QPO all set for promising Proms concert debut

By Anand Holla

If two words can sum up how sought after the Qatar Philharmonic Orchestra’s (QPO) debut at this year’s BBC Proms is, those would be: Sold Out. But for Qatar’s music lovers, the QPO will present the exact same show – only a different pianist – this Tuesday at the Katara Opera House. And the tickets, thankfully, are still available.

Every year, the BBC Proms, often hailed as the greatest classical music festival on the planet, host two months of concerts, including the popular Last Night performances, world premieres of contemporary works and shows by a diverse range of artists. For most performances, the venue, one of world’s most famous ones of course, is the stellar Royal Albert Hall in London.

Proms is an abbreviation of the Promenade concert, which is informal and inexpensive, and Promenaders or Prommers can get a seat for just five pounds. The Royal Albert Hall can accommodate up to 900 Prommers standing in the Central Arena, while around 500 more can stand, sit or recline in the Gallery. The eight-week summer season was founded in 1895.

Since this year commemorates the centenary of the outbreak of the First World War, works of wartime composers and music related to the conflict will be in focus. While symphony favourites like Berlin Philharmoniker, Cleveland Orchestra and Budapest Festival Orchestra return to the festival, QPO, on September 7, will make its debut. Other first-time appearances at the fest feature orchestras from China, Greece, Iceland, Lapland, Singapore, South Korea and Turkey.

The performance at the Proms (and at Katara on Tuesday) will feature Persian composer Behzad Ranjbaran’s eight-minute-long The Sunrise from Seemorgh (part of The Persian Trilogy), Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2 in C Minor (34 minutes), and Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 5 in E Minor (45 minutes).

The only difference would be the pianist – Peter Jablonski will be on piano for the Katara preview show, while Denis Matsuev will hold fort at the Proms performance. Two days after the Proms, QPO will perform the same programme at the Santa Cecilia Hall in Rome. By making her debut at the Proms, QPO’s music director Han-Na Chang will reaffirm her stature as one of the finest conductors of her generation.

While classical music enthusiasts would be familiar with the other two compositions, Ranjbaran’s The Sunrise from Seemorgh is likely to dazzle the audience with its soaring melody. In June, at QPO’s last concert of the season, the sold-out Beethoven’s Eroica Symphony show, the piece had its Middle Eastern premiere.

Known to draw inspiration from his cultural roots and Persian heritage in form or subject matter, Ranjbaran channelled the stories of the Shahnameh (Book of Kings), the national epic poem of Iran, to compose the three orchestral works of The Persian Trilogy. Seemorgh is one of the most intriguing stories in Shahnameh.

Written by the poet Ferdowsi, Shahnameh chronicles the mythological and legendary history of the country from the creation of the world to Persia’s conquest by the Arab conquerors in the 7th Century.

In his personal note about Seemorgh, Ranjbaran says, “The composition’s three movements are inspired by the three natural elements of the legend of Seemorgh: the mountain, the moonlight, and the sunrise, respectively. In the final movement, The Sunrise, the main theme is based on the opening theme of the first movement. The movement begins with a hush of drums in which it gradually builds up the thematic fragments to a heroic statement of the main theme by the horns.”