Hungarian conductor Gergely Madaras, Music Director of the Orchestre Philharmonique Royal de Liège, has been described as simply ‘terrific’ by London’s Daily Telegraph and as ‘a considerable talent’ by the Financial Times. For the first of three Festival concerts, conductor and orchestra offer a rare chance to hear Liège native César Franck’s symphonic poem Les Eolides, a rarely heard gem from 1876 inspired by the Greek myth of the Aeolids, daughters of Aeolus, keeper of the winds. Their programme continues with the world premiere of Alexey Shor’s nostalgic Childhood Memories concerto, with pianist Andrey Gugnin as soloist. The concert’s second half spans the wonderfully complex inventive world of James MacMillan’s three-movement Viola Concerto, written for and dedicated to Lawrence Power and first performed by him in 2014.

The InClassica Malta International Music Festival is organised by the European Foundation for Support of Culture (EUFSC), led by Konstantin Ishkhanov, in collaboration with the Malta Philharmonic Orchestra (MPO).