Concert «Những miền âm thanh – Realms of Sound»

   Three pianos, an oboe and a clarinet, five Vietnamese musicians trained in the United States and Austria — on the evening of 29 August the port city's newest auditorium opens for Tchaikovsky, Gershwin and Chopin. If you still think concert-hall music is a Hanoi affair, this night is built to argue otherwise.

   The concert is staged by the Vietnam Classical Music Association ahead of National Day on 2 September and Vietnam Music Day on 3 September. Five performers take the stage: Đỗ Hiền An and Nguyễn Việt Trung (piano, Frost School of Music, University of Miami), Ngô Phương Vi (piano, University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna), Hoàng Mạnh Lâm (oboe, Temple University, Philadelphia) and Trần Khánh Quang (clarinet, University of North Texas).

   The programme moves through several musical worlds:

• — Tchaikovsky — «Dumka in C minor, Op. 59» and «June: Barcarolle, Op. 37a, No. 6», from Slavic folk memory to an early-summer scene on the water
• — Gershwin — «Rhapsody in Blue», where the classical tradition meets jazz and blues in an American city
• — Chopin — «Mazurka in G minor, Op. 67, No. 2» and «Waltz in C-sharp minor, Op. 64, No. 2»; Liszt — «La Campanella, S. 141, No. 3»
• — Kalliwoda — «Morceau de salon, Op. 228» for oboe and piano; the evening closes with Michael Webster's «Carmen Rhapsody», a conversation between piano, oboe and clarinet

   The venue is part of the story. Nhà hát Hoa Phượng sits inside the city's Conference and Performance Centre; seen from above the building reads as a drop of water falling on a lake, with concentric ripples spreading out. It opened on 3 March 2026 with a «New Year Concert» performed by the Vietnam National Symphony Orchestra, and has been programming orchestral work steadily since.

   The night also opens a formal partnership between the association and the city People's Committee under Hai Phong's scheme to become a «City of Music» in 2026-2030, with a horizon of 2045. The foundations are already there: the port city is the birthplace of Văn Cao, Đỗ Nhuận, Hoàng Quý and Phạm Tuyên, names that have stayed in Vietnamese music for generations.

   The evening works both for regular concertgoers and for first-timers: every piece is short, vividly pictorial and needs no technical background. The organisers have not published ticket prices or a sales channel, so ask the theatre directly before you travel.

   An evening of piano, oboe and clarinet talking to each other, in Hai Phong itself — until recently you had to leave the city for that.