Tenor José de Eça and pianist Luís Costa perform recital in China
Tenor José de Eça and pianist Luís Costa gave a recital in Guangzhou, southern China, before playing in Beijing on Friday, part of the Portuguese Culture Festival in China.
The artists will perform at the Xinghai Concert Hall in the capital city of Guangdong, China’s most exporting province and the first to benefit from the country’s Reform and Opening policy adopted in the late 1970s.
On Friday, José de Eça and Luís Costa play in Beijing at the Qinghua Concert Hall, considered the most prestigious Chinese university in northern Beijing, where the current Chinese President, Xi Jinping, and his predecessor, Hu Jintao.
Established in 1911, the Qinghua campus was built from an 18th-century former imperial garden, preserving lakes, green spaces and centuries-old buildings. The university has over 25,000 students, according to its official website.
At the age of 24, José de Eça began his career as a teenager. The artist began his musical studies with his mother, Maria de Almeida de Eça, and worked on vocal improvement with his father, Oliveira Lopes, before joining the Gaia Superior Conservatory of Music.
Luís Costa began his musical studies at the age of 8 with Zhuang Xiao Hua, and continued them with professors Álvaro Teixeira Lopes and Friedemann Rieger at HFM Stuttgart, where he finished in 2012 with the top rating. She is currently pursuing a doctorate at the University of Aveiro.
The shows will reconcile the national with the international repertoire, including a play by Chinese composer Wang Shiguang, and themes by Beethoven or Franz Liszt, but also by the Portuguese Luís de Freitas Branco or Vianna da Motta.
The concerts are part of the Portuguese Culture Festival, which brought this year to China dozens of Portuguese artists, part of an agenda that also includes film, literature, theater or dance festivals, in parallel with the year of China in Portugal, in a program designed by both governments.
Other cultural events are expected to take place by the end of this year when it is 40 years since Portugal and the People’s Republic of China established diplomatic relations.
