Beethoven's 9th
Gulbenkian Choir and Orchestra
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Date
- / Cancelled / Sold out
Location
Grand Auditorium Calouste Gulbenkian FoundationPricing
25% – Under 30
10% – Over 65
Cartão Gulbenkian:
50% – Under 30
15% – Over 65
- Conductor
- Soprano
- Mezzo-soprano
- Tenor
- Bass-Baritone
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Gulbenkian Choir
Coro Gulbenkian was founded in 1964 by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation as a full symphonic body of around 100 singers. The choir joins the Orquestra Gulbenkian and other orchestras to perform Classical, Romantic and Contemporary choral-symphonic repertoire, but can also perform a cappella. It has performed – and often premiered – many 20th century works by Portuguese and international composers.
Coro Gulbenkian has been invited to collaborate with major international orchestras, under the direction of conductors such as Claudio Abbado, Colin Davis, John Nelson, Emmanuel Krivine, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Frans Brüggen, Franz Welser-Möst, Gerd Albrecht, Michael Gielen, Michael Tilson Thomas, Rafael Frübeck de Burgos, René Jacobs and Leonard Slatkin, among others.
Besides its regular season of concerts in Lisbon and frequent national tours, Coro Gulbenkian has repeatedly toured Argentina, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Hungary, India, Iraq, Israel, Italy, Japan, Macao, Malta, Monaco, Netherlands, Spain, the United Kingdom, the United States of America and Uruguay.
Coro Gulbenkian has recorded extensively for Philips, Deutsche Grammophon, Erato, Cascavelle, Musifrance, as well as FNAC-Music, performing a wide range of repertoire, from Early-Renaissance polyphony to Xenakis. Several of these albums received international awards.
Michel Corboz was the Principal Conductor between 1969 and 2019. Jorge Matta and Inês Tavares Lopes are currently the Associate and Assistant conductors, respectively.
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Gulbenkian Orchestra
In 1962, the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation decided to establish a permanent orchestral ensemble. Originally with only twelve musicians (strings and continuo) it was named “Orquestra de Câmara Gulbenkian”. This collective was successively enlarged and today the “Orquestra Gulbenkian” (the name it has adopted since 1971) has a permanent body of sixty instrumentalists, a number that can be expanded depending on the repertoire.
This structure allows the Gulbenkian Orchestra to interpret works from the Baroque and Classical periods, a significant part of 19th century orchestral literature and much of the music of the 20th century, including works belonging to the current repertoire of the traditional symphonic orchestras. In each season, the orchestra performs on a regular series of concerts at the Gulbenkian Grand Auditorium in Lisbon, where it has had the opportunity of working together with some of leading names of the world of music (conductors and soloists). It has also performed on numerous locations all over Portugal, in an effort to decentralize music and culture.
The orchestra has been constantly expanding its activities in the international level, performing in Europe, Asia Africa, and the Americas. In the recording field, Orquestra Gulbenkian is associated to labels as Philips, Deutsche Grammophon, Hyperion, Teldec, Erato, Adès, Nimbus, Lyrinx, Naïve and Pentatone, among others, and this activity was recognized with several international prizes.
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Joana Carneiro
Conductor
Acclaimed Portuguese conductor Joana Carneiro is the Principal Guest Conductor of the Real Filharmonia de Galicia and Artistic Director of the Gulbenkian Youth Orchestra, a post she has held since 2013. Previously, she was Principal Conductor of the Orquestra Sinfonica Portuguesa at Teatro Sao Carlos in Lisbon from 2014–2022 and Music Director of Berkeley Symphony from 2009–2018.
Carneiro is in high demand across the globe, particularly for her focus on contemporary music both in the concert hall and on the opera stage. Recent highlights include engagements with prominent orchestras around the world including the BBC Symphony and Philharmonia in London, BBC Scottish and Scottish Chamber, National Symphony Orchestra (Ireland), and Royal Stockholm, Gothenburg, Gavle Symphony, Helsinki and Brussels Philharmonic, Castilla y Leon Symphony Orchestra, and La Venice in Europe. Further afield, Carneiro has collaborated with the Los Angeles Philharmonic in the United States, Hong Kong Philharmonic and Beijing Orchestra in China, and Sao Paulo State Symphony in South America.
2023/24 season highlights include debuts with the Orchestre National de Bordeaux-Aquitaine in France, Musikkollegium Winterthur in Switzerland, Royal Scottish National and BBC National Orchestra of Wales in the United Kingdom and Bremen Philharmonic in Germany. Joana also returns to Gulbenkian Orchestra in Lisbon and the National Arts Centre Orchestra in Ottawa. A native of Lisbon, she began her musical studies as a violist before receiving her conducting degree from the Academia Nacional Superior de Orquestra in Lisbon, where she studied with Jean-Marc Burfin. She then traveled to the United States where she received her masters degree in orchestral conducting from Northwestern University with Victor Yampolsky and Mallory Thompson and pursued doctoral studies at the University of Michigan with Kenneth Kiesler.
