Behzod Abduraimov Enchants Audiences at InClassica
InClassica’s fourth evening brought together the combination of First Prize-winner at the London International Piano Competition (2009) and Decca Classics recording artist, pianist Behzod Abduraimov, along with Music Director of the Orchestre Philharmonique Royal de Liège, Chief Conductor of the Savaria Symphony Orchestra, Gergely Madaras, and the Russian National Orchestra (RNO), for the first time ever.
The artists presented a varied and intriguing programme which opened with a rendition of the ‘Overture’ to Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s last opera Die Zauberflöte (The Magic Flute), which premiered to resounding success just a few weeks before the composer passed away. Famously enough, the overture itself was only finished two days before the opera launched, and here it was marvellously interpreted by the Russian National Orchestra, led by Madaras, forming the perfect introduction to the remainder of the evening's performances.
At this point, Abduraimov joined the orchestra on stage to treat the audience members in the packed Dubai Opera to Composer-in-Residence Alexey Shor’s Concerto for Piano and Orchestra From my Bookshelf before the concert went to a short interval. The composer is known for taking a lot of inspiration from music of the past, and in this work he creates 8 musical portraits which describe many famous cultural figures, including Romeo and Juliet, Cinderella, Don Quixote and others.
Speaking about this piece, Abduraimov made note of the unique language of Shor’s work, stating that “the amazing part for me about Alexey Shor’s work is how precisely he can capture the characters and the heroes that we all know from books – you immediately imagine them and it is very clearly transcribed into music; you see the personalities we know”.
After the intermission, Madaras and the RNO rounded things off with a hugely well-received performance of Antonín Dvořák’s famous Symphony No. 9 - the “Symphony from the New World”. The celebrated work, which combines influences from Native American and African American music, as well as the musical heritage of Dvořák’s native Bohemia, was the composer’s last symphony, and has been counted among his most popular and beloved works ever since in premiere in New York.
Asked about his experience of his first collaboration with the RNO, Madaras responded effusively, as he remarked upon the quality of the orchestra’s members, declaring that “the collaboration was, I think, very nice. They are all fantastic musicians, we understood each other very quickly. We needed to understand each other very quickly as we really didn’t have much time, but I felt there was an instant reaction”.
The InClassica International Music Festival, organised by the European Foundation for Support of Culture and SAMIT Event Group, continues tomorrow with a concert featuring Gergely Madaras and the Russian National Orchestra once again, this time in collaboration with Russian pianist Denis Kozhukhin. For more information please visit the official website at inclassica.com.