Qua cầu gió bay - Music building bridges in Hanoi

We are the Lichtenberger Kammerchor from Berlin, under the musical direction of Katrin Hübner. In recent years, we have worked with Vietnamese musicians Mạnh Hùng Lê and Phương Hoa Trần, as well as singers from the Vietnamese community in Berlin, to develop a repertoire of Vietnamese choral music, which we would like to present on our two-week concert tour through Vietnam to mark the 50th anniversary of German-Vietnamese relations. 

Our repertoire includes well-known Vietnamese pieces such as “Qua Cầu Gió Bay,” “Trống Cơm,” and “Bèo Dạt Mây Trôi,” some of which were arranged especially for the choir, as well as classical works of Western vocal music (Mozart, Mendelssohn, Reger, etc.). We have presented our program at venues including the Berlin Philharmonic and the Humboldt Forum in Berlin, to enthusiastic responses from the Berlin cultural scene and especially the Vietnamese-German community.

Relationships between countries are relationships between people. As artists, we want to actively contribute to the upcoming 50th anniversary of German-Vietnamese relations with our concert tour. In three major Vietnamese cities, Ho Chi Minh City, Hue, and Hanoi, we want to organize workshops, rehearsals, and concerts on both a small and large scale and engage in exchange with local partners and institutions. Through this work, people from both cultures will get to know each other and create a shared, unifying event. With this cultural exchange, we want to celebrate the relations between our countries and contribute to peace around the world.

For our concert in Hanoi, we have the opportunity to collaborate and perform with Vietnam National Academy of Music and the HOPE Choir as highly valued partners.