Dubai, UAE
The 2024 InClassica International Music, organised by SAMIT Event Group, comes to a thundering close on Thursday 15th February, with a Grand Finale featuring the Oxford Philharmonic Orchestra and their Founder and Music Director, Marios Papadopoulos (UK), alongside South Korean/US violinist Elly Suh, Second Prize winner at the 2012 Naumburg International Violin Competition, and prizewinner at more than ten international competitions, including the 2015 Paganini International Violin Competition, and 2018 Leipzig International Bach Competition, amongst others. Presenting a packed programme of seminal favourites, the ensemble will open with the famous rousing Overture from Gioachino Rossini’s 1829 opera William Tell, before Suh joins them for a performance of Composer-in-Residence Alexey Shor’s Violin Concerto No. 4 in B minor, a work in three movements exhibiting all the hallmarks of Shor‘s characteristic lyrical and tonal approach to contemporary music. Finally, the evening, and InClassica 2024 itself, shall conclude with the resounding notes of Antonín Dvořák’s Symphony No. 9, ‘From the New World’, one of the most beloved and popular symphonies of all time. Composed while Dvořák was the director of the National Conservatory of Music of America, the work shows strong influences from traditional Native American and African-American spiritual songs, and was immediately an instant success upon its premiere at Carnegie Hall in 1893, before going on to delight concert-goers all around the world for more than 130 years.
Described by The London Times at his 1975 piano recital debut as having ‘all the attributes of one of the world’s greatest players’, Papadopoulos has gone on to enjoy an international career both as pianist and conductor.
He has appeared as soloist with and conducted many of the world’s greatest orchestras and worked with a host of eminent musicians including Vladimir Ashkenazy, Anne-Sophie Mutter, Janine Jansen, Evgeny Kissin, Maxim Vengerov, Martha Argerich and Lang Lang. His recordings of the Beethoven sonatas have been set on a level with Schnabel, Brendel, Barenboim and Wilhelm Kempff.
A prolific recording artist, Papadopoulos’s catalogue includes his critically acclaimed Beethoven sonatas, performances of Stravinsky’s Concerto with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and the 24 Preludes and Fugues by Shostakovich. He conducts the Oxford Philharmonic in recordings of the Brahms and Sibelius violin concertos with Maxim Vengerov as soloist. As a pianist, he and Vengerov have recorded the complete Brahms violin sonata.
In the summer of 2021, Papadopoulos published his first book – a memoir titled Beyond Dreams and Aspirations: My Journey to Oxford which charts his early career, the creation of the Oxford Philharmonic Orchestra, and his thoughts on musical interpretation.
Papadopoulos is dedicated to nurturing young talent and imparts knowledge to young artists through his vast experience, particularly during the annual Oxford Piano Festival which he founded in 1999. He served on the jury of the Leeds International Piano Competition in 2015, as well as that of the Henryk Wieniawski Violin Competition in 2016.
Marios Papadopoulos holds a doctorate in music and is a Fellow of Keble College, Oxford. In 2010 and was awarded Oxford City’s Certificate of Honour and in 2014 he was awarded an MBE in the Queen’s New Year’s Honours List for services to music in Oxford.
