Gulbenkian Música 10/11

Festivals, Music of the World, Broadcasts from the Met and other News.

Numerous will be the innovations put on display all along Gulbenkian Música’s new season. We especially recommend the three festivals integrated in our programme: Jazz em Agosto, Festival Mozart, celebrated in September, and Festival de Inverno (Winter Festival), taking place in January. These festivals, revolving around a theme or a set of themes and musical traditions, combine the excellence of performance with a diversified programme including lectures, meetings with artists, multimedia installations and related film cycles. It is precisely in the context of Festival de Inverno that the maestros Gustavo Dudamel and Esa-Pekka Salonen, conductors of the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra and the Philharmonia Orchestra of London, come to Lisbon.

Entwined with these festivals, that no doubt constitute some of the high points of this season’s musical programme, new cycles appear, such as Músicas do Mundo - which will bring to us performers who cross-breed classical experiences with traditions from several continents - as well as direct high definition broadcasts of eleven productions of the New York Metropolitan Opera’s season shown at the Grande Auditório.The backdrop of this season, the first one programmed by the new director of Gulbenkian Musical Service, Risto Nieminen, will be the figure of Gustav Mahler announcing the advent of Modernity through a series of concerts called Mahler + which, far from including only works by this Austrian composer, also comprises works by his contemporaries who influenced him and works composed under the influence of his music. He will be an excellent pretext for several concerts and for two other symphonic orchestras to come to Portugal: the San Francisco Symphony, conducted by Michael Tilson Thomas, and the Gustav Mahler Youth Orchestra, coming back this year with maestro Philippe Jordan and the singers Thomas Hampson and Burkhard Fritz, this time with a repertory totally dedicated to Mahler.

Several other orchestras will be invited to perform in the Grande Auditório, such as the Orquestra Sinfónica do Porto, the Ensemble Intercontemporain or the Orchestre des Champs-Élysées. But, as usual, Orquestra Gulbenkian and its titular conductor, Lawrence Foster, are front and centre in our programming. They perform a total of sixty concerts, many of which with the participation of Coro Gulbenkian (Gulbenkian Choir). The Orchestra will perform starring renowned soloists like Evgeny Kissin, Arcadi Volodos, Christian Zacharias, Jean-Guihen Queyras, Christian Tetzlaff, Nikolaj Znaider and Sequeira Costa. As far as educational programmes are concerned, the orchestra will interpret several Concertos para a Família (Family Concerts) like, for example, O Retábulo do Mestre Pedro, conducted by Joana Carneiro, in a scenic version by José Ramalho with the cooperation of Marionetas de Lisboa, or Grieg’s Peer Gynt, conducted by Osvaldo Ferreira and adapted and directed by José Wallenstein. The Coro Gulbenkian (Choir), directed by Jorge Matta, participates in the session Vem Cantar Jazz com o Coro Gulbenkian (Come and sing Jazz with the Gulbenkian Chorus) with the contribution of the Moreira brothers, as well as several other jazz musicians.It is also worth to mention a new format of presentation of the soloists of the Orquestra Gulbenkian who will perform in the Grande Auditório on Friday nights at 9.30 PM. By now, six free-entry recitals have been confirmed.

September will be the month dedicated to Festival Mozart, with a programme centred on the composer. It brings to us two maestros of reference: René Jacobs, with a new production of Così fan tutte (in concert version), conducting the Freiburger Barockorchestra and Coro Gulbenkian; and Philippe Herreweghe, who will conduct two concerts with the Orchestre des Champs-Elysées. This Festival also includes a performance by the German violinist Christian Tetzlaff, a unique cycle of three chamber and orchestral music performances conceived and directed by the concertino of Orquestra Gulbenkian, Florian Zwiauer, some of which smack of an authentic marathon, and a concert presentation of the opera A Flowering Tree by John Adams, inspired by Mozart’s Magic Flute.

This performance, previously presented in March at Cité de la Musique in Paris, in the context of a festival dedicated to John Adams, and conducted by Joana Carneiro, in Lisbon will involve the scenic intervention of Rui Horta. Besides the meetings with the artists, at the end of every week, there will be eight movie sessions dedicated to Mozart which include some operatic productions by prominent directors (Giorgio Strehler, Patrice Chéreau, Ingmar Bergman or Peter Greenway) and with great Mozart interprets, selected by Christian Labrande, the programmer of the Louvre cycles of filmed music.Festival de Inverno (Winter Festival) Contrary to most of festivals, which take place in summer, this one occurs in January and means to constitute a musical mosaic which reunites several different cultures and traditions and puts on display sounds and artists from various parts of the world. Along these programmatic lines, and besides the performances of the two aforementioned orchestras, all along the cycle Músicas do Mundo (Music of the World) the Grande Auditório will receive names such as the Al-Kindi Ensemble from Syria or Yasmin Levy from Israel.

De Berlim a Paris (From Berlin to Paris) will be the performance presented by Ute Lemper with Orquestra Gulbenkian, where she will interpret, among others, songs by Kurt Weil and Édith Piaf. Simultaneously, the theme Mahler + will be particularly in focus through this month, with several concerts and the exhibition of a movie cycle dedicated to the Austrian composer, also selected by Christian Labrande. This festival also includes Leoš Janá?ek’s opera From the House of the Dead, which never had been performed in Portugal, in concert version, conducted by Esa-Pekka Salonen, leading the Gulbenkian Orchestra for the first time. A lecture on Janá?ek and Dostoyevski by Paulo Ferreira de Castro and a meeting with the maestro Salonen frame the presentation of this opera.The public will have the opportunity to experience the feeling of being immersed in a symphonic orchestra through the installation Re-Rite – Be the Orchestra, a multimedia interactive audiovisual project created from the 29 channel digital recording of Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring. This installation will be on display in the Museu do Design e da Moda and will be inaugurated with a party starring DJ Gabriel Prokofiev, the grandson of the composer Sergei Prokofiev.

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