 and ended 1000 years of Imperial domination (there used to be a dramatic diorama at the Museum showing the Han ships caught up on steel tipped poles embedded in the river and being bloodily defeated by Ngo Quyen’s small boats). Ngo Quyen set himself up as King and established Vietnam’s first truly independent state at Co Loa – not far from present day Hanoi.

Now whether Hung’s piece refers to the victory or just the environment along the Bach Dang, or both, I don’t know….all I can say that it was played excellently by a full orchestra who were obviously as proud as punch and who made the audience sit up and take notice.

It’s one of those compositions that has all the marks of becoming a world class success story and if the evening’s music had ended there I’d have been content that I’d had my money’s worth.

Two harpists wove their magic into the above….and looking at the two female players I wondered if many males take up the harp or is it perceived as a females’ instrument even though it’s so heavy. In a New York list of professional harpists there are under 50 males to over 300 females! Someone suggests that it’s all to do with the pedals. Women can wear flowing skirts to cover up the furious pedalling and still manage to look serene whereas men in trousers would spoil that illusion with their legs and feet going like crazy.

A pared down orchestra accompanied Naoko in Handel’s Harp Concerto (first performed 1793) and everyone even slightly familiar with Baroque music will know that gorgeous first movement. It was a good foil for the previous large scale opener and so easy just to focus on the music and enjoy that enchanting harpist. Click here for a link to the concerto minus the skill of Naoko to remind you of the piece and to allow the magic of the instrument weave its spell.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bp7fPvWks3c[/youtube]

Then it was Naoko and strings straight into Debussy’s Dances Sacred and Profane…with profane probably having the old meaning of being secular, and being fully aware of your earthly existence. The piece is a delightfully seductive 10 minutes long and the part of me that is a frustrated choreographer sees an individual dancer in the ethereal sacred bits, weaving upwards, aloof, wandering with cool breezes, grounding momentarily as temptation approaches – but resisting. Then the profane has to be a pas de deux…earthy, sexy, celebrating the body and its sensuous movements with that quick, almost brusque ending leaving unanswered questions.

Naoko was not allowed to leave the stage without an encore and you could hear the audience’s satisfied sighs as she gave a melifluous ‘Clare De Lune’ to round off the celebration of Debussy’s 150th birthday.

All that delicious harping was almost necessary for what was to follow…..Shostakovich’s 5th Symphony which is my favourite of all the fifths…even surpassing Beethoven’s which the VNSO is playing at the end of this month.

I’ve read too much about Shostakovich’s life and times over the past year or two to ever hear his Fifth without emotions of fear and dread and trembling terror taking over. He composed it in 1937 at the height of Stalin’s great purge when millions were exiled, imprisoned or killed…and after Stalin had given a thumbs down to his Lady Macbeth opera. So it was in great fear for his own and his family’s well being and survival that he threw out his 4th and composed the magnificent piece we heard which he subtitled “A Citizen’s Reply to Just Critisism’. Most citizens who heard its premiere in Leningrad gave it an ovation that reportedly lasted longer than its 45 minute length, most perhaps realizing its intense humanity and tragic emotion.

Thankfully those in power translated it as triumphalism.

For me the whole of it reeks of fear and trembling and even that magnificent finale that offers glimmers of hope is tentative and gripping, as Shostakovich writes about it in his memoirs … what exultation could there be? I think it is clear to everyone what happens in the Fifth. The rejoicing is forced, created under threat… It’s as if someone were beating you with a stick and saying “Your business is rejoicing, your business is rejoicing” and you rise, shaky, and go marching off, muttering, “Our business is rejoicing, our business is rejoicing”. What kind of apotheosis is that? You have to be a complete oaf not to hear that.

Just about every section and instrument in the orchestra has a featured role in the 5th and conductor Honna pushed them all to their utmost and we ended up with a truly memorable and exhausting experience….and those harps again!

The applause was deafening!

BRAVO

Here’s a link to a recent full length 5th….not ours led by our magnificent Ong Honna…more over the top but it will surely grip you with its tensions and its plaintive cry of fear as it opens.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTqsU7tQW48[/youtube]

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.

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