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19H00 | Duration: 75 minutes with intermission | Co-production concertos.antena2@rtp.pt | t. 213 820 015
PROGRAMME
"Travels in My Land"
Amílcar Vasques-Dias (b. 1945) Lume de chão - Fabric of Memories and Affections
1 Light
2 Eira do Outeiro
3 Holm oak of silence
4 Scutching (Flax)
5 Assedar (Flax)
6 Spinning (Flax)
7 Linen
8 Weaving
9 By the fire (Short story)
10 Nest acacia
11 Trap door
12 Bread cherries
13 Cork Oak
PART II
Fernando Lopes-Graça (1906 - 1994) Viagens na minha terra - Nineteen piano pieces on traditional Portuguese melodies
1 Penance Procession in S. Gens de Calvos
2 At the Pilgrimage of Senhor da Serra de Semide
3 In other times Figueira da Foz danced the Lundum
4 A Christmas in Ribatejo
5 In Alcobaça, dancing an old Fandango
6 In Ourique do Alentejo, during S. João
7 Camping in the Marão
8 In São Miguel d'Acha, during the Trovoadas, women and men sing the Bendito
9 In Douro lands
10 In the foothills of Serra da Estrela
11 In Silves there are no more enchanted mills
12 Singing the Kings in Rezende
13 In Pegarinhos, an old lady sings an old rock song
14 In Citânia de Briteiros
15 In Monsanto da Beira, catching the margaça
16 In the Ria de Aveiro
17 In Setúbal, eating the beautiful orange
18 In Vinhais, listening to an old Romance
19 The adufes thunder in the pilgrimage of Senhora da Póvoa de Val-de-Lobo
NOTES TO THE PROGRAM
Fernando Lopes-Graça's "Viagens na minha Terra", whose title refers to the homonymous work by Almeida Garrett, gives the title to this recital. Despite the fifty years that separate the composition of these works and even though the approaches and styles of composition are considerably different, there is a special interest on the part of the two composers in "portraying" our country in a personal way. In each of the movements of the cycle "Viagens na Minha Terra", composed in 1953 and 1954, we find references to places, specificities or traditions of various Portuguese localities, in a kind of compilation of the ethnographic trips that Lopes-Graça made throughout the country, often in the company of the Corsican ethnomusicologist Michel Giacometti. Thus we are taken to contrasting environments: from the solemnity of the "Procession of Penitence in São Gens de Calvos" to the dancing atmosphere of "In Alcobaça dancing an old Fandango". With melodies from traditional Portuguese music, this work is marked by an immense frontality, sometimes almost rude, in the musical discourse. Amílcar Vasques-Dias' approach to his relationship with Portugal and the piano is quite different. In "Lume de chão", in a poetic and nostalgic atmosphere, Vasques-Dias, born in Badim (Monção) and currently living in Alentejo, transports to music the impressions, memories and influences of his childhood in Minho and life in the Alentejo countryside. "Fabric of memories and affections", the subtitle of this cycle composed between 2003 and 2004, seeks to make the connection between the "ground fire" of Alentejo and the "fireplace" of Minho. In musical terms, the composer continually explores the extreme registers of the piano and, in order to unify this cycle, the recurrent appearance of fragments in the different pieces. This recital thus results in a poetic-ethnographic walk through Portugal inspired by Saramago's phrase "If you can look, see. If you can see, notice".
JOANA GAMA, piano
Born in Braga in 1983. She attended the Calouste Gulbenkian Conservatory of Music in Braga, the Royal Academy of Music in London and the Escola Superior de Música in Lisbon, where she obtained a degree in Piano in 2005. In 2010 she completed her Master's Degree in Interpretation at the University of Évora where she is currently pursuing her PhD studies on contemporary Portuguese piano music as a scholarship holder of the Foundation for Science and Technology. In the Young Musicians Award she obtained several distinctions, namely the 1st place in the piano category in 2008. She played solo at the festivals "Música Portuguesa, Hoje" and "Dias da Música em Belém" at CCB. He was soloist with the Gulbenkian Orchestra and the Algarve Orchestra. He was a member of the Orquestra Metropolitana, Orchestrutopica and the Sond'Ar-Te Electric Ensemble. Always starting from the piano, in recent years she has been involved in several projects that associate music with the areas of dance, photography, theater and cinema collaborating with the choreographer Tânia Carvalho, the photographer Eduardo Brito, the company Esticalimógama or the director João Botelho. At the end of 2013 he will premiere a new play with the company Útero at the São Luiz Theater in Lisbon. He is a founding member of CAAA Centro para os Assuntos da Arte e Arquitectura, Guimarães. He has recorded several times for Antena Information: www.joanagama.com