KVT – Da Da Da Daaaa

KVT immersed in Beethoven’s 5th

When I was 12 years old Music Appreciation was a compulsory subject in my school and our teacher, Mr McNess , a young man, new to the school and to teaching, was faced with a class of over to 50 adolescent brats whose main focus was sex not Sibelius.

Mr Mcness could have begun our appreciation of the classics in the usual way of music teachers with Britten’s ‘A Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra’ or Walt Disney’s ‘The Sorcerers Apprentice’, but he decided to start day one with DA DA DA DAAA….the opening chords to Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony and he won most of us over into appreciative silence.

And for any readers who, for some reason have been wilfully deprived of that DA DA DA DAAA pleasure, click here. But as the motif is often appropriated in disco and rock music it must be one of the worlds most famous sounds.

And Mr McNess would have really appreciated the Vietnam National Symphony Orchestra’s interpretation of the same symphony last week at The Workers Theater opposite the ice cream shops in Trang Tien. Right from the start the orchestra was in top form ….as it had to be with that well known first first movement and every section of the orchestra played like a beautifully cohesive family.

I often shy away from performances of the fifth in case it doesn’t live up to my expectations but on this occasion it certainly did……not that the hoary old Workers Theater is the best place for a good orchestra to strut its stuff. Too much glorious sound seems to be muffled in the wings or lost somewhere bouncing along the padded walls. And its as though they’ve got the bass turned up too high on the console. Initially I blamed it on my new ears. I’d had my friendly barber clean the wax out the day before…thanks to my surfers ear syndrome…and I thought that perhaps my ear drums were a little too sound sensitive …but my friends assured me afterwards that they agreed with my acoustic prognosis

So if the VNSO could cope with all that and still come out on top then they must have played superbly.

The lively and lithe Japanese conductor, Tomoyuki Hirota, had the players in the palm of his hand and he had the woodwinds and brass sections way up in perfection country.

The symphony lasts 30 minutes carries you along on an emotional ride with some some excursions into mellow beauty …until its exhillarating finale

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DAyUzxDB9eE [/youtube]

where you can just about share the orchestra’s blood, sweat and enthusiastic energy. An immense work played as immensely well as circumstances allowed.

The night began with a really lovely Concertina for Bassoon and Orchestra by Ferdinand David.

For a long time now, when I’ve watched the VNSO, a young bassoon player has come to my attention. At last he’s been given a well earned place in the spotlight and it was a huge pleasure to hear Van Thanh Ha playing solo. Excellent! And beautifully supported by the orchestra. Since the week before at the little opera ‘The Child and the Spells’ when a French bassoonist gave us Ravel heaven on her long wind instrument, I’d been looking forward to Ha’s performance and I wasn’t disappointed

Back to the 5th. It’s a wonderful platform for the strings with gorgeous bits for cellos and basses and they certainly were (gorgeous)….The violins? Gorgeous too!

I’ll be back in the same theater this week with the same orchestra for Beethoven’s very glorious Emporer Concerto. Can hardly wait!