“O Sonho”
April 25th 2010
Robin Howard Dance Theatre
London
The London Sinfonietta premiered Pedro Amaral's chamber opera “O Sonho” last night at London's Robin Howard Dance Theatre. It's based on an unfinished play by Fernando Pessoa, the eccentric genius of Portuguese literature. Pessoa's whole life was an art form. He's the Edgard Varèse of literature, pioneering new ways of interpreting reality and identity.
December 4th 2010
Cascais Cultural Centre
“In Search for Electroacoustic Potential.
Between the Japanese and Portuguese Cold”
On December 4th 2010 the Sond’Ar-te Electric Ensemble, the Cascais Municipality resident group, gave a special electroacoustic music concert at the Cascais Cultural Centre. The performance was integrated into two important events – 100th Anniversary of the Portuguese Republic and the 150th Anniversary of the Friendship, Peace and Trade Treaty Conclusion between Japan and Portugal.
“Paint Me”
December 17th and 18th 2010
Culturgest
“Ample Fantasies in a Small Compartment”
“We are not only one’s muses, but also one’s pornography”, says Stephen Plaice the libretto author of Luís Tinoco’s newest opera entitled “Paint Me”. The work, commissioned by Culturgest and staged by Rui Horta, had its world premiere performance on December the 17th 2010 in Lisbon.
Metropolitana Soloists
Liviu Scripcaru - violin
January 29th 2011
Portuguese Music Museum
On January 29th 2011, Liviu Scripcaru, a Romanian violinist, who currently lives and works in Portugal gave a concert of Portuguese contemporary works for violin solo. The performance constituted a part of the Orquestra Metropolitana 2010 / 2011 concert season entitled “A música por dentro” (“Music from the Inside”). Its programme consisted of works by such composers as Emmanuel Nunes, Daniel Schvetz, Miguel Azguime, Christopher Bochmann, Sara Carvalho and Ian Mikirtoumov, with one national and three international premieres.
>> Concerts >> Editions
September 18th-23rd, 2012
Belém Arts Centre
TIAGO CABRITA
“Three Nights at the CCB - between Homages and New Music”
The first three days of the Música Viva 2012 Festival were rich in the diversity of proposals and presented aesthetics, having pluralism as the motto.
Música Viva 2012 Festival - Giving Voice!
September 18th-23rd, 2012
Belém Arts Centre
On September 22nd and 23rd I went to the Belém Arts Centre to see two performances of the Música Viva Festival. The first one told a story of a “water droplet”; the second one was saying: “Ce désert est faux”. And in fact, I was irrigated with multiple threads of creative imagination, awakening the seeds of life, which the daily routine, the political disgust or the professional annoyance, tend to dry out.
Sérgio Azevedo, “Erasing Mahler”
September 29th, 2012
“A Mahler Appetizer that Lacks Seasoning”
The Gala Concert of the Young Musicians Award (Prémio Jovens Músicos), which took place on September 29th at the Grand Auditorium of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, was an opportunity to listen to the première performance of the new work for orchestra by Sérgio Azevedo, “Erasing Mahler”, composed in response to a commission of the Guimarães 2012 European Capital of Culture. The event, whose 26thedition took place this year, was included in the 50th Anniversary of the Gulbenkian Orchestra, which under the baton of Joana Carneiro also performed the Concerto for Viola and Orchestra by William Walton, with the participation of Ricardo João Cabral Neves Gaspar, Young Musician of the Year, winner of the Young Musicians Award in the A Category (soloists), as well as the Sinfonietta – Homage to Haydn, by Fernando Lopes-Graça.
October 1st-10th, 2012
Goethe-Institut, Lisbon
“Música Viva 2012 at the Goethe-Institut”
Two concerts at the Goethe-Institut in Lisbon, on October 8 and 10, concluded the Música Viva 2012 Festival – Giving Voice!
Vasco Mendonça, “Group Together, avoid speech”
October 17th and 19th, 2012
Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation
“Group Together, avoid speech”
Commissioned by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation for the 50th anniversary of the Gulbenkian Orchestra, the new orchestral work by Vasco Mendonça (Porto 1977), “Group Together, avoid speech” was premiered on October 17th and 19th 2012.
November 17 and 27, 2012
Casa da Música
“Four Premieres, Three Composers, Two Generations”
At two concerts of its most recent programming (November 17 and 27) the Casa da Música presented 4 premiere performances of works by Portuguese composers, all of them, in fact, commissioned by the same institution. At the first concert the Porto Symphonic Orchestra Casa da Música, conducted by Andrew Grams gave us “Non"sense%)8$messages#_! (for a nonsense reality)” by Igor C. Silva and “Imagens Sonoras” by Filipe Pires; at the second one could listen to “from underground_03” by Igor C. Silva and the Triplo Concerto Grosso by Álvaro Salazar, performed by the Remix Ensemble under the baton of Peter Rundel.
January 12, 2013
Teatro Académico Gil Vicente
Not only Lisbon and Porto but also Coimbra is an important cultural centre, including for new music, whose example was without any doubt the concert, which took place on January 12 at the Gil Vicente Academic Theatre, under the title “Do Virtuosismo Pianístico de Liszt à Multi(n)disciplina do Século XXI” (“From Liszt’s Pianistic Virtuosity to the Multi(n)discipline of the 21st Century”).
