[ Thanks to Andrys for this information. ]

This pianist will be playing concerts in Japan in the next week
and a member in that area might want to catch it.

See the last paragraph for his Japan schedule.

http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/newse/20021010woa6.htm


Pianist Dang goes off in new direction
Yukiko Kishinami Daily Yomiuri Staff Writer


For the first time in his many visits to Japan, Vietnamese
pianist Dang Thai Son's tour, which runs through Oct. 20,
includes no Chopin work.


"It's a kind of new decision for me, a change of my image a bit,
although it's not that I won't play Chopin any more," said Dang,
who became the first Asian winner in the prestigious
International Frederic Chopin Piano Competition in Warsaw in
1980.


The program opens with Litany by Toru Takemitsu.


"I find this piece very special," Dang said of Litany. "They
have two movements. The first movement is very obvious, we can
listen to an old Japanese song. It was written in memory of his
friend (Arts administrator Michael Vyner), so the feeling is
very dark. It reminds me of noh theater--nothing spectacular or
dynamic, but every movement, every gesture is slow and so
meaningful. He changes color and intonation and makes it very
sophisticated.


"The second movement was composed about 30 years after the first
movement, and I see the evolution of his (Takemitsu's)
creativity. The language, the imagination and the color are so
different. The first movement is an emotion for the dead, and
the second movement depicts a kind of a life after death," Dang
said.


The piece takes about 10 minutes, which was another deciding
factor for the pianist to include it in the program.


"The audience of modern music is very particular. People going
to normal classical music concerts find it not easy to listen to
a program heavy with modern music," he said.


The rest of the program is made up of piano masterpieces from
the Romantic and Impressionist eras: six pieces from
Mendelssohn's Songs Without Words, Two Legends by Liszt and
Debussy's 12 Preludes, Book II.


Born in 1957 to a poet father and pianist mother, Dang started
taking piano lessons at age 4 from his mother, who at the time
was teaching at the Hanoi Conservatory. The Vietnam War caused
the family extreme hardships, but, with the help of Russian
pianist Izaak Katz, who recognized the young Dang's rare gift,
Dang was able to go and study at the Moscow State Tchaikovsky
Conservatory in 1977. Three years later, he won in the Chopin
competition, which takes place every five years.


Since then, Dang has been hailed as the best pianist to come
from his part of the world.


"If people know that I come from Southeast Asia, it makes me
very proud, but I don't want to make it any excuse, you see. So
I try not to look at difficulties behind me and all the
background that was not very easy," he said.


He was the only non-Polish pianist who was invited to play at a
special concert in 1999 in Warsaw that commemorated the 150th
anniversary of Chopin's death.


For more than 10 years now, Dang has been living in Montreal,
where his 84-year-old mother also lives. Yet his busy tour and
teaching schedule keeps him out of the city about two-thirds of
the year.


"Always touring is not good because you need time to recover and
make a new repertory for the next season," he said. "Usually I
take two months per year to do so. For concert activities, I
mainly spend time in both Canada and France. In Paris, there are
more concerts, and the artistic life there is really exciting.
But Canada offers me a big space and a good condition for
living. When I close my door quietly and practice piano, I
prefer Montreal. It's a kind of balance."


Before moving to Montreal, Dang lived in Japan from 1987 to
1991, teaching at Kunitachi College of Music in Tokyo.


"My life in general is very much tied with Japan. I have been
touring here for 22 years," he said.


He also goes back to Vietnam every year to hold concerts and
give master classes at conservatories in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh
City.


"Classical music came to Vietnam in the beginning of the 20th
century, during French colonial rule. We have an opera theater
from that time, and many foreign artists, mostly French, used to
visit Vietnam before the war," he explained.


"Today we have in Hanoi two music schools and three symphony
orchestras. The last five or six years, we also saw many
important musicians, such as (Mstislav) Rostropovich, (Vladimir)
Ashkenazy and the likes, coming to Vietnam."


Earlier, during his month-long tour of Japan, Dang performed
with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra under the baton
of Sakari Oramo, brilliantly playing Rachmaninoff's Variations
on a Theme by Paganini. The day of the concert, Oct. 1, Tokyo
was hit by a strong typhoon, but luckily the humid air did not
affect his performance or instrument.


"Perhaps it takes more hours to affect the piano. I like humid
air, which is like my home country, but to play when it is humid
is very difficult," he said.


Dang Thai Son performs on Oct. 11, 7 p.m. at Oji Hall in Ginza,
Tokyo, (03) 3567-9990; Oct. 13, 2 p.m. at Miyazaki Prefectural
Arts Center in Miyazaki, (0985) 28-3210; Oct. 15, 7 p.m. at Kioi
Hall in Tokyo, (03) 5749-9960; Oct. 16, 7 p.m. at Izumi Hall in
Osaka, (06) 6341-0547; Oct. 18, 7 p.m. at Sapporo Concert Hall
Kitara in Sapporo, (011) 261-2388; Oct. 20, 3 p.m. at Shizuoka
Ongakukan AOI in Shizuoka, (054) 251-2200