The 10th anniversary edition of the International Spring Orchestra Festival will bring the final curtain down after its Closing Concert at the Mediterranean Conference Centre on Saturday.

This will be a unique opportunity to experience great pieces of music interpreted by high-profile musicians.

Brian Schembri

The ambitious programme features some of the best local talent who will be interpreting works by Ludwig van Beethoven, Roland Conil and the much-awaited world premiere of the piece composed by the festival’s artistic director, Karl Fiorini, titled De dioses y de perros (Of gods and dogs).

Under the direction of Brian Schembri, the Malta Philharmonic Orchestra will feature solo soprano Claire Debono, solo pianist Lucia Micallef, the New Choral Singers, and other established local artists who will join the orchestra for Beethoven’s Choral Fantasy.

They will interpret what Mro Schembri called “a rather contemporary programme based around the amalgamation of the different elements: the soloists, choir and orchestra.”

The Closing Concert will open with Conil’s Arianne et Dionysos, which will also be a world premiere. This contemporary French composer, pianist and pedagogue started his career as a pianist, and then went on to become a respected composer with commissioned works from various important institutions.

The programme will continue with Beethoven’s Symphony No.1, a bold musical experimental work that is clearly highly influenced by Beethoven’s predecessors Haydn and Mozart.

The highlight of the concert, however, will be Fiorini’s world premiere of De dioses y de perros.

Fiorini is internationally recognised as one of the new voices in classical music. Although still in his mid-30s, he has 50 compositions to his name, ranging from solo to chamber music to orchestral works.

This new composition, written for soprano, choir and orchestra is inspired by Spanish poet Ana Bocanegra Briasco’s crude and harsh work, which had a profound influence on the composer.

Like its predecessor, the Second Symphony, this composition is also based on seven movements (chosen from Briasco’s 33 poems) and should also be performed as a continuous movement.

The final and closing piece for the night will be Beethoven’s Choral Fantasy, which the composer wrote to conclude his own benefit concert in 1808, and whose long programme also presented the first performances of his Fifth and Sixth Symphonies and the Fourth Piano Concerto. The unusual composition, which unites piano, voices and orchestra, has a choral section at the end which shows similarities in themes to the finale of his later Ninth Symphony.

• ISOF’s Closing Concert is being held at the Mediterranean Conference Centre, Valletta, on Saturday at 8pm. Tickets at €15, €20 and €25 (free for children 15 years and under and with a 50 per cent discount to students and senior citizens) can be purchased from the theatre’s website www.mcc. com.mt, through www.ticketline. com.mt, or by sending an e-mail to bookings@mcc.com.mt.

For more information and for regular updates on events, visit the ISOF website at www.iso-festival.com.