KVT – And a Merry Christmas to All

KVT gets a very nice early Xmas gift of chamber music

In the lead up to Christmas I like to get my dose of really good music that has nothing what so ever to do with Christmas carols belted out by popular singers and third rate bands and that leaves jingle bells and rudolph way out in left field. I thought that the Swedish night at the Opera House last Thursday was the one but I was mistaken as there was one more special, sparkling bauble to come.

On a cold Saturday night I trotted off to that delightful little performance space at 16 Le Thai To for a night of chamber music by assorted artists.

The five musicians are all well known in classical circles in Vietnam and, in some cases, internationally. I took a punt that these women were not going to give us a second rate performance and neither they did. First class all the way even though the audience was half full of adoring families and friends, amazingly enough all the children (apart from three near me) behaved beautifully.

Pianist Pham Quynh Trang performed a marathon on the keyboard being a player in four major compositions. I’ve seen her with the Song Hong Chamber Music group a couple of times and her last performance with them of a Vu Nhat Tan piece at the Opera House in October was scintillating.

This time she teamed with young up and coming Tran Thi Tam Ngoc and played two pieces for four hands…Dvorak’s ‘Slavonic Dance’ and Mozart’s ‘Sonata in D major.

Dvorak composed his Slavonic Dances for 4 hands and later orchestrated them…wildly successfully…. and the folk tune inspired music was a successfully energetic start to the night and settled the audience down and had my feet and fingers tapping as twenty fingers chased and danced over the keyboard.

Then the four hands cavorted delightfully through the three movements of the only piece Mozart composed for 4 hands, his Sonata in D major when he was a 25 year old ex prodigy but still prodigiously composing.

Next up was Ms Tran Thi Mo…who has to be my all time favorite Vietnamese cello player. She’s a Meritorious Artist and always performs as if the title is thoroughly deserved and I attempt to catch her whenever she does a solo or is in a chamber group. And once more I wasn’t disappointed.

She joined Pham Quynh Trang in Brahms’s Sonata for Cello and Piano, Op 99, and it was a magnificent treat for us and a flurry of concentration for the performers.

Brahms was 53 and in the year that he composed this piece he composed two other of his most loved chamber music masterpieces and for me this one is the crowning glory even though it was not too well received in its day…too different and difficult to follow they said!

Every time I hear a cello played well it becomes, once again, my favorite instrument as it growls and soars and sings and hums and trembles in the air and Ms Mo confirmed its undisputed place as she held me spellbound through the four movements…and how fortunate to have such a sympathetic partner on the piano as it is a piece that even made Brahms grunt and gasp as he played through its complexities (Trang of course did no such thing)

And just to indicate the sounds and efforts of both cello and piano in the piece here’s an early clip of Du Pre and Barenboim

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xp9IzdF9YmE[/youtube]

and one of that so so good second movement by Ax and Jian Wang

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vlyRjLd8Nr4[/youtube]

As if the Brahms wasn’t enough good stuff for one night, along came a piano trio (with our tirelessly talented Pham Quynh Trang) and played Haydn’s ‘Gypsy’, so called because of the composers use of gypsy tunes in the last movement as heard outside his patron’s castle during a festival attempting to get hot blooded youths to be persuaded to be conscripted into the army.

Another meritorious artist, Dao Tuyet Trinh and passionate violinist Phan Tri To Trinh gave a very commendable interpretation of one of Haydn’s best loved works. They succeeded in establishing that conversation of instruments that, to my inexpert ears, is a  feature of good piano trios…the gossiping, the individual stating, the murmurings of agreement, the occasional snatches of argument and the bouts of joking and jollity.

A very listenable and extremely watchable performance with a clip here of the famous and  furious third movement which can be played race horse fast or as nicely as our trio did on Saturday and that had me dancing out the front door, just as the bouquets started to flood the stage, and in a mood to celebrate the Season in fine and fiery fettle.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nkd-9rLo3L8[/youtube]