Dutch-Maltese conductor Lawrence Renes will lead the national orchestra as they take on Richard Strauss’s Ein Heldenleben.

The Malta Philharmonic Orchestra will tomorrow perform a symphonic work by German composer Richard Strauss – Ein Heldenleben.

This concert will require over 100 musicians on stage and will see the return of the Dutch-Maltese conductor Lawrence Renes, who last conducted the national orchestra in 2003.

Ein Heldenleben, which literally means A Hero’s Life, is a tone poem composed in 1898 which is generally agreed to be autobiographical in nature. As many of Strauss’s other works, it is epic in scope, scale and instrumentation, and is one of his most technically difficult works for an orchestra.

It also requires more musicians than the MPO or most orchestras employ, so on this occasion, the MPO will be joined by a number of musicians from the State Youth Orchestra of Armenia.

Maltese violinist Carmine Lauri, co-leader of the London Symphony Orchestra, will once more join the MPO as guest orchestral leader.

The event will also feature Rachmaninoff’s First Piano Concerto, written when he was just 18 years old but revised and refined at a later stage. Latvian concert pianist Inese Klotiņa will be performing the solo role.

The concert is being dedicated to the memory of jazz saxophonist and percussionist Joe Curmi il-Pusè, who died at the age of 90 last month. Curmi was part of the ‘C-in-C’ orchestra of the British Mediterranean Fleet which disbanded in 1968; its musicians were then regrouped as the Manoel Theatre Orchestra, which subsequently became the MPO.

Curmi was the orchestra’s first timpanist, though he also played the bassoon when required, and stayed on until his retirement in 1988.

Tickets for this concert, which takes place at the Mediterranean Conference Centre at 8pm can be acquired through http://showshappening.com or from the MCC’s box office.