HCM CITY — Music circles in HCM City are abuzz with excitement and curiosity over a new work composed by 48-year-old composer Le Van Tuan. Home of the Soul, performed and recorded over more than a year by lecturers and students at HCM City Music Conservatory, promises to break new ground in the way it combines different musical genres.
It has eight songs composed by Tuan that express nostalgia for the native land and explores the connection between the world and the afterlife.
Tuan says his composition is a combination of classic, romantic, opera, and rock (CROR) forms of music. They are not simple works, including poems, drama, painting and allegorical stories, he says.
Among the eight symphonies in the album are: Late-coming Spring, Thatched Roof Home, Princess and Come Back to the Desolate Hamlet. Each of these are long compositions and their author himself suggests that all of them are not seen at the same time.
He says he was motivated solely by the desire to do that was different from what he'd done in the last four decades.
"The new and the strange is not always accepted by everybody, but I write them with emotions from the bottom of my heart," says the musician who trained for seven years in Russia.
After the release of this album, Tuan plans to publish a bilingual book explaining CROR music. — VNS