The Planets
Gulbenkian Orchestra and Choir
Event Slider
Date
- / Cancelled / Sold out
Location
Grand Auditorium Calouste Gulbenkian FoundationThis concert will be broadcast live here on 11 October at 7 p.m. (GMT).
Pricing
25% – Under 30
10% – Over 65
Cartão Gulbenkian:
50% – Under 30
15% – Over 65
- Conductor
- Piano
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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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Giancarlo Guerrero
Conductor
Giancarlo Guerrero is a six-time GRAMMY® Award-winning conductor whose imaginative programming and “curatorial and interpretive creativity” (Chicago Tribune) draw out of his orchestras “exceptionally powerful and enchanting performances” (BBC Music Magazine).
The 2024-25 season marks Guerrero’s sixteenth and final season as Music Director of the Nashville Symphony, with whom he commissioned and premiered nearly two dozen pieces and released twenty-one commercial recordings, garnering thirteen GRAMMY® nominations and six GRAMMY® Awards. Guerrero will serve as Music Director Designate of Sarasota Orchestra in 2024-25 and becomes Music Director in the 2025-26 season.
Guerrero has been a frequent guest conductor in North America, performing with the New York Philharmonic, Chicago Symphony, National Symphony Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, and the orchestras of Boston, Baltimore, Cleveland, Cincinnati, Dallas, Detroit, Indianapolis, Los Angeles, Milwaukee, Montréal, Philadelphia, Seattle, Toronto, Vancouver, and Houston. Internationally he has led orchestras in Germany, London, Spain, Portugal, France, Brazil, Belgium, Italy, the Netherlands, New Zealand and Australia.
Guerrero made several recordings with the NFM Wrocław Philharmonic – where he served as Music Director for six seasons – including the Billboard chart-topping Bomsori: Violin on Stage on Deutsche Grammophon. He has also held posts as Principal Guest Conductor of The Cleveland Orchestra and the Gulbenkian Orchestra in Lisbon; Music Director of the Eugene Symphony, and Associate Conductor of the Minnesota Orchestra.
Born in Nicaragua, Guerrero immigrated during his childhood to Costa Rica, where he joined the local youth symphony. He studied percussion and conducting at Baylor University and earned his master’s degree in conducting at Northwestern. Guerrero is particularly engaged with conducting training orchestras and has worked with the Curtis School of Music, Colburn School in Los Angeles, National Youth Orchestra (NYO2), and Yale Philharmonia, as well as Nashville Symphony’s Accelerando program and biannual Composer Lab & Workshop for young and emerging composers.
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Boris Giltburg
Piano
Boris Giltburg is lauded across the globe as a deeply sensitive, insightful and compelling interpreter. Critics have praised his "singing line, variety of touch and broad dynamic palette capable of great surges of energy" (Washington Post) as well as his impassioned, narrative-driven approach to performance.
Giltburg regularly plays recitals in the world’s most prestigious halls, including Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw, Brussels’ Bozar, Hamburg’s Elbphilharmonie, London’s Southbank Centre and Wigmore Hall, New York’s Carnegie Hall, Prague’s Rudolfinum and Vienna’s Konzerthaus. Throughout the 2024/25 season, he embarks on a series of eight concerts performing the entire cycle of Beethoven Piano Sonatas at the Wigmore Hall, all of which will be live-streamed.
Giltburg is widely recognized as a leading interpreter of Rachmaninov: "His originality stems from a convergence of heart and mind, served by immaculate technique and motivated by a deep and abiding love for one of the 20th century’s greatest composer-pianists." (Gramophone). To celebrate Rachmaninov’s 150th anniversary in 2023, Giltburg released the last disc in his acclaimed Rachmaninov concerto cycle which received a Choc de Classica award and a 5* review in The Times. In recent years Giltburg has engaged in a series of in-depth explorations of other major composers, including Ravel (performing solo works at Bozar, Flagey, the Amsterdam Muziekgebouw and the Wigmore Hall, and concerti with the Orchestre National de France, Brussels Philharmonic and Residentie Orkest) and most recently Chopin, including three recitals at the Wigmore Hall last season.
This season’s Beethoven cycle continues such an exploration as, in 2020 to celebrate the Beethoven anniversary, Giltburg embarked upon a unique project to record and film all 32 of Beethoven’s piano sonatas across the year: "these interpretations are enormously pleasurable and at times revelatory… Giltburg’s pianism is ideally suited to late Beethoven" (five stars, BBC Music Magazine). He also recorded the complete concerti with Vasily Petrenko and the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, appeared in the BBC TV series Being Beethoven.
Giltburg’s list of orchestral collaborators includes the Czech Philharmonic, Dresden Philharmonic, Finnish Radio Symphony, NHK Symphony, Orchestre National de France, Oslo Philharmonic, Philharmonia Orchestra and Santa Cecilia di Roma. In the 2024/25 season, Giltburg explores concerti by a range of composers: he performs Rachmaninov with the Hallé, Bournemouth Symphony and Gulbenkian Orchestra, Prokofiev with Belgian National and Stavanger Symphony, Tchaikovsky with London Philharmonic, Mozart with Hamburger Symphoniker, Shostakovich with Enescu Philharmonic, Bartók with Teatro Colon, and Grieg with Dresden Philharmonic.
Giltburg is a consummate recording artist and has been exclusive to Naxos since 2015, winning the Opus Klassik Award for Best Soloist Recording for Rachmaninov concerti and Etudes Tableaux; a Diapason d’Or for Shostakovich concerti and his own arrangement of Shostakovich’s Eighth String Quartet; and a Choc de Classica Award for Rachmaninov concerti. He also won a Gramophone Award for the Dvořák Piano Quintet on Supraphon with the Pavel Haas Quartet, as well as a Diapason d’Or and Choc de Classica for their joint release of the Brahms Piano Quintet.
Giltburg feels a strong need to engage audiences beyond the concert hall. His blog "Classical Music for All" is aimed at a non-specialist audience, which he complements with articles in publications such as Gramophone, BBC Music Magazine, The Guardian, The Times and Fono Forum.
Sergei Rachmaninoff
Gustav Holst
TRANSMISSION
A pianist of exceptional sensitivity, Boris Giltburg is one of today’s most fascinating concert pianists making his debut at Gulbenkian Music. After an immersion in the works of Beethoven and Ravel, Giltburg has now dedicated himself to Rachmaninoff, with Gramophone magazine writing that “his originality comes from a convergence of heart and mind, served by immaculate technique and motivated by a deep and abiding love for one of the greatest composer-pianists of the 20th century”. Under the direction of Giancarlo Guerrero, and joined by the young musicians of the Gulbenkian Orchestra Course, the Gulbenkian Orchestra will also play Gustav Holst’s celebrated orchestral suite The Planets.
Sponsor Gulbenkian Music
Sponsor Piano and Orchestra Concertos
Sponsor Gulbenkian Orchestral Course
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