KVT – Dazzling Young Fingers on a Keyboard

KVT with two big hits at NHA HAT LON

‘If,’ as Arthur Sullivan of Gilbert and Sullivan fame used to say, ‘the audience leaves the theater humming one of the tunes, you know you’ve got a hit’

On Friday night I left the Opera House humming the anthemic, fateful melody from the last movement…and two days later it’s still running around my cranium and occasionally slipping through my lips to startle a few passer bys.

And Tchaikovsky’s 5th was a big hit….all the way through

But first things first!

Last December 28 year old Japanese pianist extraordinaire, Tamura Hibiki, knocked our socks off with his beautifully impassioned interpretation of Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto No 2 with the help of the Vietnam National Symphony Orchestra

So when he came back to us this year with a new, blonde look, we rushed to get our seats where we could see those short fingers dance and pulse all over the ivories

This year he played the hoary old favorite, Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No 1, and it stopped owning my hoary epithet and I fell head over heels for it again. The famous opening theme blared out by the horns and sweeping strings and majestic ascending chords from the piano immediately grabbed me by the hair on the nape of my neck and I was hooked for the next 30 plus minutes.

Funnily enough that stately, emotional opening theme, one of the world’s most gut grabbing tunes when played well, goes on for too brief time and then is discarded, never to be reprised. But with Tamura in charge of the keyboard and splendidly chased along by the VNSO-which just gets better and better-the audience seemed to be hypnotized by his playing….sometimes ebullient, often dazzling, never overly flamboyant, but always heart wrenchingly poetic. It’s been described as a first movement combining sweaty athleticism- where the piano ‘indulges in cadenza-like flights of startling execution’ – interlaced with intense moments of pure, restrained poetry and, to the audience’s delight, one that ends in a starbursting firework display from all on stage

At this stage it’s time to introduce renowned Russian conductor Alexander Polyanichko who is no stranger to famous soloists and who held the VNSO gently but firmly in the palms of hands all evening.

In the second movement the flute, oboe, cello and violas take turns with the piano to blow through a gentle lilting breezy theme and is counter pointed with a melody is pure romance…it’s apparently based on a French song translated as one must amuse one’s self by dancing and laughing which pianist and orchestra translated perfectly into heart string tugging stuff

Then it was into the last movement that grabs onto the flapping shirt tails of a Ukrainian folk song which has the pianist’s fingers dancing and scattering all over the keys in ‘brilliant syncopations’. Then the orchestra throws in a really lyrical piece and the piano shows that it can do the same, if not better, and it all builds up to one of those finales designed to blow your head off….which it just about did

Bravos and curtain calls and a Liszt-ian encore had us sore handed, replete and wowed out.

A really BIG hit

Here’s a recent clip of the dazzling young pianist with another hit

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Eyy6ku-Sfk[/youtube]

Usually I’m not a yell out loud Tchaikovsky fan but I realized that our excellent conductor was not going to let one of his famous countrymen get trashed by a mere Vietnamese mob of musicians so when the clarinets eased into the somber beginning of Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony you knew that Tchaik’s intended bleakness was being indelibly established. Even though melodies of balletic beauty shaft in and out like sunlight dispersing shadows you cant’ escape the feeling that this is music to which the Fates dance and preen as they take on the awesome fate of determining human destinies.

The VNSO were on a real roll and the immediately recognizable, hauntingly memorable melody that stirs from a somber growl of strings, introduced by a solo horn in the second movement and taken up as a conversation with individual wind instruments, was hair raisingly delicious. Even the brass interrupting with the fate theme a couple of times doesn’t spoil our relaxed enjoyment too much because after startled pauses the whole orchestra takes hold of hope and with the help of the woodwinds and pizzicato strings brings it all to a conclusion that makes you melt inside.

Still on a real roll the orchestra waltzed into the third movement and you could just imagine it as a graceful pas de deux in a one of Tchaik’s ballets with a naughty corps de ballet brushing through en point before the white clad hero and heroine rescue the scene with a few more lifts and throws. Then the clarinets and bassoons sort of grab control at the end and sweep us into a very drear and proper beginning to the last movement.

It’s an anthemic movement that drags you with it screaming and kicking along with it like lambs to a fateful slaughter or lemmings to the nearest steep cliff….but near the end all this suggested ominous stuff changes into a grand and glorious waltz and you charge in demented happiness to the finale with the tympani pounding like excited heart beats

VNSO you did yourselves proud, VERY PROUD

CONGRATULATIONS ALL ROUND and especially maestro Polyanichko

Tchaikovsky is still not my favorite composer but at this rate he is climbing higher and higher up my want to re-discover to hit parade