Following in the wake of the incredibly successful European tour back in 2018, the Malta Philharmonic Orchestra (MPO) will once again be collaborating with the European Foundation for Support of Culture (EUFSC) as it prepares to embark on a tour of some of the most illustrious concert halls in Europe between the 16th and 21st of May 2021.
There will be four concerts taking place in all, with the first being held at the legendary Domed Hall of the Hanover Congress Centre on the 16th of May, followed by a performance at Wiesbaden’s famous Kurhaus on the 17th of the month. The tour will then move to the luxurious modern masterpiece that is the Gasteig in Munich on the 19th of May, before rounding everything up with a memorable trip to the Golden Hall of the Musikverein in Vienna on the 21st.
This will be the MPO’s fifth taste of touring in recent years, with Malta’s premiere orchestra having undergone three tours in 2018 - in Germany, Austria, Russia, and the USA respectively - as part of the celebrations to mark the organisation’s 50th anniversary. A further fourth tour followed in 2019, which saw Malta’s cultural ambassadors travelling to Russia once more. In these instances, as now, the orchestra was joined by its Principal Conductor Sergey Smbatyan, who has garnered a reputation as being one of the most exciting young conductors in the music world today.
On this occasion, the orchestra shall also be joined by the American soloist Stella Chen, who is the current reigning winner of the Queen Elisabeth International Violin Competition, having won the 2019 edition of the competition before it was postponed due to the Covid-19 pandemic, as well as being the recipient of the 2020 Avery Fisher Career Grant and 2020 Lincoln Center Emerging Artist Award.
Together, the MPO and their guest star shall be performing a varied programme that will include Felix Mendelssohn’s famous Violin Concerto, as well as the wonderful Violin Concerto of globally-recognised composer Alexey Shor. The orchestra shall also be giving a rendition of Sergei Prokofiev’s universally-beloved Symphony No. 1 to close off each concert.
In this way, the tour will be working to further the MPO’s and EUFSC’s aim of exporting Maltese talent and culture, both musically and in terms of composition, as well as of increasing awareness and appreciation of Malta’s classical music heritage on the international stage.