The press conference, held at St James Cavalier, was addressed by Tourism and Culture Minister Dr Francis Zammit Dimech, orchestra board chairman Lino Attard and artistic director Prof. Michael Laus.
In his speech, Mr Attard said that the orchestra is working hard to maintain a presence and to attract new listeners to its concerts. The innovation of a pop concert with the participation of established artists and the National Youth Orchestra projects were certainly aimed to increase audiences, Mr Attard insisted. He added that the orchestra will continue to reach out to all levels of society through its educational programmes and through exploring new avenues.
Prof. Laus said that it was an established fact that the level of musical education and orchestral playing had gone up substantially over the past years. He said that the National Youth Orchestra already has around 30 members and these are being trained by the main orchestra’s section leaders as well as other seasoned musicians.
Prof. Laus gave details on the first concert to be performed by the orchestra which will take place on 4 December and will include works by Haydn, Mozart, Purcell and Galea. He also hinted at the possibility of performing Gustav Holst’s massive orchestra work, The Planets, with the two orchestras combined. Minister Zammit Dimech said that all these initiatives indicated that the national orchestra was indeed, “an orchestra on the move”. He stated that over the past years the standard of playing had indeed improved with every concert and lauded the pop concert and youth orchestra projects as ideas that would definitely create a bigger market for the orchestra.
The minister said that the new website was definitely an important communicative tool that would bring about better interplay between the National Orchestra and other ensembles all over the world.
The website’s address is www.maltaorchestra.com and the site includes state of the art features, an easy to navigate interface, biographical and archival information, a news section and a performance diary. The “National Orchestra goes Pop” concert will be held on 27 November at the Mediterranean Conference Centre and will include appearances by Fabrizio Faniello, Olivia Lewis and Hooligan amongst others. In the meantime, the National Youth Orchestra will perform on 4 December and another session dedicated to school students will take place tomorrow at Maria Regina Junior Lyceum in Blata l-Bajda.