Tonight, tunes like Jubilation by Cultural Medallion recipient Leong Yoon Pin and Enchanted Paths by Yong Siew Toh Conservatory professor Ho Chee Kong will take centrestage at the Hanoi Opera House, performed by the Vietnam National Symphony Orchestra.

Works by Vietnamese composers like Trong Bang and Hoang Duong will also be performed by the country's top orchestra, conducted by local conductor Adrian Tan.

The Singapore-Vietnam Friendship Concert, as it is being billed as, is the brainchild of Tan, 30, and is presented by local company Keppel Corporation.

The conductor, who is also a full-time naval officer, first worked with Vietnam's top orchestra in April last year when he conducted a concert featuring the young Chinese violinist Tang Yun, star of director Chen Kaige's film Together (2002).

The conductor and the orchestra hit it off, and Tan has since conducted three other concerts with the orchestra, performing the works of music greats like Beethoven, Dvorak, Rachmaninoff and Shostakovich.

However, Tan has always wanted to showcase new music written by local composers.

'It's easy to choose to perform music of the great composers that has been handed down over hundreds of years,' he says.

'But the great composers of tomorrow are the contemporary composers today. I think that it is almost a duty for a musician or a conductor to champion the composers of his or her own country.'

When he started planning the concert in December last year, one of the earliest ideas was to have a soloist each from Singapore and Vietnam perform a solo work by a composer of the other country.

Thus, performing local composer Bernard Tan's Piano Concerto is Vietnamese pianist Tran Thi Tam Ngoc, 24, a recent graduate of the Yong Siew Toh Conservatory who will soon enter the Boston Conservatory to do her master's in music performance.

She started practising the piece about two months ago, and loves the theme and melodies as 'they remind me of Asian music'.

She says: 'The three movements are like three dances. One of the most difficult things about the piece is to connect the piano with the orchestra, to get the right balance and make it sound like a whole piece.'

ysteph@sph.com.sg

'The great composers of tomorrow are the contemporary composers today'

Conductor Adrian Tan, on wanting to showcase new local music