American conductor Christopher Zimmerman, music director of Fairfax Symphony Orchestra in the US, will lead a Scheherazade Concert at the HCM City Opera House on October 19. (Photo: courtesy of HBSO)HCM City (VNS/VNA) - American conductor Christopher Zimmerman,music director of Fairfax Symphony Orchestra in the US, will leada Scheherazade concert at the HCM City Opera House on October 19.
The concert will feature Scheherazade, op 35, a symphonic suite composedby Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov in 1888.
The four-movement work was inspired by One Thousand and One Nights, acollection of Middle Eastern and Indian tales told by the sultan Scheherazade.
Scheherazade was first performed in Saint Petersburg in November 1988. Itis considered Rimsky-Korsakov’s most popular work.
In 1910, the Ballets Russes premiered a ballet adaptationof Scheherazade at the Opéra Garnier in Paris in 1910. The Russianchoreographer Michel Fokine was the choreographer, and the libretto by Fokineand Léon Bakst of Russia.
Vietnamese-American violist Vu Viet Chuong will perform along with musiciansfrom the HCM City Ballet Symphony Orchestra and Opera (HBSO).
Chuong earned a bachelor’s and master’s degrees in violin performance from theUniversity of Houston, and a doctorate at the University of North Texas.
He has appeared as a soloist with orchestras in the US and Vietnam such as theSan Angelo Symphony, Odysseus Chamber Orchestra, the Richardson SymphonyOrchestra, Hanoi Symphony Orchestra and HBSO.
He has also performed at international music festivals in the US, UK andBrazil.
He is co-founder of the Vietnam Connection Music Festival, which attractsleading classical artists in Vietnam and the world.
Internationally acclaimed Vietnamese-British pianist Tra Nguyen will give asolo performance of Concerto in F for Piano and Orchestra, a compositionby American composer and pianist George Gershwin.
The work, written in 1925, contains elements of blues, ragtime, and Charlestonmusic. All are new to the classical form.
It was first performed by the New York Symphony Orchestra in 1925, withGershwin as a soloist.
Tra Nguyen, who studied at Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatory in Russia and at theRoyal Academy of Music in the UK, gave her first performance at the Hanoi OperaHouse when she was ten years old.
She has performed at other prestigious venues, including the Queen ElizabethHall, Cadogan Hall, Wigmore Hall, the Kennedy Center, and Tokyo Opera.
She has issued a number of CDs for piano and orchestra.
The concert will also include English composer Edward Elgar’s Introductionand Allegro for Strings, op 47.
The work was written in 1905 and performed in an all-Elgar concert by the newlyformed London Symphony Orchestra.
The composition will feature a string quartet, including violinists Tang ThanhNam and Le Minh Hien, violist Pham Vu Thien Bao, and Meritorious Artist andcellist Nguyen Tan Anh.
Conductor Zimmerman graduated from Yale University with a Bachelor of Arts inMusic, and received his Master’s degree from the University of Michigan.
He has worked with numerous orchestras, such as the Royal PhilharmonicOrchestra and London Symphony Orchestra of the UK, Prague Symphony Orchestra,and National Orchestra of Rio de Janeiro in Brazil.
Zimmerman was formerly the music director of the Symphony of Southeast Texas,the Bangor Symphony Orchestra and the City of London Chamber Orchestra.
Since 2009, he has been music director of the Fairfax Symphony Orchestra, whichwas the 2013 winner of the Best Classical Orchestra Ensemble given by theWashington DC Area Musical Awards.
The Scheherazade Concert will begin at 8 pm at 7 Lam Sơn Square inDistrict 1. Tickets are available at the venueand www.ticketbox.vn.-VNS/VNA
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