After a month’s break, the HCMC Ballet, Symphony Orchestra and Opera (HBSO) is opening its new season with a major performance by a visiting choir from Sweden.

The Gustav Sjokvist Chamber Choir - PHOTO: COURTESY OF HBSO

On Saturday, March 2, the Gustav Sjokvist Chamber Choir will perform a variety of mostly Swedish compositions in the Saigon Opera House, with the assistance of Vietnamese artists.

The occasion is in celebration of 50 years of diplomatic relations between Sweden and Vietnam.

The Saigon concert follows an evening of Swedish jazz plus choir, to be staged in Hanoi on February 25.

The title of the Saigon concert is “God in Disguise”.  This refers to the title of the longest item in the program, a highly melodic lyrical suite composed in 1940 by Lars-Erik Larsson (1908 – 1986).

The story is the ancient Greek one of the god Apollo appearing for a year as a farm laborer in the service of King Admetus in the Greek region of Thessaly.

The story is told in the drama Alcestis by the famous Ancient Greek tragedian Euripides.

In that play, King Admetus marries Alcestis, but on his wedding day he manages to offend the goddess Artemis. For this he is doomed to die. But Apollo, grateful for the kindness King Admetus had shown him when he worked on his farm, pleads with the other gods for his reprieve. Their judgment is that he will be saved if someone else offers to die in his place. This Alcestis does.

As she is being taken down to the Underworld, however, she is saved by Hercules, half-way through completing his famous 12 “labors”. He brings Artemis back to King Admetus, and thus earns the eternal gratitude of both Admetus and Apollo.

Lars-Erik Larsson’s God in Disguise (‘Forkladd Gud’ in Swedish), written in a neo-Romantic style, is one of the most popular works in the classical field in Sweden. It has been recorded by, among others, Elsa-Pekka Salonen.

It contains parts for solo soprano and solo baritone. The narration has been translated into Vietnamese by Nguyen Thi Thuy Linh, and will be spoken by Vo Trien Quang.

The concert will also feature the HBSO Orchestra and Chorus. There will be one specifically Vietnamese item, extracts from the Vietnamese folk suite The Flow (‘Dong chay’), conducted by HBSO’s Tran Nhat Minh.

The concert will begin with a sequence of short Swedish choral items, and will end with Beethoven’s ‘Ode to Joy’ from his Ninth Symphony.

The Gustav Sjokvist Chamber Choir has 33 members and was founded in Stockholm, the Swedish capital, in 1994.

The choir specializes in contemporary music, but also performs jazz and music by the greatest masters, such as Bach, Mozart and Brahms.

The choir’s artistic leader is Florian Benfer, and he will conduct the Saigon Opera House concert. As well as being a singer himself, he is a man with a wide range of musical interests and sympathies. As leader of the choir, he succeeds its founder, Gustav Sjokvist, who died in 2015. Benfer has been leader since 2018.

Tickets are from VND300,000 to VND650,000, with a special price of VND80,000 for students. The concert begins at 8 p.m.