The Festival

FIME, over more than three decades of existence, in stages of progressive or more abrupt development, has been asserting itself as a Festival of unique characteristics in the country, raising the sympathy and admiration of many visitors from other places that have already passed through Espinho. Nowadays it receives some of the best interpreters in the world in its areas of activity.

The religious theme of the works scheduled for this concert – the interpretation of which will surely be marked by a piano and a trio of almost (im) probable complicity, which unite in a quartet of excellence – harmonize and merge with the space where they will be presented, surely creating a very special atmosphere for a unique musical experience.

The Transfigured Night is a central work of the end of Romanticism whose musical language anticipates the modernisms of the 20th century. Inspired by a symbolist poem, it condenses the tensions and strains of the end of Romanticism into a highly expressive texture.

The center of this program is the music for cello and strings from the 18th century. Edgar Moreau, a young promise of classical music, recorded part of the repertoire of this concert on the album Giovincello, edited by Erato in 2015. This record includes a set of solo works that are not frequently presented, recorded with the group Il Pomo d’Oro.

For a long time, the figure of the conductor did not exist as we know it today. As a general rule, orchestras were conducted by the concertmaster, the first of the violins, or by the harpsichordist. In this edition of the Espinho International Music Festival, the program bets on several concerts that take up this tradition, in which case, the well-known pianist and conductor Lars Vogt, plays and directs Beethoven and Prokofiev, with the orchestra Real Filharmonía de Galicia, in a program absolutely exciting.

Pedro, the Wolf and the mystery composer!
In this concert are presented two of the most famous musical works written with the youngest in mind… but not only! Prokofiev wrote a “symphonic fairy tale for orchestra” for a children’s theater company. Pedro e Lobo tells the story of Pedro, a mischievous boy and his adventures in the forest, full of animals and dangers, in which some instruments have a very special role.

The career of multi-instrumentalist and composer Hermeto Pascoal can hardly be summed up. Founder of some of the most innovative Brazilian musical groups, the Quarteto Novo, stood out for its unorthodox approach to jazz models and for the expansion of improvisation forms, often related to the traditional music of Northeast Brazil.

The Espinho International Music Festival celebrates with immense privilege the collaboration of the great improviser Hermeto Pascoal with the young Espinho Jazz Orchestra, in a less usual context in which the compositions of this musician with a remarkable career of several decades of inventiveness they will make you hear at sunset in front of this Atlantic that lives in Espinho, expecting a concert in which the unpredictability and sharing will give the various tonic.

French saxophonist Émile Parisien is one of the most interesting musicians in French jazz today. Its stylistic plasticity impels him to develop very heterogeneous projects with varied backgrounds. The present concert presents its inventive quintet with a very special guest: Michel Portal.

The closing concert of the Espinho International Music Festival has already affirmed itself as an essential and unmissable moment in the Festival’s program, bringing orchestral music to the public space, for diversified audiences, as diversified have been the programs presented annually .

Edin Karamazov is one of the most distinguished current audiences, having performed with musicians such as Renée Fleming, Andreas Scholl and Sting, with whom he recorded the album Songs from the Labyrinth in 2006. In an intimate setting, Karamazov will play transcriptions of works by Johann Sebastian Bach for cello and solo violin, in a recital full of drama.