KVT – HOANG/ RAVEL/ FRANCK @ THE OPERA HOUSE

A hot summer night but in the cool interior of the Hanoi Opera House maestro Tran Vuong Thach – on loan from the Ballet Symphony Orchestra in TP Ho Chi Minh – conducted the Vietnam National Symphony Orchestra and made sure that they gave us some really ‘cool’ music.

First up was a new, short and totally cool 4 part composition by personable, 26 year old local Pho Duc Hoang who has been studying composition in Boston since 2011 and who already has a nice body of performed music works behind him

We heard Bubble an exciting modern piece that was revised this year. It has a distinct international flavor.

Its atonal fizzing beginning, that had me purring with pleasure, gave way to jazzy slides from the really turned on brass and wind sections of the orchestra.

At times the work’s moods were like watching a protoplasmic waxy bubble inside the slowly heating translucent liquid of a funky 1960ies lava lamp- rising, morphing, swirling, breaking apart, falling, dancing…

It’s a composition that I’d gladly listen to again

[youtube width=”700″ height=”393″]https://youtu.be/27XvZReW_cs[/youtube]

Thanks to the generosity of L’Espace we got a return visit by internationally celebrated pianist Celimene Daudet who gave us an intellectual solo performance in late 2014 and who is celebrated for her 2013 recording of Bach’s The Art Of Fugue

On our hot summer night the VNSO joined her in Ravel’s very popular Piano Concerto in G-the opening movement being a perfect follow on from Bubble with its reference to jazz melodies reminiscent of Gershwin (Ravel in 1928 had returned from America and decided to compose a concerto that would endear him to his legion of American fans). Luckily, again, the brass and winds purled those summer night jazz sounds perfectly.

It’s the Adagio where the audience falls head over heels for an expert pianist such as Celimene Daudet who can soothe and smooth diaphanous breezes all over you. As one critic puts it… the Adagio is the reason we not only delight in this concerto but truly love it. The piano, alone, spins out a long, long melody over a kind of slow waltz bass that manages to be incredibly gentle even while it moves in constant cross-rhythm against the song in the right hand. When this melody is rounded off, a flute and then other woodwinds softly make their presence known. Eventually the English horn steps forward to sing the serene melody, while the piano decorates it with fanciful garlands

The final movement is as if Ravel is challenging us to share in his love of life, his Basque roots with their fiery Spanish echoes, and to shimmy with his discovery of sliding jazz… the pianist abandons any notion of being an accompanist or chamber-music partner and is unmistakably out front in the most soloistic manner possible. Wind solos speak in beguiling foreign accents, which is to say in foreign keys. There are startling trombone smears, and the bassoon is given a particularly demanding virtuoso bit. A crack of percussion carries our minds back to the concerto’s opening, and the final bang is colored by the same bass drum thump that ended the first movement. Brilliant stuff from our pianist and totally revved up musicians who made you realize why the movement was repeatedly encored in the years following the concerto’s debut in 1933.

Daudet wowed them at Carnegie Hall in December 2013 – and no wonder!

Below she gives advice to Palestinian boys after one of her international concerts

About 3 years ago the VNSO played Franck’s Symphony in D minor and almost did it justice. On this year’s hot summer night with the brass section on par with the winds and the strings, they really hit the spot!

IF you are superstitious you may think that it’s a bit of a gamble to follow Ravel with a symphony that he considered to be a bit second rate… but under Maestro’s Thac’s baton Franck was wonderful. Lots of first time listeners to the symphony enthuse that it’s their new favorite.

It’s a shorter than usual symphony and as Franck was an innovator of the cyclical form – in that the main ideas and melodies keep recurring and transforming as new elements throughout. In the final, glorious movement it starts to fit you like a comfortable kid glove and you know that you want to hum along and share in its triumphal journey. It’s the beginning of the second movement that makes you shiver when the hum of pizzicato strings and the tingling harp allow the cor anglais to preview one of the composer’s best ever melodies.

Here’s a fragment of that tune offered with empathy to the hundreds of thousands who’ve recently had their jobs and incomes jeopardized by an undersea effluent spill:

[youtube width=”700″ height=”393″]https://youtu.be/cIhhXDAjU9A[/youtube]

And the last…

[youtube width=”700″ height=”393″]https://youtu.be/jkcLrIbPYIM[/youtube]