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The sound of music

THE Abu Dhabi Festival 2011 will inaugurate its world-class programme of performances with the Middle Eastern debut of Maestro Valery Gergiev and the World Orchestra for Peace.

Emirates Palace will welcome the orchestra on January 4, heralding the start of the UAE’s largest classical arts event.

The 2011 theme of the Abu Dhabi Festival is ‘Harmony for Humanity’, and celebrates the capability of culture, the arts and music to unite people in mutual appreciation and encourage a more harmonious way of living.

Appropriately, the late founder of the World Orchestra for Peace, Sir Georg Solti was a passionate believer in the “unique strength of music as an ambassador for peace” and it is in this spirit that the Abu Dhabi Festival has invited the orchestra to perform.

Comprising the world’s finest orchestral players, drawn from more than 62 international orchestras and representing 30 countries, the orchestra was recently designated the UNESCO Artist for Peace, the first major orchestra to receive the honour.

“My late husband, Sir Georg Solti, created this unique orchestra in 1995 as a gesture of world harmony in to celebrate the 50^th anniversary of the founding of the United Nations. My husband, having lived through two world wars, believed that it was the duty of everyone to look forward and learn from the past to create a better future,” said Lady Valerie Solti, patron of the World Orchestra for Peace.

The orchestra’s world-acclaimed conductor Valery Gergiev will lead the orchestra through a programme of popular classics including Rossini’s William Tell Overture, Prolofiev’s Symphony No 1 and Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 5.