Japanese conductor to lead young musicians at Hồ Gươm Opera

Japanese conductor Yutaka Sado will perform with Super Kids Orchestra and Việt Nam Youth Orchestra. Photo of organisation board

HÀ NỘI — Conductor Yutaka Sado will lead young musicians from Japan Super Kids Orchestra (SKO) and Việt Nam Youth Orchestra (VYO) to perform at Hồ Gươm Opera on January 4.

Under the baton of the conductor, the orchestras will play a repertoire of pieces by Vietnamese composer Trần Mạnh Hùng, Japanese composer Yasushi Akutagawa, and others.

Conductor Sado has conducted widely in France, Jerusalem, Switzerland, Czech Republic and Hungary. He led the Lamoureux’s first recording of the digital age, a well-received all-Ibert disc for Naxos, and planned a series of “Lamoureux Premiere” recordings.

In 2011, he took his first turn conducting the Berlin Philharmonic with music from Takemitsu and Shostakovich. Later recordings include The Puccini Experience (2007), Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 5 (2010), and Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto No. 2 (2011).

The conductor acquired an assistantship with the Kansai Nikikai, a Japanese opera company, where he had the opportunity to work with the New Japan Philharmonic and the Kyoto Symphony Orchestra while learning operatic repertory. He travelled to the United States on a fellowship to the Tanglewood Music Festival, where he studied with Seiji Ozawa, and won the Davidoff Special Prize at a competition in Schleswig-Holstein.

He served as Leonard Bernstein’s assistant on a tour of Germany and the Soviet Union. His debut outside Japan was conducting at the 39th annual International Young Conductors’ Competition in Besançon, France in 1989, where he took first prize.

He will conduct the VYO playing the petite suite entitled Thiên Thanh (Colour of Nature) to open the concert. The suite composed by Hùng has three chapters embedded with Vietnamese sounds, and is deliciated to the VYO.

The melodies in the piece carry the essence of traditional music found in the northwestern region, Central Highlands, among the Chăm ethnic group and in the imperial city of Huế.

SKO will perfrom Triptyque for String by Yasushi Akutagawa. He (1925-89) was a leading Japanese composer of the post-World War II era. With its chugging and angular rhythms and folk-like melodies, Akutagawa’s early Triptyque for String Orchestra recalls the motoric compositions of Prokofiev, Bartók, and of course, Stravinsky.

The piece was given its world premiere by The New York Philharmonic, led by Mr. Voss, at Carnegie Hall in December 1953.

Other pieces will be played at the concert including Gustav Holst’s St Paul’s Suite; 1st Movement of Jig; Ennio Morricone’s New Cinema Paradice; Edgar Meyer’s 1B – Appalachian Journey; Leroy Anderson’s Fiddle-Faddle; Vittorio Monti’s Csárdás; Tchaikovsky’s Serenade for Strings in C Major, Op. 48 and Bill Whelan’s Riverdance.

English Romantic composer Edward William Elgar’s Pomp and Circumstance Marches, Op. 39 – March No 1 in D Major will be performed by the two orchestras to close the concert.

The concert is the first project in the VYO Exchange Programme with the desire to bring the world to Việt Nam and Việt Nam to the world. It will bring the opportunity for everyone in Việt Nam to experience the quintessential virtues of cultures around the world, according to the concert organisation.

The concert will begin at 8pm. Tickets can be booked at the link: https://bit.ly/48n2Zci. — VNS