German cravat Andreas Staier is playing at the Casa da Música in Porto, next to the Orquestra Barroca, in a concert with works by Carlos Seixas and Domenico Scarlatti who recorded on the album À Portuguesa.
The program that will return to Casa da Música on Saturday for the Queluz Nights will also be repeated on Tuesday at the ‘Around the Baroque’ festival, before a new concert at the Konzerthaus in Vienna on the 9th of this year. month.
Staier, an associate artist at the Casa da Música in Porto in 2018 and one of the main names of the harpsichord and pianoforte on a global level, also took over the musical direction of the orchestra during the recording of the album, which includes works by Portuguese Carlos Seixas (1704 -1748), defined by the critic as “a great composer”, placing him among the most important names of music in the eighteenth century.
In the program there are two Concertos for harpsichord, in Sol minor and Lá maior, by the composer of Coimbra, cravista and organist of the court of D. João V, besides pieces by Domenico Scarlatti (1685-1757), Italian with whom the Portuguese court, ‘Alla Portugesa’, one of the ‘Bizzarie Universali, op.8’, by English William Corbett (1680-1748).
From Scarlatti, three sonatas for harpsichord will be performed, between the two Seixas Concertos, in a reduced version of the program that was recorded on the album, released by Harmonia Mundi and recorded in February this year in Oporto.
In the first part of the Baroque expression, the new song, with Peter Rundel directing the Remix Ensemble, another set of Casa da Música, at the world premiere of Gonçalo Gato’s new work for instrumental ensemble.
The Lisbon, ‘Young Composer in Residence’ for 2018, in the House, debuts the second of three orders, in a program that also includes ‘Auf die Stimme der weißen Kreide’ (The Voice of White Chalk, Johannes Maria Staud.
Born in 1979, Gonçalo Gato is the 11th Young Composer in Residence at Casa da Música, having worked with orchestras such as the BBC Symphony, Britten Sinfonia or London Symphony, as well as German Recherche, the British Chroma Ensemble or the Portuguese Sond’Ar-te Electric Ensemble.
Gonçalo Gato won the Póvoa de Varzim International Composition Competition in 2008 and 2011, and has a PhD from the London Guildhall School of Music & Drama, and was directed by Julian Anderson.
Andreas Staier is considered one of the great names of the harpsichord and pianoforte on a global level, with an extensive discography and active stage career. In the 1980s he was part of Reinhard Goebel’s Musica Antiqua Köln orchestra, formed the ensemble Les Adieux , and worked as a soloist in orchestras such as the Cologne Concert, the Berlin Academy of Ancient Music or the Baroque of Freiburg, as well as collaborations with musicians such as tenor Christoph Prégardien and pianist Alexei Lubimov.
‘À Portuguesa’ precedes a European tour and follows a series of concerts of the same program in France and Germany, starting with a six-year “very good collaboration” between Staier and Baroque Casa da Música, revealed the German, in an interview, when recording the album.
Staier attributes to Seixas the role of pioneer and “great composer” who may have created “the first two Concertos for key [and orchestra] of History”, admitting that they may precede Johann Sebastian Bach’s 14 concertos for harpsichord, also identifying Scarlatti as “one of the great geniuses of music for the key”.
Previous recordings of Carlos Seixas’ harpsichord concerts include Kevsky Haugsand and Norwegian Baroque Orchestra, Spanish Jose Luis Gonzales Uriol, Segréis de Lisboa and Ensemble Arcomelo, and Hungarian János Sebestyén, with Liszt Ferenc Chamber Orchestra.
