KVT in Musical Heaven with Goto Ryu and the VNSO

KVT fiery, teary and very satisfied after a week of great classical music

If you weren’t at the Opera House on Wednesday or Thursday night you missed out on a truly fabulous musical event.

The Vietnam National Symphony Orchestra was involved in two very classy compositions….one by Tchaikovsky and one by Mahler. Both were so good that they deserve an opinion piece each.

Mahler on Monday!

The Tchaikovsky was in a world of its own!

On Thursday a packed auditorium, with an overwhelming majority of Japanese, were there especially to experience the magic that 25 year old Goto Ryu can produce on his 1722 Stradivarius.

The local Japanese music lovers always know a brilliant musical thing when it comes to town and things hardly ever get better than this former child prodigy from New York who is so popular with conductors and orchestras around the world that his 2014 playing schedule is enormous and we were fortunate that it brought him close to our shores.

The violinist above entering the stage at Carnegie Hall where he’s been invited back to give another concert this year.

He was here in 2011 and blew us all away with a Paganini Violin Concerto and anyone who saw that was back in the audience ready for his interpretation of Tchaikovsky’s almost too famous Violin Concerto in D major,op 35.

Apparently Jimmie Hendrix was an influence on Ryu’s playing style…hence a sometimes aggressive and fiery approach that gave the Tchaikovsky a youthful verve that ignited the auditorium and I don’t think that I was the only one who had tears on their cheeks….. several times.

In 2011 I wrote that: he has the most amazing stage presence. Although he is concentrating enormously on the score imprinted in his mind and has probably blocked out everything but the conductor and the music coming at him from the orchestra, he appears to be connecting with his audience via eye contact. At times I thought he was sharing a particular poignant moment or two with me alone. It makes you feel really special even though you know everything out in front of him is in a pitch black chasm.

The first, long movement calls for some formidable technical feats on the part of the soloist and the exceptional cadenza was made even more exceptional by this young man. It was impossible not to applaud at the movement’s conclusion even though you realized that there was a chance your appreciation could upset the performer’s concentration as he headed for the Canzonetta which has the violin play a long melody that suggests sentimental dreaming and can be too saccharine. But Ryu has a clean and lyrical approach that was awe inspiring. You were swept along like sweet, fresh, moist air rising and shattering high above like thin ice….oh it was good!
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Without a pause the second movement leads into the finale with its peasant music feel. It has everything a great finale needs. Unforgettable melody, intense drama, flashy brilliance and tenderness that belies the traumas that Tchaikovsky was enduring when he composed it.

Ryu was able to make his violin sing so purely that it was, at times, as if a human voice was crying out for us…then his fine tuned, ferocious fieriness came to the fore and you could imagine the Cossacks dancing as violin and orchestra raced and dived for the finish line and enormous, sustained applause

Our exceptional conductor Honna had the Vietnam National Symphony Orchestra playing in perfect simpatico with the soloist, so much so that they almost seemed to become one organism.

They were led along an understated path that made for truly beautiful listening.

Superb!

As if the concerto wasn’t enough Ryu gave us a ruby encore to thank us …a Fritz Kreisler composition as in this clip

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e43zYP_27tc[/youtube]

And for those of you like me who can’t get enough of this young and personable young man here’s a different take

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jCGW-ALx2lU[/youtube]

WHAT A NIGHT! ONG HONNA, THE VNSO AND YOUR SPONSORS…. THANKS VERY MUCH

*** The purists amongst us will have already pointed out that the image of Ryu at the top of the page was taken after his Paganini triumph in 2011. This year his smile was just as wide and Ong Honna is just as handsome