VietNamNet Bridge – Viet Nam National Orchestra and Symphony (VNSO) will premier Four Last Songs and Don Quixote at Viet Nam National Academy of Music's Grand Hall tomorrow, Oct 15.

Full circle: Soprano Ha Pham Thang Long. — Photo courtesy of VNSO

Four Last Songs and Don Quixote by composer Richard Strauss will be played by Vietnamese and international artists at a two-night concert closing the Strauss Cycle which has been being performed by the VNSO since 2013.

"The Strauss Cycle presented through last two years was a big project for the VNSO," said conductor Honna Tetsuji.

"In these last concerts we introduce great works to the Vietnamese audience with Vietnamese and international artists".

The VNSO has performed most of Strauss' major works over the past two years at six concerts.

The concert features VNSO artists soprano Ha Pham Thang Long and viola musician Nguyen Nguyet Thu; German cellist Maximilian Hornung; Japanese trumpeter Sekiyama Yukihiro and Taiwanese tenor-tuba player Lee Chia-Yeh.

Cellist Hornung's debut performance of Richard Strauss' Don Quixote at the Salzburg festival was highly acclaimed.

Yukihiro is a trumpet principal at the NHK Symphony Orchestra while Lee is from Taiwan Kaohsiung Philharmonic.

Richard Georg Strauss (1864 –1949) was a German composer of the late Romantic and early modern eras.

In 1948, Strauss felt himself slowing down. However, he was not yet ready to put down his pen. His imagination had been caught by a piece by the lyric poet Josef von Eichendorff's Im Abendrot (At Sunset), and he set to work turning it into an orchestral song.

It was to be the final song in the set that became known as the Four Last Songs, and within five months it was followed by Spring, September and Going to Sleep.

Don Quixote is a tone poem by Strauss for cello, viola and large orchestra. Subtitled Fantastic Variations on a Theme of Knightly Character, the work is based on the 17th-century novel Don Quixote de la Mancha by Miguel de Cervantes.

The concert will take place at 8pm, at VNAM, 77 Hao Nam Street on Thursday and Friday.

VNS