InClassica merges old and new as Alexey Shor takes centre stage

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Alexey Shor, composer-in-residence for InClassica 2023
Alexey Shor, composer-in-residence for InClassica 2023

Published: Wed 29 Mar 2023, 10:51 AM

Last updated: Wed 29 Mar 2023, 12:17 PM

The InClassica International Music Festival returned to Dubai in February, bringing with it hundreds of artists and musicians from all over the world. For this 12th edition, the organisers behind the festival decided to present both historic and contemporary musical works, honouring the accomplishments of the past while keeping an eye firmly fixed towards the future.

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Held to celebrate all that is good about classical music while also safeguarding this tradition for future generations and promoting its appeal around the world, the festival’s programme of works featured music from the likes of Ludwig van Beethoven, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Robert Schumann, Johann Strauss, and many others being performed alongside various works from living composers, most notably those of the festival’s composer-in-residence, Alexey Shor.


Since he entered into the professional music world, Shor has quickly made a name for himself as one of the most interesting composers of the 21st century, intentionally departing from the conventions of our time and creating music which, like InClassica itself, acknowledges the past while expressing an undeniable contemporary bent. The result has been a series of hugely popular works which embrace the precepts of melody and lyricism while expounding profoundly modern attitudes and ideals.

Aleksander Chaushian performing at InClassica 2023 in Coca-Cola Arena
Aleksander Chaushian performing at InClassica 2023 in Coca-Cola Arena

His success may be more easily understood when one speaks to the artists who performed his pieces at InClassica, such as the Italian violinist Giuseppe Gibboni, for instance, the First Prize and multiple Special Award winner of the 2021 Paganini Competition, who interpreted Shor’s violin concerto no. 5, going on to note that: “I think it’s a nice concerto with a lot of not only virtuosic passages but also beautiful melodies. In my opinion, it’s very well written for violin, and I enjoyed having the chance to play it tonight. I think his approach to music is very nice. The style of composing of the last century is wonderful and there’s a lot of study behind it, but we also need beautiful melodies sometimes, that’s still very important. Contemporary music perhaps can sometimes run the risk of being too effective, too detached from this, but Shor is not.”


Conductor Tomas Grau, meanwhile, who presented Shor’s Cello Concerto No. 1, ‘Musical Pilgrimage’ alongside Armenian-UK cellist Alexander Chaushian and the National Symphony Orchestra of Uzbekistan, remarked on Shor’s unique style and the sheer joy that his compositions can present, both to audience members and to musicians themselves, stating that “the cello concerto is very beautiful. It's an extremely nice piece, and I was very happy with the result because it seemed to go down very well with everyone. It's a classical style but it's a new style at the same time, I think. It's Shor's style and it's his voice and it works, it takes you on a kind of journey during the concerto and it's very nice music. It's very enjoyable to play, and it's no difficulty to rehearse and to perform, not because it's easy music, but it's easy to work with that music because it is so enjoyable music."

Indeed, Shor’s propensity to breathe new life into the 21st-century composition by walking the line between tradition and modernity is one that was appreciated by many musicians at the festival, including the Artistic Director of the Galilee Chamber Orchestra, Israeli pianist Saleem Ashkar, who performed Shor’s Piano Concerto No. 2, ‘From my Bookshelf’.

“The piece has incredible charm and humour and beauty”, he said. “It has moments of lightness, deceptive lightness because lightness doesn’t mean that it’s not deep, and sometimes we think that only heavy things can be deep and that’s not true. He can bring humour and lightness with great inventiveness. And then there's the fact that he’s walking a very subtle and personal line in terms of his relationship with tradition. He’s not an avant-garde composer, by choice, and he embraces tradition but he knows how to break it in his way, he knows how to be part of it harmonically, but on the other hand, he knows when to break it so that it has its accents, it has its voice.”

With many of the hundreds of concert-goers attending each of the evening events expressing similar sentiments to those of the musicians, InClassica 2023 has perhaps shown that while the masters of the past will always continue to hold a special place in our hearts, the maestros of today do indeed have what it takes to stand alongside them, to the great benefit of all who cherish the beauty of this artform.


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