MPO's 21st stellar season concerts for 2019

The MPO 21st season, which for the first time spans a calendar year, promises many special concerts from top conductors and soloists exclusively chosen for 2019. Stellar violinists like Akiko Suwanai in the Brahms Violin Concerto and Sarasate's Gypsy Airs, Tianwa Yang in Bruch's Scottish Fantasy and Ryu Goto in the Korngold Violin Concerto grace the DFP stage.

Rising violinists like Elena Urioste and Grace Clifford entertain us in Bernstein's Serenade, after Plato's Symposium and Mendelssohn's evergreen Violin Concerto respectively.

Perennial favourite conductors like Roberto Abbado, Mark Wigglesworth and Stanislav Kochanovsky also grace the DFP stage this season. Abbado features twice with a Russian programme of Prokofiev, Kabalevsky and Shostakovich as well as some major German fare of Beethoven's Coriolan Overture and Brahms' First Symphony.

Kochanovsky brings us an innovative Mahler concert featuring the Bach Suite and dramatic Fifth Symphony as well as an opera in concert, featuring Tchaikovsky's ever popular Queen of Spades after Pushkin's fateful tale.

Wigglesworth offers us a further two Mahler symphonies, the optimistic First and haunting Ninth.

Pianists Llŷr Williams, Tengku Irfan and P'ng Tean Hwa entertain us in concertos by Weber and Ravel. Other maestros that appear with the MPO are Alexander Briger, Rossen Milanov, Jessica Cottis, Olari Elts, Martin Sieghart, Junichi Hirokami, Jessica Gethin, Hans Graf, Jun Märkl, Benjamin Bayl, Jac van Steen, Jane Glover and Dirk Brossé.

The magnificent Klais pipe organ of the Dewan Filharmonik Petronas can be heard in two organ recitals (by Evelyn Lim and Gunther Rost) and in a concert which features sparkling organ concertos by Haydn and Handel with acclaimed organist Gunther Rost.

The 2019 MPO anniversary season promises many concerts of varied fare, with great artists in wonderful repertoire. For further information, visit www.mpo.com.my or call (03) 2331 7007.