Musical Destinations
Oliver Condy experiences a Middle Eastern capital city undergoing radical transformation, with a burgeoning musical culture at its heart
Oliver Condy visits the Qatari capital, Doha
Doha is growing at an amazing rate. There’s every chance, in fact, that the Qatari capital’s landscape has already visibly shifted since my visit just a few months back. Oil and gas money is seemingly in inexhaustible supply. Qatar is now the richest country on earth per capita and owns, for example, great swathes of London including Canary Wharf, the 12.5 acres of land formerly occupied by Chelsea Barracks and, further east, the Olympic Village. This super-wealth is fuelling the creation back home of an instant metropolis comprised of mind-boggling
infrastructure and dazzling architecture, rising almost as fast as it can be designed. Space-age businesses, universities, hospitals, libraries, mosques and, in time for the 2022 football World Cup, no fewer than nine brand new stadiums are just the start. And never mind the equestrian centre where the most valuable horses I’m ever likely to pat are bred, housed, trained and seriously pampered.
In terms of cultural ambition and long-term legacy, however, Doha’s glory is its Education City, covering over 4.5 square miles and served by its own bespoke metro system. Eight handpicked departments from universities across the globe, including the London School of Economics and Texas A&M University, have been cloned alongside a home-grown university and all are housed in, you guessed it, state-of-the-art premises. And swooping over the Education City are the winged minarets of its jumbo mosque, its sleek, egg-like main building providing enough room inside for at least 1,800 worshippers with an adjacent courtyard for an additional 1,000. It’s very hard to take it all in.
The Qatar Phil is made up of some of the world’s finest orchestral musicians
Planning and overseeing most of the city’s major ventures is the Qatar Foundation, set up and run by the mother of the Emir, Sheikha Moza bint Nasser. Its community development arm currently juggles 21 different projects, including two dedicated to music. Ten years ago, the foundation decided that, in among the noise of industry and ambition, Qatar should have its own national symphony orchestra. It was to be made up of some of the finest musicians from orchestras across the world, and would provide a cultural bridge between east and west, with a goal eventually to nurture and integrate Qatari music talent. A decade on, and while there’s a long way to go to producing local classical stars, the orchestra is thriving. It gives over 40 concerts a year, of music from both Arabic and Western music, many of which take place at the Katara Opera House (actually a multi-purpose concert hall whose interior simply resembles an opera house).
Life evidently must be good for the musicians – the pay, too – because many of those who were recruited at the very beginning are still there today. As is the orchestra’s manager, Kurt Meister, a former manager of the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra. Auditions were held back in 2007 to find ‘the best musicians in the world’ with the expectation that the prospect for many families uprooting themselves to live in Qatar would be offputting. ‘I was frightened that we wouldn’t get enough applications,’ says Meister,
‘but we actually had 3,200 people apply.’ Meister held hundreds of auditions in Europe, North Africa and Russia, and barely a year later, on 30 October 2008, the first concert took place in Qatar’s national theatre, conducted by Lorin Maazel.
Maazel was the first in what has become a long line of guest conductors – Meister is reluctant to appoint a permanent principal, particularly after the controversial reign of Han-na Chang which ended acrimoniously just a couple of years after it had began in 2012. One suspects that the orchestra prefers to do things its own way. But one thing the orchestra does lack is its own concert hall which, Meister muses, may be up for discussion after the World Cup. Whatever the venue, however, the orchestra is impressive and certainly deserves a good, permanent home; close your eyes and you’d think its performance of Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique last summer was by a major European orchestra. ‘We’ve come a long way,’ says Meister, who smiles at the idea that many of the players who joined fresh out of college have matured into fully fledged orchestral musicians. Friends, too – the sense of conviviality is palpable. They’ve grown together, and know they’re onto a good thing.
All eyes are now on the Qatar Philharmonic’s second decade and there’s a sense that it must explore its Qatari roots if it is to survive long-term. Helping to sow these musical seeds is the Qatar Music Academy, set up in 2011 and aimed at providing top-class musical tuition to over 450 young students, whether Qatari or the children of the thousands of ex-pat workers who have recently flocked to the country. The Academy, led by a handful of inspiring musicians and leaders, offers courses in Arab and western music, and students are actively encouraged to delve into both. The standard of their end-ofterm performances is reassuringly high, which bodes well for the future of the Qatar Philharmonic. So it should be good for at least another few decades yet. Further information:
Visit qatarphilharmonicorchestra.org for info on the orchestra’s new season