Musicians play Mozart at the Grand Hyatt Hotel yesterday.SHAIVAL DALAL

DOHA: Guests were treated to a night of classical music and German treats, which is part of the German Cultural Week, at the Grand Hyatt Hotel Doha yesterday.

Strains from Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s famous pieces floated along the lobby of the hotel as guests were treated to a feast of the senses: good music, good food and good company.

Eight musicians — with Peter Davida and Attila Szucs playing the horn, Svetlin Gueorguiev and Claire Louise the oboe, Thomas Gnausch and Rony Moser the clarinet, and Yoshiko Koyama and Miroslav Stoyanov, the bassoon — performed Mozart’s Serenade in E-Flat for Wind Octet, KV 375 for the first half and excerpts from the operas “The Magic Flute,” “Marriage of Figaro,” “La Clemenza di Tito,” and “Cosi Fan Tutte” in the second half. Guests were served German treats during the break.

“This is the first time we are having the German Cultural Weeks here in Qatar... German embassies in other Middle Eastern countries have this kind of cultural dialogue with whichever country they were based, but this is the first time we’re doing this in Qatar,” said Matthias Ohnemuller, a counsellor at the German Embassy.

Ohnemuller said the German Embassy decided not to bring just one event for a day “but have a meeting... and meetings usually take time... and this is how we want to introduce our culture to the public.”

During their preparations, which took them more than six months, Ohnemuller said they decided to bring not only music and art but also films.

“We will showcase around five German Oscar-nominated films like ‘The Lives of Others’ ... We will also showcase a very old movie, an historic German film, called ‘The Adventures of Prince Ahmed’ at Souq Waqif. This will be an exchange of culture between Qatar and Germany,” said Ohnemuller in an interview.

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