VietNamNet Bridge – Under the baton of Japanese conductor Honna Tetsuji, the Vietnam Symphony Orchestra and a choir of nearly 1000 people performed the Symphony No. 8 by Gustav Mahler at the National Convention Centre in Hanoi on October 23.

Participants came from the choir of the Vietnam Opera Ballet Theatre, the National Music Institute, the Hanoi Art Teacher Training University, the Army Culture and Art university, the Hanoi Children’s Palace, and the choirs from Japan and Malaysia.

Besides conductor Honna Tetsuji, there were eight conductors for the choir, including Graham Sutcliffe, Ha Manh Chung, Dang Chau Anh, Tran Nhat Minh, Ly Giai Hoa, Le Vinh Hung, Nguyen Kieu Lan and Nguyen Ngoc Tung.

Gustav Mahler was an Austrian late-Romantic composer and one of the leading conductors of his generation. As a composer, he acted as a bridge between the 19th century Austro-German tradition and the modernism of the early 20th century. While in his lifetime his status as a conductor was established beyond question, his own music gained wide popularity only after periods of relative neglect which included a ban on its performance in much of Europe during the Nazi era. After 1945 the music was discovered and championed by a new generation of listeners; Mahler then became one of the most frequently performed and recorded of all composers, a position he has sustained into the 21st century.

The Symphony No. 8 in E-flat major by Gustav Mahler is one of the grandest choral works in the classical concert repertoire. Because it requires huge instrumental and vocal capacity it is frequently called the "Symphony of a Thousand", although the work is usually performed nowadays with far fewer than a thousand, and Mahler himself did not sanction the name. The work was composed in a single burst of inspiration, at Maiernigg in southern Austria in the summer of 1906. The last of Mahler's works that was premiered in his lifetime, the symphony was a critical and popular success when he conducted its first performance in Munich on 12 September 1910.

The show at the National Convention Centre is the largest music show in Vietnam so far.

PV