Alexey Shor InClassica
This February 2023, the InClassica International Music Festival returned to Dubai, bringing with it the music of a myriad of household names in the world of composition, as well as a number of pieces from the pen of its Composer-in-Residence, Alexey Shor.
The festival celebrated its 12th edition with dozens of concerts headlined by a host of internationally-acclaimed artists from all around the world. While presenting many works from historic masters like Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Ludwig van Beethoven, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Johannes Brahms, Antonín Dvořák and countless others, InClassica’s programme also included many offerings from contemporary composer Alexey Shor, much to the delight of the audiences who packed the seats at Dubai’s Coca Cola Arena and Dubai Opera.
Firmly established as one of the leading composers of our time, with his music already having been performed in such illustrious venues as New York’s Carnegie Hall, the Berlin Philharmonie, Vienna’s Wiener Musikverein, and the Kennedy Center, to mention a few, Shor has earned renown for his idiosyncratic approach to contemporary music, with the US-based composer favouring a style that priorities musicality, tonality and evocative language over abstract expression.
This approach has proved to be extremely popular among audiences, with concert-goers in Dubai effusively praising his pieces in a sentiment that has also been shared by the musicians who are performing the works themselves.
Commenting after presenting Shor’s Cello concerto No. 1, ‘Musical Pilgrimage’, Armenian-UK cellist Alexander Chaushian, the winner of the 12th International Tchaikovsky Competition and cello professor at London’s Royal Academy of Music, remarked that “I think it’s a wonderful piece for cello, very well-written for cello. It has a lot of super happy thematic material and actually performing it gives you a buzz and good vibe as well which is a wonderful thing. I really loved it.”
South Korean pianist Yeol Eum Son, meanwhile, prize winner at the the Thirteenth Van Cliburn International Piano Competition and International Tchaikovsky Competition, had the opportunity to interpret Shor’s Piano Concerto No. 1, ‘Travel Notebook’, and took a note of Shor’s expressive musical language, stating that “I really like this work, Travel Notebook. It presents different stories and different images and brings so many things to life. It’s full of fantasies and tales, you can very easily connect to it, and immerse yourself in it. And at the same time it’s very colourful. It’s like one very great story”.
Thus, as the reception from InClassica suggests, it seems that Shor’s musical style has tapped into a hitherto unexplored potential for contemporary music. Luckily for all music-lovers worldwide, the prolific composer is showing no signs of slowing down, even after having premiered new music at InClassica itself, thereby giving his fans a promise that his work, and his unique sound, will be here to stay for many years to come.
Also published on Medium.