Carneiro is the 2010 recipient of the Helen M. Thompson Award, conferred by the League of American Orchestras to recognize and honor music directors of exceptional promise. In 2004, Carneiro was decorated by the President of the Portuguese Republic, Mr. Jorge Sampaio, with the Commendation of the Order of the Infante Dom Henrique
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Ilse Eerens
Soprano
Praised for her luminous voice, musical sensitivity and versatility, Belgian soprano Ilse Eerens enjoys an international opera and concert career in repertoire that spans from Bach to works of the 21st century.
Highlights of the season 2024-25 include her debut at New National Theater Tokyo in the title role and world premiere of Toshio Hosokawa’s new opera Natasha. In concert she will perform Brahms Requiem with the Gulbenkian Orchestra under the baton of Peter Dijkstra, La Vierge in Honegger’s Jeanne d’Arc au bucher with hr-Sinfonieorchester and Alain Altinoglu in Alte Oper Frankfurt, Philharmonie de Paris, Wiener Musikverein and Elbphilharmonie Hamburg, Mahler’s Symphony no 8 at La Monnaie, Bach’s Matthäuspassion with Phion and Residentie Orkest, Pergolesi’s Stabat Mater with Orchestre National du Capitole de Toulouse and Liza Lim’s Fatimah/Jubilation of Flowers with Basel Sinfonietta
Recent seasons saw engagements at Royal Opera House Covent Garden, Salzburger Festspiele, Theater an der Wien, Opera de Lyon, Opera de Lille, Stadttheater Klagenfurt, Bregenzer Festspiele in roles such as Pamina and 1.Dame/Die Zauberflöte, Mélisande/Pelléas et Mélisande, title-roles in Janáček’s Cunning Little Vixen and Hosokawa’s Matsukaze, Tschang-haitang in Zemlinsky’s Der Kreidekreis, Marianne in HK Gruber’s Geschichten aus dem Wienerwald, La Vierge in Jeanne d’Arc au Bûcher, Susanna/Le nozze di Figaro, Despina/Cosi fan tutte and Héro in Berlioz’ Béatrice et Benedict.
Next to these appearances Ilse Eerens is a regular guest at La Monnaie in Brussels in roles such as Pamina, Sophie/Der Rosenkavalier, La Vierge, Celia/Lucio Silla, Oscar/Un ballo in maschera, Jemmy in a concert version of Guillaume Tell (also at the Concertgebouw Amsterdam), Noémie in Massenet’s Cendrillon, Antigone in Enescu’s Oedipe and Amanda in Ligeti’s Le Grand Macabre, a part she has also performed at the Teatro Colon in Buenos Aires, Teatro dell’Opera di Roma and at the Adelaide Music Festival in Australia.
Equally sought-after in concert, her repertoire includes the major works from Baroque and Classique up to Music of the 21st century - from Bach’s Oratories to the Requiems by Mozart, Brahms, Fauré and Dvorak, Masses and Oratories by Haydn, Beethoven, Mendelssohn and Schubert up to contemporary music like Hans Abrahamsen’s Let Me Tell You and the world premiere of Hosokawa’s Nach dem Sturm with the Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra. At the Salzburger Festspiele and the Wiener Konzerthaus she performed Gottfried von Einem’s Der Prozess with the Radiosinfonieorchester Wien. Ms Eerens has worked with conductors such as Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Riccardo Muti, Hartmut Haenchen, Lorenzo Viotti, Kazushi Ono, HK Gruber, Ton Koopman, Philippe Herreweghe, Peter Dijkstra, Richard Egarr, Laurence Equilbey, Jean-Christoph Spinosi, Michael Schønwandt, Mark Wigglesworth, Jaap van Zweden, Antonello Manacorda and Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla and ensembles like Orchestre National de Radio France, Orquesta y Coro Nacional d’España, Gewandhausorchester Leipzig, Sinfonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks, MDR Sinfonieorchester, City of Birmingham Symphony, Rotterdam and Brussels Philharmonic, Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra, Zürcher Kammerorchester, Capella Mediterranea, Noord Nederlands Orkest, Beethovenorchester Bonn, Choeur Accentus and NDR Vokalensemble, just to name a few.
