EUFSC President Konstantin Ishkhanov: Upcoming InClassica Festival in Dubai a “Great Artistic Journey”

From 15th August to 26th September 2021, the European Foundation for Support of Culture (EUFSC) will present, with the collaboration of SAMIT Event Group, the latest edition of InClassica International Music Festival in Dubai, UAE, featuring 37 extraordinary soloists, twelve celebrated conductors and eight world-renowned orchestras. The festival will be hosted in two of the city’s best locations: the Dubai Opera and Coca-Cola Arena.
For this glorious event, the organisers will work alongside some of the most respected classical music channels, including Medici.tv, which will participate as official media partner. Moreover, the EUFSC and SAMIT will also present two more projects during the summer of 2021 in Dubai: the final stage of the Classic Piano International Competition, taking place from 15th August to 3rd September, and the Middle East Classical Music Academy (MECMA), taking place in parallel with InClassica from 4th to 23rd September. Classic Piano is an event which will feature the winners of fourteen preliminary competitions from around the world, who will compete in Dubai across four rounds in an unrivalled display of tenacity, musicianship and pianistic excellence, while MECMA will welcome esteemed professors and performers from across the globe for a series of workshops, lectures and open masterclasses.
The following is a list of some of the classical music stars who will be performing in Dubai this summer:
● Exclusive Deutsche Grammophon artist, 2016 Vladimir Spivakov International Violin Competition Winner and “Young Artist of the Year 2017” award recipient at the Festival of Nations, virtuoso violinist Daniel Lozakovich (Sweden);
● Exclusive Deutsche Grammophon artist, two-times Opus Klassik Award-winner and Principal Clarinettist of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, Andreas Ottensamer (Austria);
● Grammy Award, twice Gramophone Classical Music Award, Classic Brit Award and five times Edison Classical Music Award winner, violinist Maxim Vengerov (Monaco);
● Gold medallist of the Fifteenth Van Cliburn International Piano Competition and multiple First Prize Winner at numerous other international competitions, pianist Yekwon Sunwoo (South Korea);
● Exclusive Deutsche Grammophon artist, five-times recipient of the Record Academy Prize in Tokyo, three-times recipient of the Echo Deutscher Schallplattenpreis award and multiple Grammy Award-nominee, cellist Mischa Maisky (Belgium);
● Winner of the 1986 Rostropovich International Competition in Paris and BMG (RCA), Sony and EMI recording artist, cellist Gary Hoffman (Canada/USA/France);
● Recipient of the Music Prize of the city of Duisburg in 2017 and International Beethoven Prize for Human Rights, Peace, Freedom, Poverty Reduction and Inclusion, four-times ECHO Klassik Award-winner, pianist Fazil Say (Turkey);
● 2020 Avery Fisher Career Grant, 2020 Lincoln Center Emerging Artist Award and Robert Levin Award (Harvard University) recipient, top prize winner of the Tibor Varga International Violin Competition, youngest ever prize winner of the Menuhin Competition and Winner of the 2019 Queen Elisabeth Competition (Brussels), violinist Stella Chen (USA);
● Seven-times ECHO Klassik Award winner, violinist Daniel Hope (UK);
● Performer alongside some of the most esteemed orchestras around the world, winner of an Emmy Award as a TV host at the age of 16 and of the ECHO Klassik Award, one of the most magnetic figures of the modern classical music, opera soprano Danielle de Niese (USA/Australia);
● Recording artists for Sony Classical, Universal, Cyprès, Mirare and Capriccio, multiple award-winners including Choc of the year (Le Monde de la Musique);
● Editor’s Choice (Gramophone), CD of the month (Fono Forum and BBC Music Magazine), Diapason d’Or de l’Année, Trio Wanderer (France).
These artists will perform some of the most important and popular compositions of classical music, including works by the Festival’s Composer-In-Residence, Alexey Shor. Mr Shor has collaborated with some of the most acclaimed soloists in the world, including violinists Ji Young Lim, Andrey Baranov and Daniel Lozakovich, clarinetist Paul Meyer and Andreas Ottensamer, violist Shlomo Mintz, pianist Nikita Mndoyants, cellist Gautier Capuçon and many others. Moreover, some of the most prestigious concert halls across the globe have hosted Shor’s compositions, including the Great Hall of Moscow Conservatory, the Mariinsky Theatre (St. Petersburg), the Concertgebouw (Amsterdam) and Gasteig (Munich), amongst others. The festival’s featured repertoire will involve numerous concertos, symphonies, tone poems and other works from some of the most well-known composers from the world of classical music.
The conductors featured at InClassica include:
● Music Director of the Mainly Mozart Festival in San Diego, California, Michael Francis (UK/USA);
● Founder, Artistic Director and Principal Conductor of the ASSO, Principal Conductor of the MPO Sergey Smbatyan (Armenia);
● Music Director of Canada’s National Arts Centre Orchestra, Alexander Shelley (UK);
● Artistic Director and Principal Conductor of the Chamber orchestra at the Tchaikovsky Moscow State Conservatory, Felix Korobov (Russia);
● Founder and Music Director of the St. Petersburg Festival Orchestra, Marius Stravinsky (UK);
● Music Director of the Orchestre Philharmonique Royal de Liège, Gergely Madaras (Hungary).
The orchestras set to perform under the batons of the aforementioned composers include the Armenian State Symphony Orchestra, Deutsche Staatsphilharmonie Rheinland-Pfalz (Germany), Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra (Israel), Kaliningrad Symphony Orchestra (Russia), Malta Philharmonic Orchestra, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra (UK), Russian National Orchestra and Slovak Philharmonic Orchestra.
The 2021 InClassica International Music Festival will bring together people from many different countries, offering a unique celebration of music and promoting a vital platform for the performance of renowned compositions both old and new. Despite all the difficulties that the COVID-19 pandemic has recently brought to our lives, the soloists, orchestras and conductors looks set to make the InClassica festival in Dubai something to be remembered in the future.
(Konstantin Ishkhanov, President of European Foundation for Support of Culture)
“I’m very proud to launch this prestigious edition of InClassica in Dubai, a special location where audiences from all over the world will have the incredible opportunity to enjoy some of the most important compositions performed by classical music stars. I cannot wait to welcome everyone to InClassica, and wish the best of luck to all the soloists, conductors and orchestras who are part of this project. I am sure that this edition will be a great success, and the start of a phenomenal cultural and artistic journey here in the Middle East.” — Konstantin Ishkhanov, President of the EUFSC