Music lovers brace for new QPO concert season

Doha: Yet another exciting concert season awaits music aficionados in Qatar as Qatar Philharmonic Orchestra (QPO) lines up diverse masterworks by the greatest composers for the 2019/2020 season beginning with a Rachmaninoff concerto and a Dvořák symphony which the 101-member orchestra will perform at tonight’s season-opening concert.

For tonight’s show, QPO will regale the audience with Sergei Rachmaninoff’s   Concerto No.2 in C minor for Piano and Orchestra considered one of the most enduringly popular pieces of the Russian composer and virtuoso pianist.

Today, Rachmaninoff’s Second Piano Concerto stands as one of the most popular and demanding piano concertos of the Romantic era, with melodies so striking that pop stars like Frank Sinatra and Celine Dion were moved to incorporate them into their own work.

The concert repertoire also includes Dvorak’s Eighth Symphony. Cheerful and optimistic, Symphony No 8 was written by Czech composer Antonín Dvořák in 1889 on the occasion of his election to the Bohemian Academy of Science, Literature and Arts, the pastoral character of which was inspired by the folk music of this famous composer’s homeland. At the concert to be held at the Qatar National Convention Centre (QNCC), QPO will play under the baton of remarkable young Uzbek conductor Aziz Shokhakimov with award-winning Korean virtuoso Hans H. Suh on piano.

In a statement, QPO said the new concert season which marks the start of the 12th year since the orchestra was launched “brings with it a mature musical family” and promises “a year of novelty, excitement and enrichment” for concert-goers.

“The season of concerts is innovative and broad, a continuance of our commitment to bridge Arabic and Western music; but we’re reaching out still further this year. It will be up to you to keep an eye peeled – and perhaps it will fall on some familiar faces where you don’t expect them. We feel that Qatar is a place ripe for music, and that we’re here to make it sound,”  it said. Like in previous seasons, QPO will be integrating music with education holding school concerts this school year.

Following the opening concert is another enthralling QPO performance featuring Bedrich Smetana’s Vltava from “Ma Vlast,” Dvorak’s The Noon Witch, Gioachino Rossini’s Overture to Guillaume Tell and Richard Strauss’ Don Juan. The concert to be held on September 14 at QNCC will have David Niemann as conductor and narrator.

Masterpieces by great composers like Frédéric Chopin, Felix Mendelssohn, Sergei Prokofiev, Dmitriy Shostakovich, and Johannes Brahms will be among the musical pieces that music lovers can expect in QPO’s next concerts this season. In addition, there will be special shows such as the opening concert for the Qatar France Year of Culture, Films concert, Video Games Live and Arabian Music Festival.