Available on CD and DVD are Haydn’s Jahreszeiten with Concerto Köln and Marcus Creed (Carus), Nach dem Sturm with the Orquesta Sinfonia de Euskadi under Jun Maerkl, Dvořák’s Requiem and Stabat Mater (Record of the Month/Gramophone Magazine) and Brahms’ Ein deutsches Requiem with Collegium Vocale Gent and Philippe Herreweghe, Bach’s Osteroratorium with the Orchestra of the 18th Century and Frans Brüggen, Schoenberg’s Moses und Aaron (EuroArts) and songs by Antonio Salieri (SWR/Hänssler Classic).
Awards include the Arleen Auger prize in the International Vocal Competition in ‘s-Hertogenbosch in the Netherlands, where she was the only the finalist who excelled in all the three categories of Opera, Oratorio and Lieder, and the 3rd prize at the ARD Musikwettbewerb 2006.
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Gerhild Romberger
Mezzo-Soprano
The mezzo-soprano Gerhild Romberger has always placed her artistic focus on concert singing, describing her special expressiveness and intimacy in this field. Her broad
repertoire includes all the great alto and mezzo parts of oratorio and concert singing from the Baroque to the literature of the 20th century. Her work focuses on recitals,
contemporary music and the works of Gustav Mahler. She holds a professorship for singing at the Hochschule für Musik in Detmold and has long been a sought-after teacher.
In the upcoming 2023/24 season, the focus will once again be on the symphonies of Gustav Mahler. Gerhild Romberger will open and close the season with the 2nd Symphony. She will first perform in Monaco with the Orchestre Philharmonique de Monte Carlo and later be accompanied by the Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra in Katowice. She has also accepted an invitation from Canada and will perform the 3rd Symphony with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra. Another focus of the season is Beethoven's 9th Symphony, which will take Gerhild Romberger to Paris to perform with the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, Hamburg's Elbphilharmonie Orchestra and to Lisbon with the Gulbenkian Orchestra, where she will work with Mikko Franck, Alan Gilbert and Joana Carneiro.
Important stations for Gerhild Romberger in recent years have been concerts with Manfred Honeck, who invited her to perform Mahler's symphonies, Beethoven's Missa solemnis or the Große Messe by Walter Braunfels, among others, as well as her work with the Berlin Philharmonic and Gustavo Dudamel, the Los Angeles Symphony Orchestra under Herbert Blomstedt and Zubin Mehta, and with the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra under Riccardo Chailly and Andris Nelsons. She is a regular guest with the Vienna and Bamberg Symphonies, amongst others under Daniel Harding, at La Scala in Milan under Franz Welser-Möst and Riccardo Chailly, with the Vienna Philharmonic under Andris Nelsons and the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra under Mariss Jansons, Bernard Haitink and Simon Rattle.
The alto is featured on numerous CD recordings, including Mahler's 3rd Symphony with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra under Bernard Haitink, which won the 2018 BBC Music Magazine Award for "Recording of the year." Her first solo CD with songs by Gustav Mahler and Alfredo Perl at the piano was released by MDG in 2016. -
Tuomas Katajala
Tenor
Finnish tenor Tuomas Katajala is one of the most versatile and sought-after Scandinavian tenors and has achieved noticeable success not just as an opera singer, but as a concert singer as well. He studied at the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki as well as in Rome and Amsterdam and has a longstanding and close relationship with the Finnish National Opera in Helsinki and the Savonlinna Opera Festival, where he made his stage debut as Tamino/Die Zauberflöte. Following this, he was accepted into the master class at the Accademia Rossiniana and undertook the role of Libenskopf in Il Viaggio a Reims under the baton of Alberto Zedda at the Rossini Festival in Pesaro.
Past seasons' opera highlights include, among others, Tamino/Die Zauberflöte at the Royal Opera House Covent Garden, Staatsoper Unter den Linden Berlin, Opéra de Lille and in Tampere, Almaviva/Il barbiere di Siviglia at Komische Oper Berlin, Ferrando/Così fan tutte at Seattle Opera, Steuermann/Der fliegende Holländer in Helsinki and in a concert performance with the Accademia di Santa Cecilia in Rome, Don Ottavio/Don Giovanni at Finnish National Opera and the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow, as well as Belmonte/Die Entführung aus dem Serail at the Savonlinna Opera Festival.
In 2019, he made his debut as Max in Der Freischütz on the occasion of a concert tour with concerts in Vienna, Brussels, Caen, Luxemburg, Aix-en-Provence and at Ludwigsburger Schlossfestspiele. This engagement marked a change in repertoire and was followed by debuts as Loge/Rheingold at the Finnish National Opera, Idomeneo in Tel Aviv and, most recently, Hoffegut/Die Vögel in Strasbourg.
