KVT – Mozart Cycles L’Espace

KVT back into the groove with the VNSO

This week it was refreshing, after too long a pause, to get back into the groove with the Vietnam National Symphony Orchestra and an excellent concert in the auditorium at L’Espace.

For those who like good classical music try to get a copy of the VNSO 2013 Season calendar. It will be a year’s great listening.

Unfortunately I’ll miss out on what I think will be the season’s highlight, the Japanese opera ‘Yuzura’ with a top Japanese cast of principals. It’s on at the Opera House on March 29 and 30.

It also looks like the Japanese and the Italians are going to celebrate their 40^th anniversary of diplomatic relations with Vietnam in the best way possible by showcasing some of the best that Vietnam can offer in their home countries. The VNSO will do two very comprehensive tours of Japan (Early Summer and Autumn) and it will be in Venice and Florence in July. The concerts they play in Hanoi prior to leaving for overseas will also be highlights.

This week took up on the VNSO’s continuing Mozart Cycle and thanks to the continuing generosity of the French, we got one of the world’s best clarinet players to solo with them…and Michel Lethiec was truly wonderful….and due to the continuing wonderfulness of the French, full price tickets were only 120 000VND (WHERE ELSE IN THE WORLD BUT HANOI!)

It takes musical cleverness to make Mozart’s Symphony No 25 feel as though you’re hearing it fresh and new, especially the first movement that was so predominant in the movie ‘Amadeus’. And the VNSO under the baton of the very clever Tetsuji Honna did just that.

When the first movement is played well I like to feel a sense of conflict and agitation, even tenseness, and I got all that. This continued when the third and fourth movements were played. I like the idea that the 17 year old Mozart was really into the prevailing storm and stress romantic movement that was all the rage in literature and that the 25^th was meant to be a bit dark and ominous and meant to shock or thrill his audiences with feelings of extreme emotion….and if doesn’t do that for me than I sit back and go ho hum.

Apparently the 25^th is important in that it freed the wind instruments from a background role in orchestral compositions and the flutes and oboes escape from the violins at times in bursts and thrills to wonder at.

I thought that the Andante second movement was going to fall a bit flat at its commencement but it picked up and flowed mellowly with those storm cloud undertones seeping through.

Here’s a You Tube offering of another great interpretation of the symphony…by Bernstein [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KFsvK-A_HV8[/youtube]

Without only a slght  break Honna revved up the Orchestra with the Clarinet Concerto in A Major, composed just before Mozart’s death.

What a great opening with the orchestra in fine fettle and Michel Lethiec doing all those gymnastic musical leaps that are required as the scales are swung up and down. The finale to the movement results, for me, in one of the most joyful musical moments ever created…. before the slow second movement, slow and stately, brings me near to tears as the clarinet wrings every note of its pathos as it sings so very low and gut wrenchingly high.

It was a magic marriage of soloist and orchestra that left me feeling full of a warm sadness (sounds funny but too true). But the last movement immediately pricked that bubble with a light playfulness that continued throughout with the clarinet weaving skillfully through a game of hide and seek and follow the leader until they all coalesced, throwing away any ribbons of melancholy or sadness that may have tried to remain and ended up in a flourish that was immediately rewarded with applause.

Mozart to die for! A soloist to remember and cherish

I couldn’t get a Lethiec clip of that magic second movement so here’s one by Shirin that if you have a sense of beauty will probably make you feel as teary as I was (twice) on Saturday night

[youtube] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BxgmorK61YQ[/youtube]

And here’s a link to fill you in on the maestro who played for us

Superb night.

Thanks again L’Espace and Honna