ABU DHABI // One of the world's most renowned performers of Mozart's music took to the stage at Emirates Palace hotel last night for the opening of the capital's annual classical arts gathering, the Abu Dhabi Festival.
Augustin Dumay, a virtuoso violinist, performed in and conducted Mozart Masterpieces, a musical appreciation of the great Austrian composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.
Dumay travelled to Abu Dhabi with the Royal Chamber Orchestra of Wallonia, Belgium. The orchestra's director general, Laurent Fack, said Dumay was the only living musician who can convey the essence of Mozart's music.
"Mozart's music is very beautiful to hear and it touches everyone, but is nearly impossible to play to the standard the composer would have wanted. It needs not only technical mastery, but also to capture the spirit between the notes.
"It is a common understanding in the musical world that Augustin is one of only five people in the past 250 years who have managed it, and the only one alive today," Fack observed.
Dumay played alongside leading soloists from the Queen Elisabeth College of Music in Belgium and Abdel Rahman el Bacha, a Lebanese pianist and composer.
They played a repertoire including Concerto No. 10 in E-flat major for Two Pianos, Concertone in C major, Sinfonia Concertante in E flat and Symphony No 29 in A.
El Bacha said it would take time to build a solid audience for classical music in the Arab world, but education in the form of concerts like last night's were important stepping stones. "A concert is very different from hearing a recording," he said. "It is more magical when you hear it in person."
The concert opened the eighth edition of the Abu Dhabi Festival - an annual fortnight of classical music, dance and theatre organised and hosted by Abu Dhabi Music and Arts Foundation (Admaf).
It is the result of a memorandum of understanding signed between Admaf and the Queen Elizabeth College of Music.
The college's executive director, Bernard de Launoit, described Admaf as pioneers in the region.
"Admaf want to create partnerships and develop cultural activities, and this is really pioneering. We hope that in the future, when the city has established itself as the hub of art and culture that it aims to be, we will be here working with musicians from the region."
The theme for the festival this year is "Harmony for Humanity" and for the duration of the festival, an exhibition called Path of Roses by the Algerian artist Rachid Koraïchi, will be on display in the Emirates Palace.
The Mozart concert will be followed tonight with a live broadcast from the Metropolitan Opera House in New York, at the cinema in Marina Mall. The tragic opera Lucia di Lammermoor, written by Donizetti, will be performed. It tells the story of Lucia, a girl in 17th-century France who is caught up in a family feud.
Tomorrow, the Globe Theatre Company from London will perform Macbeth, and on Tuesday the choreographer Russell Maliphant and the ballerina Sylvie Guillem will present Push, a ballet and street dance performance from the Sadler's Wells Theatre in London.
The festival continues until April 4, when the singers Dmitri Hvorostovsky and Ekaterina Siurina will perform pieces by Rossini, Verdi and Mozart accompanied by the Italian opera maestro Nicola Luisotti and the Russian National Orchestra.
