Concerto-Fantasy

• Chihara’s four-movement Concerto-Fantasy for piano and orchestra was inspired by traditional Vietnamese melodies and modes, “expressing a sense of longing for a peaceful past and projecting possibilities for the future.”¹
  • Chihara was also inspired by his own experiences composing film and TV scores about the Vietnam War.
• Chihara wrote Concerto-Fantasy between 2019-21 in collaboration with Vietnamese-American pianist Quynh Nguyen.

Program Notes by Paul Chihara:

The Concerto-Fantasy was written for the young Vietnamese virtuoso Quynh Nguyen, which was commissioned for its premiere by Frank E. Ferguson for the Vietnam National Symphony Orchestra. I composed it from January 2019 to February 2021 in New York City as a personal tribute and musical portrait of the soloist. It is in four movements, played without pause.

The first movement begins with an orchestral statement of the concerto’s principal melody (played by a solo violin), an idėe fixe that haunts the entire composition – a melody inspired by popular music from Vietnam, provided to me by friends and refugees from Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City) who had escaped to southern California. The piano enters immediately after this brief orchestral statement with the first movement’s theme, semplice and dolce, introduced by the soloist, a sweet portrait of Quynh Nguyen herself as a young (but very talented) pianist. The music becomes more animated, and leads directly to the second movement, which is very much in an American jazz idiom, both playful and innocent. This introduces a love theme played in the violins and clarinet.

But this idyllic mood is interrupted by the abrupt entrance of the third movement, with snare drums and distant trumpets. War has come to Hanoi, and the gorgeous traditional and natural world is being destroyed by chaos and violence. The music of this Scherzo is not a descriptive war symphony, but a sort of musical nightmare of violence, confusion, and dread.

The fourth movement begins as a grateful hymn of praise and thanksgiving, and the lyrical materials from the first three movements are reprised. There is a brief and threatening nightmare moment (as if the dreadful memories of battles past still echo in the subconscious). But the moment is fleeting, and the concerto ends with the innocence of the opening movement, in a spirit of reconciliation and hope. Love and peace have returned to this gorgeous country.²

1. Notes in accompanying booklet, CHIHARA, P.: Piano Works (Complete) – Concerto-Fantasy / Bagatelles / 4 Reveries / Ami performed by Quynh Nguyen, Rieko Aizawa, and the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Stephen Barlow, Naxos 8.559894, 2023, compact disc.
2. Ibid.