HCM CITY — The HCM City Ballet Symphony Orchestra (HBSO) and Opera celebrates Polish composer Frederic Chopin's 200th birthday with a concert at the Opera House tonight.
Chopin Night will open with Andante Spianato et Grande Polonaise Brillante Op. 22 and Piano Concerto No 2 in F minor.
Pianists Ly Giai Hoa and Nguyen Anh Son and the orchestra will perform the concertos under the baton of Tran Vuong Thach.
Hoa graduated with a master's in piano from the HCM Conservatory and from a two-year course at Shanghai Conservatory of Music in China. Son is a piano graduate of HCM City Conservatory and has conducted at the Moscow Tchai-kovsky Conservatory in Russia.
The concert will continue with the ballet Chopiniana (Les Sylphides) with choreography by Russian Mikhail Fokine and music by Chopin staged by Kim Quy and To Nhu, dancers To Nhu, Hong Chau, Phi Diep and Duc Nhuan.
The ballet has no plot, but instead consists of many white-clad sylphs dancing in the moonlight with a poet or young man dressed in white tights and a black top.
The ballet, which premiered in 1907 in St. Petersburg, highlights Chopin's concertos, including the Polonaise in A major, Op. 40, No. 1; Nocturne in F major, Op. 15, No. 1; Mazurka in C sharp minor, Op. 50, No. 3; Waltz in C sharp minor, Op. 64, No. 2 and Tarantella in A flat major, Op. 43.
Born in 1810 in Warsaw of French-Polish parents, Chopin was considered a musical genius and one of the great masters of Romantic music. He composed first Polonaises at the age of seven and performed for the first time four years later.
He enrolled in the Warsaw Lyceum in 1823 and took a three-year course in music theory and composition with composer Jozef Elsner at the Warsaw Conservatory, which was affiliated with the University of Warsaw.
In 1830, Chopin settled in France and supported himself as a composer and piano teacher, giving few public performances. He died of tuberculosis in 1849.
The majority of Chopin's compositions were written for the piano as solo instrument. He also invented musical forms such as the instrumental ballad and made major innovations to the piano sonata, mazurka, waltz and nocturne.
The concert will begin at 8pm today at the HCM City Opera House at 7 Lam Son Square, District 1. Tickets, ranging from VND100,000 (US$5) to VND200,000 ($10), are available at the box office. — VNS