Beethoven's 9th
Gulbenkian Choir and Orchestra
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Date
- / Cancelled / Sold out
Location
Grand Auditorium Calouste Gulbenkian FoundationPricing
- 23,00 € – 42,00 €
25% – Under 30
10% – Over 65
Cartão Gulbenkian:
50% – Under 30
15% – Over 65
- Conductor
- Soprano
- Gerhild Romberger Mezzo-soprano
- Tenor
- Alexander Grassauer 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
Gulbenkian Orchestral Course Artistic Director
Acclaimed Portuguese conductor Joana Carneiro is Principal Guest Conductor of the Real Filharmonia de Galicia. She is also Artistic Director of the Estágio Gulbenkian para Orquestra, a post she has held since 2013.
Joana Carneiro was Principal Conductor of the Orquestra Sinfonica Portuguesa at Teatro Sao Carlos in Lisbon from 2014 until January 2022. From 2009 to 2018 she was Music Director of Berkeley Symphony, succeeding Kent Nagano as only the third music director in the 40-year history of the orchestra. She was also official guest conductor of the Gulbenkian Orchestra from 2006 to 2018.
Recent and future guest conducting highlights include engagements with the BBC Symphony, Philharmonia Orchestra, Royal Northern Sinfonia, Orquesta Sinfónica de Castilla y León, Gothenburg Symphony, Norrkoping Symphony, Royal Stockholm Philharmonic (whom she conducted at the Nobel Prize Ceremony in December 2017), Swedish Radio Symphony, Scottish Chamber Orchestra, National Arts Centre Orchestra in Ottawa and the BBC Scottish Symphony.
In opera, recent projects include The Handmaid’s Tale (ENO), Nixon in China (Scottish Opera), Rake´s Progress (Lisbon), Carmen (Royal Stockholm Opera), Wonderful Town (Royal Danish Opera), The Gospel According to the Other Mary (English National Opera), La Passion de Simone (Ojai Festival), Oedipus Rex (Sydney) and A Flowering Tree (Vienna, Paris, Chicago, Cincinnati, Gothenburg, Lisbon).
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, followed by her Masters degree in orchestral conducting from Northwestern University.
Carneiro is the 2010 recipient of the Helen M. Thompson Award, conferred by the League of American Orchestras to recognize and honour 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.
In 2023-24 Ms Eerens will return to the Takefu Festival in Japan, perform Mahler’s Symphony no 2 at La Monnaie, Bach’s Weihnachtsoratorium on tour with Nederlands Kammerkoor and Peter Dijkstra, Beethoven’s Symphony no 9 with the Gulbenkian Orchestra, Frank Martin’s Le vin herbé with NDR Vokalensemble, Haydn’s Schöpfung with Vlaams Radiokoor, Bach cantatas with Ton Koopman and Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra and concerts with Het Residentie Orkest, Zürcher Kammerorchester and PRJCT Amsterdam.
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 Toshio Hosokawa’s Matsukaze, Tschang-haitang in Zemlinsky’s Der Kreidekreis, Marianne in HK Gruber’s Geschichten aus dem Wienerwald, La Vierge in Honegger’s Jeanne 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 Toshio 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. -
Tuomas Katajala
Conductor
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 and Opéra de Lille, 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, 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 and Idomeneo in Tel Aviv.
Katajala's vast concert- and oratorio repertoire includes the key works by J.S. Bach, Handel, Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Bruckner, Mahler and Britten. He sang at different music festivals in the USA (i.a. Avery Fisher Hall in New York), France (Salle Pleyel in Paris), Germany (Laeiszhalle Hamburg), Scandinavia, Spain, the UK (Glyndebourne Festival), and Japan.
Tuomas Katajala worked together with conductors such as Vladimir Ashkenazy, Kent Nagano, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Mikko Franck, Klaus Mäkelä, Susanna Mälkki, Eivind Gullberg Jensen, Hannu Lintu, and Santtu-Matias Rouvali.
Engagements in the season 2021/22 include the new productions of Don Giovanni/Don Ottavio at Moscow's Bolshoi Theatre and Braunfels' Die Vögel/Hoffegut in Strasbourg and Mulhouse, as well as Zauberflöte/Tamino in Tampere.
On the concert stage he can be heard in Stravinsky's Renard with the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra under Nicholas Collon, in Schnittke's Faust Cantata with Rome's Accademia di Santa Cecilia and Antonio Pappano, as Ferrando in a concert version of Così fan tutte with the Kammerakademie Potsdam under Antonello Manacorda, in Dvorak's Stabat Mater with the Orchestre de Pau Pays de Béarn, as well as in Bach's St John Passion with the Orquestra Gulbenkian in Lisbon.
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, and as Loge in a concert performance of Rheingold in Singapore.
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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