Huge choir for Ha Noi's largest concert

The Japanese baritone, Katsunori Kono, completed his graduate studies at the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music. He studied at Hochshule Fur Musik in Munich on a scholarship offered by the German Academic Exchange Service, and later studied at the Wiener Staatsoper as a research student. He won numerous prizes such as the second prize at the 43rd Geneva International Music Competition Voice Division (no first prize awarded that year), the first prize at the 37th Hertogenbosche International Voice Competition Song Division, and the Salzburg City Prize.

Katsunori Kono has participated in the Rhine Music Festival, the Salzburg Music Festival, and the Amsterdam Concertgebou, as well as recitals, operas, orchestra concerts and performances of religious music throughout Europe. He made his debut in Japan appearing in "Performance Today", sponsored by the Sony Music Foundation.

In a concert of the NHK Symphony Orchestra conducted by Hiroshi Wakasugi, Katsunori Kono sang the Lieder Eines Fahrenden Gesellen by Gustav Mahler, and received high praise for his fresh and youthful singing.

In the concert, entitled “Mahler Cycle”, the Vietnam National Symphony Orchestra will play ten symphonies by Mahler under the baton of Japanese conductor Honna Tetsuji.

Besides Beethoven Cycle, Mahler cycle is one of the series of concerts that attract public attention in recent years.

Mahler Cycle will take place at the Hanoi Opera House on March 3-4.

Gustav Mahler was a late-Romantic Austrian-Bohemian 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.

Ho Huong Giang