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The Ensemble Darcos is one of the most prestigious Portuguese chamber groups currently active. It was founded in 2002 by the composer and conductor Nuno Côrte-Real, with the aim of performing works by the greatest European composers of chamber music, such as Beethoven, Brahms and Debussy, and music by Côrte-Real himself; this relationship establishes thr group as an authorial project. In instrumental terms, the Ensemble Darcos is variable in formation according to programme, from duos to quintets, up to the typical 20th-century formation of fifteen musicians, centred around the musicians Filipe Quaresma, Reyes Gallardo, Helder Marques and Gaël Rassaert. For these projects the group regularly invites outstandign musicians from various countries, including the cellist Mats Lidström, the violinists Massimo Spadano, Giulio Plotino and Junko Naito, the violist Ana Bela Chaves, and the percussionist Miquel Bernat. It regularly give vocal concerts, working with some of the most important Portuguese singers, such as Eduarda Melo, Luís Rodrigues, Dora Rodrigues, Lara Martins and Job Tomé. Since 2006 the Ensemble Darcos has had an artistic residency in Torres Vedras, beginning the Darcos Season, a series of concertos of symphonic and chamber music, in 2008. Significant amongst its concerts are those given in the Magnus Hall in Berlin, in October 2007, the Triple Concerto for violin, cello, piano and orchestra by Beethoven, at St John's Smith Square, in London, under the musical direction of Nuno Côrte-Real, and its regular participation in recent editions of the Dias da Música in Lisbon. In summer 2014, the group performed in the International Musiv Festival of Póvoa de Varzim. In January 2010, the Ensemble Darcos recorded for Portuguese Radio Television a series of songs by Cole Porter, with the singers Sónia Alcobaça and Rui Baeta, a programme also given in Lyons, France, in partnership with the Camerata du Rhône. The CD Volupia, the group's first recording, entirely dedicated to the chamber music of Nuno Côrte-Real, was launched in October 2012 on the Numérica label