Jingle Bells, White Christmas and O Come All Ye Faithful – all these must appear in any Christmas Concert worthy of the name. But the HCMC Ballet, Symphony Orchestra and Opera (HBSO) has opted for some sophisticated variations on these traditional favorites.

Conductor Petros Karpathakis - PHOTO: COURTESY OF HBSO

They will stage their annual Christmas event on December 19 in the Saigon Opera House, beginning at 8 p.m. O Holy Night and Ding Dong Merrily in High will also appear in what is a varied and appealing program.

But these popular items will be augmented by many other numbers associated with the festive season.

First will come a suite of music from Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker, the ballet performed in a fully-staged version by HBSO earlier in the month. This will be followed by Shostakovich’s Jazz Suite Number 2, not particularly connected to Christmas, perhaps, but a suitable Russian complement to Tchaikovsky’s music.

After a first half of purely orchestral items, the concert will continue after the intermission with a varied program that will combine religious numbers with popular Christmas melodies.

Among the latter will be a version of White Christmas by Irving Berlin, sung by the HBSO Chorus, and a Latin version of O Come All Ye Faithful (which was originally a Latin hymn anyway), featuring the HBSO Chorus again, plus tenor Phan Huu Trung Kiet.

There will also be a rendition of Cantique de Noel (‘O Holy Night’) by the French composer Adolphe Adam, who composed the music for the ballet Giselle, seen in HBSO’s beautiful production in Saigon earlier in the year. The soloist will be soprano Cho Hae Ryong.

The evening will conclude with Ding Dong Merrily on High, sung by the Saigon Ladies, Variations on Jingle Bells by the U.S. composer James Lord Pierpont (the arrangement is by Mark Hayes), and Let it snow! Let it snow! Let it snow! by the composer of Broadway musicals Jule Styne, with Mark Hayes again responsible for the arrangement.

Of the more “serious” items, most of them religious in keeping with Christmas as a Christian festival, prominent will be two famous versions of Ave Maria (‘Hail to Mary’).

The first will be the rendition by Schubert, sung by the tenor Tran Thanh Nam. This will be followed by the version of J.S. Bach, adapted in the 19th century by Charles Gounod, in which the soloist will be soprano Ly Hoang Kim. It will be interesting to hear these two equally famous items side by side.

Also counting as serious religious music are Cesar Franck’s Panis Angelicus (which means ‘bread of angels’), a celebrated item sung all over the world on important occasions such as weddings, and Bizet’s Agnus Dei (which means ‘lamb of God’).

The first will be sung by soprano Pham Khanh Ngoc, plus the HBSO chorus. The second will feature tenor Pham Trang.

Leading this major seasonal event will be the Greek conductor Petros Karpathakis, who rather unusually combines conducting with a training in jazz.

So a huge range of numbers associated with Christmas, from The Nutcracker to Let it snow! and Jingle Bells, will again characterize this multi-faceted annual concert.

Ticket prices are very reasonable - from VND650,000 to VND200,000, with a special price of VND80,000 for students.

SGT