DUBAI — To call Dubai a land of conundrums and contradictions would be an understatement. For starters, it is more than a city but less than a country. It is one of seven emirates that make up the United Arab Emirates (Abu Dhabi is another), each ruled by a family dynasty. Just 40 years ago, there was virtually nothing here. Today, nearly four million people live in Dubai, yet 90 percent of them are expats. More neck-cricking skyscrapers have gone up in this short time than anywhere else on earth, and still more are rising at a dizzying pace.
This tiny speck on the planet boasts the world’s largest exclusively international airline (Emirates) as measured by available seat miles, with more than 150 destinations in 80 countries on six continents. While other carriers are abandoning use of the Airbus 380 (the double-decker) or never ordered any, Emirates has more in service — over 100 — than all other carriers combined.
Dubai’s flamboyant downtown core is all sleek, gleaming steel, glass, and concrete, yet less than an hour’s drive away one can stare into Arabia’s infamous Empty Quarter — sand, sand, sand as far as the eye can see. And speaking of sand, Dubai’s famous Palm Jumeirah, the world’s largest artificial island (visible from space it is so huge), was built entirely on sand imported from the Sahara, as engineers determined that the local sand had the wrong consistency for construction purposes.
Also imported are Dubai’s multifarious Western cultural events, many of which take place in the 2,000-seat Opera House that opened in 2016 (a long time ago by Dubai’s fast-paced standards). One of these events is the annual InClassica International Music Festival. Though billed as the 14th such festival, it is only the fifth to be held in Dubai. The festival originated in Malta under a different name and moved to Dubai in 2021 at the height of the pandemic.
Why Dubai? Because its quarantine and safety measures were far less stringent than those in most other places, and the festival has been here ever since (there is talk about moving it once again next year). I attended the first six (April 6-11) of 16 concerts this year in the stunningly beautiful Opera House, which sits in the shadow of the world’s tallest building, the Burj Khalifa, jutting more than half a mile into the sky. Like so much else in Dubai, all the talent was imported. Two orchestras alternated in 12 of the concerts, the Franz Schubert Filharmonia from Barcelona and the Tokyo Philharmonic. (The four remaining concerts consisted of recitals and chamber music.)
The festival’s Maltese-born artistic director, Alan Chircop, notes that when InClassica moved here in 2021, it was the first time Dubai had ever experienced an event of this kind on this level. In the few years since then, he has observed a steady growth in the classical-music scene, owing in part to numerous master classes by members of visiting orchestras.
Sponsors, private funding, and partnerships keep the festival alive, despite the lack of government support. The hall does not yet see capacity crowds, but the concert at which Mikhail Pletnev was piano soloist saw a dramatic increase in audience size, due in part, I was told, to the large Russian expat community here.
InClassica might well have been called the Alexey Shor Festival, as every concert included music by this prolific, Ukrainian-born composer, whose career has taken him to residencies in Russia, Malta, Israel, and now the U.S. (Long Island).
Fifty-five-year-old Shor (born Alexey Vladimirorvich Kononenko) only recently turned to composition as a profession. For most of his adult life, he was a mathematician, applying his knowledge of statistical arbitrage to making Renaissance Technologies into a highly successful hedge-fund operation.
A soft-spoken, mild-mannered fellow quite content to live in the musical past, Shor’s compositions sound more like Spohr with a thick coating of Michel Legrand than anything composed in either this century or the last. He claims to be self-taught, with the assistance of Rimsky-Korsakov’s and Walter Piston’s treatises. “I don’t believe that art has to be continually reinventing itself,” he says. “The idea of constant evolution doesn’t resonate with me. Some may criticize me for what I do, but I am quite happy writing music that most people want to hear.”
Judging by the audience response in Dubai, Shor has calculated correctly. His music falls gently on the ear, never straying from tonality, ever lyrical though not always exactly melodious. A music theorist would be hard put to find any sense of development in his music. Dubai has no history of classical music to speak of, yet the audience at every concert I attended responded warmly to Shor’s music. I found most of it bland, but one work stood out, the Suite for Piano and Orchestra No. 2, subtitled From My Bookshelf. Each of its eight movements, lasting a total of 40 minutes, was inspired by a work of literature. Most successful were the Don Quixote and Tom Sawyer pieces, the former set to Spanish rhythms, the latter to ragtime. Two of the movements were encored by popular demand.
While Shor was unequivocally the anchor of this festival, artists involved in performing his music constituted a true international lineup: Gil Shaham (U.S.A.), Daniel Hope (Ireland), Maxim Vengerov (Monaco), Daniel Lozakovich (Sweden), Fumiaki Miura (Japan), Mikhail Pletnev (Switzerland), and Gautier Capuçon (France), among others.
Dubai may be a newcomer on the classical-music scene, but those who partake of its offerings do so seriously and enthusiastically. There was applause after every movement and plenty of hooting and whistling at the end of each work, behavior more expected in a sports arena than a concert hall. Yet while the music was playing, there was not a peep from the audience, nor did a single cell phone go off. The dress code is casual (scarcely a tie in sight), and all age ranges are represented, with an emphasis on the younger generation, including a good sprinkling of well-behaved children.
It was only appropriate that a city that thrives on the highest, the biggest, the longest, the fastest, the mostest of almost everything invite Japan’s oldest (now in its 114th season) and biggest orchestra (166 members who work on a rotating basis), the Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra, to participate in this festival. Unfortunately the orchestra’s dynamic, highly talented chief conductor, Andrea Battistoni, had to withdraw at the last minute due to a family emergency.
Conrad Van Alphen stepped in to conduct Schubert’s Symphony No. 9 in C major in a routine performance (jet lag on the musicians’ part may well have taken its toll), but two nights later I heard a Beethoven Fifth that will long remain in my memory. Rhythmic precision, textural clarity, startling dynamic contrasts, and brisk but not frenzied tempos marked Van Alphen’s interpretation, while the Japanese orchestra’s legendary technical perfection was a marvel in itself.
The Franz Schubert Filharmonia’s performances varied widely depending on who was on the podium. John Warner drew forth the best playing, with taut rhythms in Mozart’s Overture to The Magic Flute and a sturdy account of Beethoven’s Eroica Symphony in which the horns distinguished themselves. (Mozart and Beethoven figured heavily in all of the festival’s orchestral programs.) Under Lionel Bringuier, however, the Filharmonia sounded semi-professional at best. Oddly, only two of this orchestra’s six programs were led by its founding chief conductor and music director, Tomàs Grau, who turned in a rather tepid Tchaikovsky Fourth Symphony at the concert I heard.
If the festival has one overriding flaw, it is the hall it uses (there is no other suitable venue in the city). Stunning as it looks both inside and out, the acoustics are bone dry. Sound tends to stay on the stage rather than surround the listener. Fortissimos are painfully raw, pianissimos barely audible. Even the Tokyo Philharmonic, which I have heard many times on its home turf, could not project the warmth and depth of sound it normally produces.
But not to worry: A second hall is already underway, as well as another skyscraper that will break Dubai’s own record for the world’s tallest building. As a place that constantly looks to the future, Dubai even has a wildly popular museum devoted to the subject (Museum of the Future). Top that!
