Classical oasis: Postcard from Dubai

During the darkest days of lockdown, I often imagined myself listening to live music in beautiful and exotic surroundings. But although locations in Europe, America and Asia figured frequently in these wistful daydreams, the United Arab Emirates was not a country that ever came to mind. Here my imagination failed me, as this year’s InClassica International Music Festival and its accompanying Middle Eastern Classical Music Academy proved in spades. Set among the towering skyscrapers of Dubai’s city centre, InClassica brought a legion of top soloists to perform at ‘the Middle East’s largest and most ambitious classical music festival’. And neither the baking 44C heat nor the myriad PCR tests, locator forms and Covid app downloads required for international travel could put off the enthusiastic soloists, orchestras, students and audiences who came to celebrate the return of live performing.

Launched by the European Foundation for Support of Culture, which for the past ten years has run the annual Malta International Music Festival, this year’s inaugural InClassica event ran from 28 August to 26 September and featured such world-class soloists as violinists Maxim Vengerov and Gil Shaham, cellists Mischa Maisky and Steven Isserlis, soprano Danielle de Niese and tenor Joseph Calleja – not to mention orchestras from Armenia, Israel, Malta, Germany, Russia and Slovenia…