Symphonic Dances
Gulbenkian Orchestra
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Date
- 20:00 / Cancelled 20:00 / Sold out Thursday, 20:00
- 19:00 / Cancelled 19:00 / Sold out Friday, 19:00
Location
Grand Auditorium Calouste Gulbenkian FoundationPricing
25% – Under 30
10% – Over 65
Cartão Gulbenkian:
50% – Under 30
15% – Over 65
- Conductor
- Percussion
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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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Muhai Tang
Conductor
Muhai Tang hails from Shanghai receiving his first musical training at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music and subsequently at the “Hochschule für Musik und Theater in Munich. He began his international career in 1983 conducting Berliner Philharmoniker's concerts at the invitation of his teacher Herbert von Karajan.
After this promising start there, countless invitations followed to conduct many other leading orchestras in the world including the Dresden Staatskapelle, the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, the London Symphony Orchestra, the St.Petersburg Philharmonic, the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra, NSOW (National Symphony Orchestra Washington) and the Orchestre National de France.
He performed on stage with some of the most internationally renowned soloists such as Lord Yehudi Menhuin, Marta Argerich, Pierre Fournier and Sir Giuseppe Giacomini among others.
His invitations were not limited to orchestral but included also operatic concerts; he was appointed Chief Conductor of the Finland’s National Opera in Helsinki, he conducted Rossini’s Otello and Le Comte Ory with Cecilia Bartoli at the Opernhaus Zürich both filmed and released by Decca Records as DVD productions.
He then went on to become the first Chinese conductor to lead a new production at La Scala in Milan during the EXPO 2015, this again being Rossini’s Otello. Starting from 2017 he has been conducting each year in China the Wagner’s Ring Cycle. His enthusiasm for opera drove him to successfully conduct the Chinese premiere of the original opera “Marco Polo” by the CPAA Theaters at the Guangzhou Opera House in 2017 and its world premiere at Teatro Carlo Felice, Genoa, Italy in 2019.
He continued his venture of bringing European opera to China conducting the Chinese premieres of Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande and Britten’s The Turn of the Screw in 2016 having much earlier in his career conducted Wagner’s Flying Dutchman in Shanghai Grand Theater Opening with Shanghai Symphony Orchestra and Deutsche Oper am Rhein.
In the course of his career he collected many prestigious international awards in particular the Grammy Award of America in 2004, the German “Echo-Klassik” Award in 2006 and the 2017 Italian International Opera Awards (Oscar della Lirica); he is the only Chinese conductor who has won such awards in this century.
Muhai Tang is fascinated by musical adventures. In 2015 and 2016 leading the Tianjin Symphony Orchestra he accomplished to great acclaim some series of concerts in two years featuring the complete symphonies of both Beethoven and Mahler juxtaposing one composer with the other in the same program.
Not only has he toured with European orchestras, he has also toured with many Chinese ensembles in China and the rest of the world: in particular with the Shanghai Chinese Orchestra he has presented traditional Chinese music at such prestigious venues as the Barbican Centre London, the Paris Philharmonie, the Berlin Philarmonie and the Hamburg Elbphilharmonie when touring in 2018.
In 2019 he conducted the grand opening ceremony of the Asian Cultural Carnival in the National Stadium of China (The Bird’s Nest) and on 20th July of that year he led the Harbin Symphony Orchestra from China to give a successful performance at the Salzburger Sommer Festspiele for the festival's opening ceremony; the HSO is the oldest orchestra in China, having been founded in 1908, and of which M.to Tang is the artistic director and principal conductor.
Alongside conducting Muhai Tang is also extensively involved as artistic director of several music festivals and takes great interest, as a professor of diferent conservatories, in supporting musical education and giving encouragement and technical guidance to the young generation.
Among many chief positions of different orchestras all over the world, Muhai Tang has been the Laureate Conductor of CNSO in Beijing.
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Agostinho Sequeira
Percussion
‘There is a sense of magic in his performance, and absolute commitment.’ – TROMP International Percussion Competition
‘Art invites us to think about ourselves and our actions towards the ones around us. We are all living drums sharing resonance.’ – Agostinho Sequeira
Agostinho Sequeira (1998) is making waves in the world of percussion. The multi-prize winner of TROMP 2020 – the world’s leading percussion competition – wholly absorbs the music and finds ways for audiences to experience the same. His performances carry a rare naturalness and purity, and he employs his physical presence as a tool, much as an actor or dancer would. In selected repertoire and improvisation, the ritualistic exploration of nuance, beauty and surprise of sound always takes centre stage.
Agostinho’s main focus is on the audience, developing his musical ideas from their perspective. Solo programmes with multi-percussion are centred around a theme to provide a sense of storytelling and create impact. Examples include Revolution 19 which explores the relationship between The Beatles and composers Cage, Stockhausen and Bach. In Touch is a performance about the connection between our social persona and our inner being. Agostinho has performed solo recital programmes at Muziekgebouw Amsterdam, Muziekgebouw Eindhoven, Centro Cultural de Belém, IPEA Shanghai Percussion Festival, Bach Festival Dordrecht and Wonderfeel Festival, among others.
The social elements in Agostinho’s presentations come from his rich family background of Indian and Portuguese origin. These days, Agostinho takes inspiration from various types of music, from opera and bossa nova to Pink Floyd and trance.
As a soloist, Agostinho has performed with the Dutch Ballet Orchestra, Gulbenkian Orchestra and Orquestra Metropolitana, among others. As a member, he has played with ensembles such as the Concertgebouw Orchestra, Klangforum Wien, Antwerp Symphony Orchestra, Amsterdam Sinfonietta and HIIIT (Slagwerk Den Haag).
Agostinho is part of Toonzetters, a quartet of pianos and percussion presenting new music by Dutch and Dutch-based composers. They have performed extensively throughout the Netherlands including at Oranjewoud Festival and Muziekgebouw Amsterdam, having released their debut album in 2023.
Agostinho was the First Prize Winner and Young Musician of the Year in Portuguese Radio’s Prémio Jovens Músicos in 2016. In 2024, at the age of 25, he was offered a teaching position at the Conservatorium van Amsterdam, focusing on Solo Multi-percussion.
Guo Wenjing
Sergei Rachmaninoff
Muhai Tang, Principal Conductor of the Gulbenkian Orchestra between 1988 and 2001, returns to the Grand Auditorium. The reunion with a very particular hall and audience defined the career of one of the most outstanding conductors of his generation. Tang conducts Rachmaninoff’s Symphonic Dances and The Rite of Mountains, a piano and orchestra concerto by Guo Wenjing. The work of this major contemporary Chinese composer reflects on the earthquake that struck Sichuan in 2008, exploring the relationship between natural disasters and human life. The soloist will be Agostinho Sequeira, winner of the Tromp Prize in 2020.
Sponsor Gulbenkian Music
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