A leading Vietnamese and Japanese duo will perform together in a chamber music concert on May 15 in Hanoi.

Viola player Imai Nobuko and violinist Bui Cong Duy will play a duet in G major by Mozart.

Imai will give a nine-part solo performance of a piece by English composer Benjamin Britten. She will also play in a sextet performance with the Vietnamese Lotus String Quartet and veteran cellist Ngo Hoang Quan.

Imai has played with the Berlin Philharmonic, London Symphony Orchestra and Chicago Symphony Orchestra.

The award-winning viola player currently teaches at the Amsterdam and Geneva Conservatories, and at Conservatoire Superieur et Academie de Musique Tibor Varga in Sion, Switzerland.

She returns to Japan several times a year, where she has served as artistic adviser of the Casals Hall's annual Viola Space project and the Casals Hall Ensemble for the past ten years.

In 2009, she established the International Viola Contest.

This is the second time she has performed in Vietnam, but the performance will mark her debut with violinist Bui Cong Duy. Duy is a leading Vietnamese violist who picked up prizes in Ekaterinburg and Novosibirsk, and the PI Tchaikovsky contest for young violists in Saint Petersburg in 1997.

Duy has performed with famous chamber orchestras including the Saint Petersburg Philharmonic Kapella Orchestra, Moscow Philharmonic Orchestra and London Festival Orchestra.

He is now teaching at the Vietnam National Academy of Music.

The concert will kick off at 8pm at Vietnamese Cultural Space, 16 Le Thai To Street./.