The Royal Opera House Muscat will host online concerts on its YouTube page. In its first batch of shows, as part of its From our Stage to your Home series, the venue staged two pre-recorded concerts featuring the best of the sultanate's classical music talent.
The first, featuring the Muscat Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and the Opera Choir Group, will air on Sunday, May 23, while the second, boasting the talents of the Royal Oman Symphony Orchestra, can be seen on Sunday, June 20.
Both shows will begin streaming from 7.30pm UAE time.
To whet the appetite for the concerts ahead, the Royal Opera House Muscat director general Umberto Fanni shares with The National his 10 top classical music picks we need to listen to – and why.
1. ‘Symphony No.7 in A major, Op.92’ by Ludwig Van Beethoven (1813)
“An absolute masterpiece of symphonic music,” Fanni says before hailing the high-minded concept powering the work.
"With Beethoven's 7th Symphony in A major, it is all about exploring the idea of harmony and joy, which Beethoven conquers."
2.‘Symphony No.6 in B-Minor, Op.74' by Pyotr Tchaikovsky (1893)
Tchaikovsky should be remembered for more than composing popular ballets Swan Lake and The Nutcracker.
Fanni says the Russian composer dug deep for what would be his final symphony. “This is sort of an autobiographical confession and a tragic farewell. Tchaikovsky had undoubtedly composed one of the most beautiful and exciting pages in the history of music.”
3. ‘Symphony No.40 in G-Minor, K 550’ by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1788)
A popular yet enigmatic work, Mozart’s symphony continues to astound thanks to its focus and versatility.
“It has an extraordinary structural coherence,” Fanni says. “The thematic unity and the compositional wisdom in this piece merge into a sound that is as moving as it is beautiful.”
4. ‘Piano Concerto no.1 in E minor, Op.11’ by Frederic Chopin (1830)
More than showcasing the beauty and eloquence of the piano, Fanni says Chopin’s concertos often served as love letters to his homeland.
“Almost all his compositions reveal a melancholy derived from lyrical and sentimental meditation,” he says. “Chopin wanted to inspire us to explore the flavours and aromas of his beloved Poland.”
5) ‘Violin Concerto in E minor, Op.64’ by Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy (1845)
If you want an introduction to the violin, then you can’t go past this seminal work.
“This remains one of the ‘evergreens’ of international repertoires for the violin,” Fanni says. “Like most of the concerts of the Romantic era, this piece fully illustrates the chemistry needed between composer and performer.”
6. ‘Symphony No.5 in C-Sharp Minor’ by Gustav Mahler (1904)
Fanni describes Mahler’s symphony as equally refined and romantic, with a section of the piece dedicated to his wife.
“It is perhaps one of the most famous and performed pieces in the world."
7. ‘Romeo and Juliet, No. 13 Dance of the Knights’ by Sergei Prokofiev (1940)
Prokofiev’s musical score for the Shakespeare ballet remains one of the most performed works in the genre.
Fanni says the music perfectly captures pivotal moments in the ballet and provides evocative accompaniment to the work’s mix of “courtly and country” dance styles.
8) ‘Trio for piano, violin and cello No.2 in E-Flat Major, Op.100, D. 929’ by Franz Schubert (1828)
A bold and dramatic work from the Austrian composer, Fanni says sections of the piece are inspired by a Swedish folk song.
The eclectic approach is responsible for the composition’s sweeping range.
“It has an accompaniment in the form of a march that gives the melody a movement and a dark colour,” he says. “It has a painful and obsessive intensity and eventually explodes with great emotion.”
9) ‘The Two Arabesques for Piano (Deux Arabesques), L. 66’ by Claude Debussy (1891)
An immediate hit at the time, the two-part work remains a great distillation of Debussy’s approach of being a “musician who painted music”.
"The Two Arabesques were the first solo piano works published by the young Debussy when he was still in his twenties," Fanni says.
“Over 100,000 copies of the first Arabesque were sold during the composer’s lifetime. It was immediately popular and still remains so."
10) ‘Cello Suite No.1 in G-Major, BWV 1007’ by Johann Sebastian Bach (1723)
Fanni describes the composition as dynamic and focused, before praising Bach for his relative restraint.
“The purity of the melodic line counts more than the mass of volume,” he says. “This is a piece of intimate and passionate music.”
