Israel Phil breaks through in Abu Dhabi
NewsThe Israel Philharmonic Orchestra will perform Mahler’s first symphony tomorrow night at the Emirates Palace Auditorium in Abu Dhabi, its debut in the Emirates. The concert is given in partnership with Abu Dhabi’s Department of Culture and Tourism. It was st up by Michal Herzog, wife of the Israeli President
Lahav Shani will conduct. In the first half he will also be soloist in Mozart’s 23rd piano concerto. There will be a live stream at 1600 GMT on the orchestra’s Facebok site.
Neighbouring Qatar remains hostile to Israelis.
Qatar hosting the Israel Philharmonic might have been a bigger image rehab than hosting the World Cup or paying David Beckham $150 million to say he liked camping out in the desert.
It was such a great orchestra! We’ve just been listening to the 1978 Francesca da Rimini with LB conducting. The strings are sensational, so richly expressive, despite the Mann acoustic. (Pletnev’s Moscow orchestra from 1996, for instance, is not in the same league.) Our guess is that Shani might bring back some of the glory, if he stays.
As long as they don’t play gay music or gay composers and their gay players don’t engage in any activity that would be punishable by stoning to death under Qatari Sharia law, nothing to worry about.
This small improvement in international comity is among the few positive things we can attribute to the Trump administration, which brokered the normalization of relations between Israel and the UAE in 2020.
It was supposed to biglier but it’s better than nothing.