Masterworks concert «American Horizons»

   An evening that follows European symphonic music across the Atlantic and watches it turn into something else. The Sun Symphony Orchestra has built the programme as a single line running from the German tradition to the American sound of the early twentieth century.

   The programme:

• — Brahms — Academic Festival Overture, Op. 80;
• — Dvořák — American Suite, Op. 98b, written during his years in the United States;
• — after the interval — Ives, Symphony No. 2, in which hymns, folk tunes and marches push their way into a classical symphonic frame.

   The pleasure of hearing these three in one sitting is that they are in conversation. Dvořák went to America and came back carrying local material; Ives grew up inside those same melodies and wrote them into a symphony so deliberately conventional in shape that it unsettled his contemporaries. Played back to back, the line between them becomes audible.

   It works equally well as a first classical concert and as a serious listen — nothing here requires homework beforehand. The hall is on Hang Bai, a five-minute walk from Hoan Kiem Lake, which makes it one of the easier venues in Hanoi to reach on foot.

   Booking: seats are reserved through the organiser's form or by phone — 0965 765 946 (Vietnamese), 0913 489 858 (English). Reserve a seat.

   Worth the evening if you want to hear a Vietnamese orchestra take on repertoire it rarely gets to play.