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Temple numbers
Expected completion: 2022
Height: 24 meters
Ground floor banquet hall: 370 square metres to accommodate about 750 people
Ground floor multipurpose hall: 92 square metres for up to 200 people
First floor main Prayer Hall: 465 square metres to hold 1,500 people at a time
First floor terrace areas: 2,30 square metres
Temple will be spread over 6,900 square metres
Structure includes two basements, ground and first floor
Game Of Thrones Season Seven: A Bluffers Guide
Want to sound on message about the biggest show on television without actually watching it? Best not to get locked into the labyrinthine tales of revenge and royalty: as Isaac Hempstead Wright put it, all you really need to know from now on is that there’s going to be a huge fight between humans and the armies of undead White Walkers.
The season ended with a dragon captured by the Night King blowing apart the huge wall of ice that separates the human world from its less appealing counterpart. Not that some of the humans in Westeros have been particularly appealing, either.
Anyway, the White Walkers are now free to cause any kind of havoc they wish, and as Liam Cunningham told us: “Westeros may be zombie land after the Night King has finished.” If the various human factions don’t put aside their differences in season 8, we could be looking at The Walking Dead: The Medieval Years.
Quick pearls of wisdom
Focus on gratitude: And do so deeply, he says. “Think of one to three things a day that you’re grateful for. It needs to be specific, too, don’t just say ‘air.’ Really think about it. If you’re grateful for, say, what your parents have done for you, that will motivate you to do more for the world.”
Know how to fight: Shetty married his wife, Radhi, three years ago (he met her in a meditation class before he went off and became a monk). He says they’ve had to learn to respect each other’s “fighting styles” – he’s a talk it-out-immediately person, while she needs space to think. “When you’re having an argument, remember, it’s not you against each other. It’s both of you against the problem. When you win, they lose. If you’re on a team you have to win together.”
Zayed Sustainability Prize
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UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
Mercer, the investment consulting arm of US services company Marsh & McLennan, expects its wealth division to at least double its assets under management (AUM) in the Middle East as wealth in the region continues to grow despite economic headwinds, a company official said.
Mercer Wealth, which globally has $160 billion in AUM, plans to boost its AUM in the region to $2-$3bn in the next 2-3 years from the present $1bn, said Yasir AbuShaban, a Dubai-based principal with Mercer Wealth.
“Within the next two to three years, we are looking at reaching $2 to $3 billion as a conservative estimate and we do see an opportunity to do so,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Mercer does not directly make investments, but allocates clients’ money they have discretion to, to professional asset managers. They also provide advice to clients.
“We have buying power. We can negotiate on their (client’s) behalf with asset managers to provide them lower fees than they otherwise would have to get on their own,” he added.
Mercer Wealth’s clients include sovereign wealth funds, family offices, and insurance companies among others.
From its office in Dubai, Mercer also looks after Africa, India and Turkey, where they also see opportunity for growth.
Wealth creation in Middle East and Africa (MEA) grew 8.5 per cent to $8.1 trillion last year from $7.5tn in 2015, higher than last year’s global average of 6 per cent and the second-highest growth in a region after Asia-Pacific which grew 9.9 per cent, according to consultancy Boston Consulting Group (BCG). In the region, where wealth grew just 1.9 per cent in 2015 compared with 2014, a pickup in oil prices has helped in wealth generation.
BCG is forecasting MEA wealth will rise to $12tn by 2021, growing at an annual average of 8 per cent.
Drivers of wealth generation in the region will be split evenly between new wealth creation and growth of performance of existing assets, according to BCG.
Another general trend in the region is clients’ looking for a comprehensive approach to investing, according to Mr AbuShaban.
“Institutional investors or some of the families are seeing a slowdown in the available capital they have to invest and in that sense they are looking at optimizing the way they manage their portfolios and making sure they are not investing haphazardly and different parts of their investment are working together,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Some clients also have a higher appetite for risk, given the low interest-rate environment that does not provide enough yield for some institutional investors. These clients are keen to invest in illiquid assets, such as private equity and infrastructure.
“What we have seen is a desire for higher returns in what has been a low-return environment specifically in various fixed income or bonds,” he said.
“In this environment, we have seen a de facto increase in the risk that clients are taking in things like illiquid investments, private equity investments, infrastructure and private debt, those kind of investments were higher illiquidity results in incrementally higher returns.”
The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, one of the largest sovereign wealth funds, said in its 2016 report that has gradually increased its exposure in direct private equity and private credit transactions, mainly in Asian markets and especially in China and India. The authority’s private equity department focused on structured equities owing to “their defensive characteristics.”
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