Katajala's vast concert- and oratorio repertoire includes the key works by J.S. Bach, Handel, Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Bruckner, Mahler and Britten, which he performed at renowned concert halls and festivals in the USA (i.a. Avery Fisher Hall in New York), France (Salle Pleyel in Paris), Germany (Laeiszhalle Hamburg), Portugal (Gulbenkian), Scandinavia, Spain, the UK (Glyndebourne Festival), and Japan.
Tuomas Katajala worked with conductors such as Vladimir Ashkenazy, Kent Nagano, Klaus Mäkelä, Pablo Heras-Casado, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Mikko Franck, Susanna Mälkki, Eivind Gullberg Jensen, Hannu Lintu, and Santtu-Matias Rouvali.
In the season 2022/23 Tuomas will be on stage as Tamino/Zauberflöte at the Finnish National Opera as well as in Savonlinna, and as Max/Der Freischütz at Theater an der Wien, among others. In addition, he can be heard in Beethoven's Symphony no 9 with the Wiener Symphoniker under Klaus Mäkelä, in Britten's "Serenade for tenor and horn" with the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, in the title roles of Parsifal and Oedipus Rex, both with the Orchestra Sinfonica di Milano, and as Loge in a concert performance of Das Rheingold in Singapore.
Projects in season 2023/24 include role debuts as Lohengrin at Savonlinna Opera Festival and as Erik/Der fliegende Holländer in Beijing, as well as a new production of Poulenc's Dialogues des Carmélites/Chevalier de la Force at the Finnish National Opera.
His concert engagements in this season count the opening concert of the Orchestra Sinfonica di Milano at the Scala (Mahler's Lied von der Erde), Lili Boulanger's Faust et Hélène with the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra under Hannu Lintu, as well as further concerts in Italy, Portugal and Finland.
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Alexander Grassauer
Bass-Baritone
The young bass-baritone received his first singing lessons from Sigrid Rennert in Bruck an der Mur. He studied voice with Prof. Karlheinz Hanser and in the Lied class of Prof. Florian Boesch at the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna. He received further artistic impulses from Ramon Vargas, Robert Holl and Elina Garanca.
On the opera stage he sang Masetto in Don Giovanni at the Stadttheater Baden near Vienna, Marchese in La Traviata at the Festspiele Klosterneuburg, Figaro in Le nozze di Figaro at the Schlosstheater Schönbrunn, Speaker in Mozart's Magic Flute on a tour of the Teatro alla Scala in Shanghai, and Frank in Die Fledermaus at the Deutsche Oper am Rhein in Düsseldorf.
His concert activities include national and international performances such as various recitals, Beethoven's Ninth Symphony in Bangkok and at the Grosses Festspielhaus Salzburg, J.S. Bach's St. John Passion and Handel's Messiah at the Vienna Konzerthaus, Mozart's Requiem in Germany, Mendelssohn's Paulus at the Golden Hall of the Vienna Musikverein, Beethoven’s Christus am Ölberge at the Tiroler Festspiele Erl and other performances in countries such as Italy, Hungary and Poland, as well as two appearances at KS Elina Garanca's open-air concerts "Klassik unter Sternen" and "Klassik in den Alpen" in summer 2019.
As of season 2020/21 season, he has been a permanent member of the ensemble at the Staatstheater am Gärtnerplatz in Munich, where his roles include Speaker in Die Zauberflöte, Masetto and Leporello in Don Giovanni, Don Basilio in Il barbiere di Siviglia, Alidoro in La Cenerentola, Monterone in Rigoletto and Frank in Die Fledermaus.
Alexander Grassauer is a laureate of several international singing competitions. He won first prizes at the 2017 Hariclea Darclée Singing Competition in Romania, the 2017 International Brahms Competition, the 24th Ferruccio Tagliavini Singing Competition, and second prize at the 2022 Hugo Wolf International Competition for Lied Art in Stuttgart. He also won the prize for the best young talent at the 4th International Otto Edelmann Competition in Vienna and the first prize at KS Elina Garanca's Future Voices initiative.
Ludwig van Beethoven
Symphony No. 9, in D minor, op. 125
For some years, Joana Carneiro divided her passion for music with an academic path that led her to study medicine. However, at the age of 18, when she conducted an orchestra for the first time and led that immense mass of sound through Beethoven’s music (Symphony No. 1), she realised that the call could not be ignored. Beethoven has been present at key moments in the conductor’s career and it is to the German composer that she now returns with the Gulbenkian Choir and Orchestra to conduct Symphony No. 9, one of the most iconographic works in the repertoire.
Sponsor Gulbenkian Music
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