UAE National Orchestra: Abu Dhabi Festival

Led by conductor François López-Ferrer, recipient of the 2024 Sir Georg Solti Conducting Award, the UAE National Orchestra opens the Abu Dhabi Festival’s 2026 season with what looks like a super programme. It kicks off with Franz von Suppé’s Overture to Light Cavalry, full of bracing fanfares and galloping rhythms and irresistible high spirits. Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No.2 should be a real contrast, with classical lyricism and brooding passion – it’s also one for the virtuoso, and the soloist here is the much-lauded Georgian pianist David Khrikuli. And the concert culminates in Dvořák’s Symphony No.8, lyrical, pastoral, tuneful and ultimately optimistic.