This year marks forty years of diplomatic relations between Japan and Vietnam. In the Vietnam War, B-52s flew north from U.S. bases in Japan, antiwar movements rose against that, and Japan too was in uproar at times. After the war ended and the Cold War ended, ties with Vietnam went through twists and have lately been good. That is welcome.
So there are various friendship events this year; one, hosted by the Mainichi, whose head office is in Palaceside Building, is a concert by the Vietnam National Symphony Orchestra on the evening of the 27th at Tokyo Opera City Concert Hall in Hatsudai.
Frankly I do not know the orchestra’s level. Founded in 1959, the history is still short, and the country is not rich, so conditions must be hard. Still, from 1984 they received aid from the Ministry of Culture and Information (now Culture, Sports and Tourism), raised their level, and in 2011 even succeeded at Carnegie Hall in New York — a striking leap in recent years.
Supporting that growth is conductor Honna Tetsuji
(56) = photo right, who also conducts this time. He has led the orchestra since 2001 and became music director and principal conductor in 2009, contributing to cultural exchange and the ensemble’s musical standard through collaborations with world-class Japanese musicians. For those merits the Vietnamese government awarded him a cultural merit prize in 2012.
Mainichi and other reports say Honna stayed close to players for whom coming late to rehearsal was normal, and at first, for $100 a month, took on the dream that “an unknown orchestra and an unknown conductor aim at the world.” Honna himself started trombone in junior high, entered Tokyo University of the Arts’ instrumental department, left to become a conductor, and built a record in Europe — a man of contrary bone. Perhaps he matched wavelength with an orchestra in a developing Asian country. The 2010 Hanoi millennial “Mahler Symphony of a Thousand,” brought off with many Japanese players’ help, was praised as “making music bloom in a country that had been all war.” I look forward to a passionate performance from a growing orchestra.
The program: Takemitsu Toru, Requiem for Strings; Vietnamese composer Nguyen Thien Dao, Piano Concerto “Concerto Vivo” (soloist Kodama Momo); Beethoven, Symphony No. 7. Doors 18:30, start 19:00. Tickets S 6,000 yen, A 5,000, B 3,000.