ORCHESTRA LEADER - Conductor Lê Ha My, HBSO’s director, will lead a concert highlighting masterpieces by great composers Edward Elgar, Gara Garayev and Tchaikovsky, which will be held at the HCM City Opera House on April 20. Photo courtesy of HBSO

HCM CITY — The HCM City Ballet Symphony Orchestra and Opera (HBSO) will present a concert of compositions by the world’s great composers at the Opera House on April 20.

The concert will open with Pomp and Circumstance March No.1 in D Major, op 39, a march for orchestra written by English composer Edward Elgar in 1901.

The composition, which premiered in October 1901, is best known among Edgar’s series of six marches, Pomp and Circumstance, named after a phrase taken from Shakespeare’s Othello.

The evening will continue with Vietnam Suite, written by the prominent Azerbaijani composer Gara Garayev for the Soviet film Vietnam in 1954.

The composition premiered at a concert in Hà Nội in 2023 with a performance of the Việt Nam National Symphony Orchestra and the Hanoi Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Honna Tetsuji.

The event was initiated by the Embassy of the Republic of Azerbaijan in Việt Nam, supported by the embassies of Turkic-speaking countries in Việt Nam, and organised by the Việt Nam National Academy of Music.

The concert highlight will be Symphony No 6 in B minor, Op 74, also known as Pathétique Symphony, written by Russian composer Tchaikovsky in 1893.

The four-movement symphony was first performed in Saint Petersburg in October 1893 and led by Tchaikovsky.

The work is his final completed symphony and one of the most popular compositions of the Romantic period.

All three compositions will be performed by HBSO symphony orchestra.

Conductor Lê Ha My, HBSO’s director, will lead the concert.

My graduated in piano from the Việt Nam National Academy of Music in 1999, and then was sent to the Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatory for conducting in Russia.

He has worked with orchestras in Russia and Việt Nam.

The concert will begin at 8pm at 7 Lam Sơn Square in District 1. Tickets are available at the box office. — VNS