Sheherazade is a figure from the Persian literary masterpiece One Thousand and One Nights (also called The Arabian Nights).

A tyrannical sultan is beheading a series of brides each after one night in order to prevent their ever being unfaithful. Sheherazade chooses to be one of these brides, but postpones her death by telling tales that need to be completed the following evening. After she has told 1,000 stories over 1,001 nights the sultan agrees to reprieve her and takes her as his wife.

The Russian composer Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov set the legend in four parts. Initially he gave these movements titles, linking them to tales in the One Thousand and One Nights. But he later discarded these, writing “All I desired was that the hearer … should carry away the impression that it is beyond doubt an Oriental narrative of some numerous and varied fairy-tale wonders.”

The third movement, however, depicting the young sultan and the young Sheherazade, is markedly romantic in tone, and its melodies have become very famous.

The conductor for the evening will be Christopher Zimmerman. He’s the Music Director of the Fairfax Symphony Orchestra, in Fairfax, Virginia, near Washington DC. It was voted winner of the Best Classical Orchestra Ensemble in 2013 in the Washington Area Music Awards.

The Saigon concert begins with Edward Elgar’s Introduction and Allegro for Strings. This work includes a string quartet as well as a string orchestra. In this quartet Tang Thanh Nam will play first violin, Le Minh Hien the second violin, Pham Vu Thien Bao the viola, and Meritorious Artist Nguyen Tan Anh the solo cello.

These four artists also star in HBSO’s earlier Chamber Music Concert today, October 9.

Following the Elgar, the orchestra will play George Gershwin’s Concerto in F for Piano and Orchestra.

The piano soloist will be Nguyen Bich Tra, better known as Tra Nguyen. She first appeared in the Hanoi Opera House at the age of ten, and now lives in London. She has made many CDs which, together with her performances, have garnered international acclaim.

Gershwin’s piano concerto was commissioned the night after the sensational New York premiere of the same composer’s Rhapsody in Blue. It was first performed by the New York Symphony Orchestra in 1925, with the composer as soloist.

The work contains elements of blues, ragtime and Charleston, almost all of them new to the classical form. Gershwin, who was involved with three different Broadway musicals at the time, said the first movement encapsulated the young, enthusiastic spirit of American life. 

Early critics found the work located somewhere between a classical concerto and jazz. Stravinsky found it brilliant, but Prokofiev thought it was amateurish. There have been many recordings, but Gershwin himself never recorded it.

This Saigon concert is presented in cooperation with the HCMC Union of Friendship Organizations and the HCMC’s Vietnam – U.S. Friendship Association.

Ticket prices are from VND650,000 and VND500,000 down to VND200,000, with a special concession of VND80,000 for students. The concert begins at 8 p.m.

SGT