HCMC – The HCMC Ballet, Symphony Orchestra and Opera (HBSO) has scheduled three concerts for December, but only for the benefit of TV audiences.
The concerts are a chamber event on December 6, Ballet Suite Carmen dance performance on December 7, and a night of film music on December 26.
The three events will be filmed by HCMC Television (HTV). The dates for their eventual broadcast, however, have not yet been fixed.
The chamber music event will feature Mendelssohn’s Symphony for String Orchestra Number 10, Vivaldi’s Concerto for Two Violins in E Minor with violinists Pham Vu Thien Bao and Le Minh Hien, Waltzes Numbers 3 and 4 from Shostokovich’s Four Waltzes for Flute, Clarinet and Piano, Pieces 2 and 7 from Max Bruch’s Eight Pieces for Clarinet, Viola and Piano, and the Romance from Shostakovich’s The Gadfly for Viola and Piano.
The concert will conclude with Debussy’s Premiere Rhapsodie for Clarinet and Piano with soloists Hoang Ngoc Anh Quan and Ju Sun Young, and Mozart’s Divertimento for Strings K.136 performed by the HBSO String Orchestra.
The concert will be conducted by Tran Nhat Minh.
The Ballet Suite Carmen is a popular favorite from the HBSO’s ballet. It uses themes from Bizet’s famous opera but in a novel and ingenious way. This one-act ballet version was composed by the Russian composer Rodion Shchedrin and choreographed by the Cuban choreographer Alberto Alonso. Its premier was in Moscow in 1967. The orchestration is for strings and percussion only.
The combination of a Russian and a Cuban artist was predictably controversial in the middle of the Cold War, but the work has proved very popular with audiences everywhere. It has been performed several times in Saigon by HBSO Ballet.
The program for the night of film music, scheduled for filming on Boxing Day, has not yet been finalized. But on the evidence of similar concerts from HBSO in the past there will be a wide range of perhaps 20 numbers, including solo vocal and choral items.
Taken together, these three events will be a bonanza for classical music lovers, starved as we have been for live material during the Covid-19 pandemic. Details of broadcasting dates will be given as and when they become available.
