In a statement, QPO said the programme –from 5pm and 7.30pm – will include more than 15 globally acclaimed songs such as the Final Countdown, Waka Waka, Hayo Fariqi, and Al Deera, among others, which will serve as a warm-up performance gearing up Qatar’s community for the 2022 FIFA World Cup in the country.
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QPO will also hold a concert on October 23 at QNCC’s Auditorium 3, showcasing “The Best of Baroque – Vivaldi’s ‘The Four Season’.
“The performance will feature George Frideric Handel and Antonio Vivaldi classics, with a special nod to Vivaldi’s best-known work The Four Seasons, a set of four violin concertos that are considered the world’s most popular and recognised pieces of Baroque music,” QPO said in a press statement.
The audience will see Eunhye Lee (piccolo), Christoph Teichner (harpsichord), and French violinist Lyonel Schmit, perform at the concert.
Besides the conductor of the concert, Schmit, renowned for his phenomenological approach to music, will also perform as a soloist on Vivaldi ‘The Four Seasons.’
The programme will begin with Handel’s (1685–1759) ‘Music from the Royal Fireworks’, HWV 351 – Overture, followed by Vivaldi’s (1678–1741) Concerto in A minor for piccolo and strings, RV 445 – Movement I. It will also feature Handel’s Solomon, HWV 67, Act III ‘The Arrival of the Queen of Sheba’; and finally, Vivaldi’s ‘The Four Seasons.”
Handel wrote ‘The Music for the Royal Fireworks’ to highlight the festivities of the Aix-la-Chapelle peace treaty, marking the end of the Austrian Succession War in 1748.
QPO noted that Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons were “a revolution in musical conception: in them Vivaldi represented flowing creeks, singing birds (of different species, each specifically characterised), a shepherd and his barking dog, buzzing flies, storms, dancers, hunting parties from both the hunters’ and the prey’s point of view, frozen landscapes, and warm winter fires”.
Vivaldi, born in 1678, was the son of a barber who later served as a violinist at the great Basilica of St Mark. He studied for priesthood and was ordained in 1703.
QPO’s upcoming performance at QNCC includes Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 27 on October 27 – his final piano concerto before his passing. Performers include Sonja Park (piano) and Schmit, as the concertmaster and conductor.
QPO stressed that “attendees will be only admitted if they are fully vaccinated or present a negative rapid antigen test within 72 hours of the concert start time”.