Piano recital «Moonfall on the Keys»

   Autumn in Vietnam means lanterns and mooncakes, and this year it also means a quiet evening at the piano. In Ho Chi Minh City it takes place inside the Steinway & Sons gallery, a week or so before the Mid-Autumn Festival: a small room, a concert grand and a programme built entirely around the moon, from French impressionism to a jazz standard.

   The recital is called «Moonfall on the Keys», and the title describes its shape well: seven pieces, and the moonlight sounds different in every one of them. At the keyboard is Nguyễn Hào Quang, a pianist born in 1998. He started playing at six, graduated with distinction from the nine-year course of the Ho Chi Minh City Conservatory of Music, then spent four years at the Conservatoire de Versailles Grand Parc under Professor Marc Vitantonio, where he took second prize at the Concours International de Piano de Chatou «Cécile Edel-Latos», and two more years at the Conservatoire Royal de Liège in Belgium with Etienne Rappe.

   The programme

• — «Clair de lune» by Claude Debussy, the third piece from «Suite bergamasque»
• — «Moonlight Sonata», first movement Adagio sostenuto — Beethoven's Sonata No. 14 in C sharp minor
• — «Fly Me to the Moon» by Bart Howard
• — «Pagodes» by Claude Debussy from «Estampes»
• — Nocturne in C sharp minor by Frédéric Chopin
• — «Notturno» by Edvard Grieg from the «Lyric Pieces»
• — «September: Am Flusse» (At the River) by Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel from «Das Jahr»

   The evening runs as a single arc: it opens with the moon melodies everyone recognises and closes with music that is rarely played live here — the eastern colours of «Pagodes» and the autumn page by Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel, sister of Felix Mendelssohn, whose early works were published under her brother's name.

   This one is for listeners who like to sit close. In a gallery you hear the pedal and the performer's breathing, which never reaches you in a large hall, and you will not need opera glasses to watch the pianist's hands. If classical music has so far been background in your headphones, a room this size is the fairest way to test how it actually sounds.

   The lower rate is a student one: it is for pupils of the conservatory and of music schools, while everyone else takes the standard seat. The music itself starts at 19:30, with guests welcomed in the gallery beforehand. The organisers ask for neat clothing and no children under eight, and every guest is promised a gift that will be revealed on the night.

   The Mid-Autumn Festival is still a few days away, but the moon music arrives earlier, and you will hear it a few steps from the piano.