The 1st Festival of Ancient Music of Torres Vedras will take place between next Saturday and June 8, to energize churches and historical spaces of the county, announced today the city hall.
“The Festival of Ancient Music of Torres Vedras appears as a response of revitalization and valorization of all the historical patrimony existing in the several places of the county, combining the music of the time with the beauty of the architecture and the acoustics of these same spaces“, explains, in the dossier of press, this municipality of the district of Lisbon.
At the same time, it seeks to “disseminate a very diverse, sacred and profane repertoire, making known to the general public composers and works of European culture, from the Middle Ages to pre-classicism.”
With the artistic direction of Daniel Oliveira, the festival begins on Saturday at the Church of Santa Susana, Maxial, with a baroque lute and flute concert, by Vinicius Perez and Alexandre Andrade, accompanied by the old music group Camerata Galante.
The concert has as background the 300 years of the passage of the Italian musician and composer Domenico Scarlatti in Lisbon, where he left marks of the “italianization of the Portuguese musical life of seven hundred“.
Works by Scarlatti and Handel, written for baroque flute and lute, and by Luís Alvares Pinto will be interpreted.
The second concert takes place on May 11 in the noble hall of the Runa Palace and is dedicated to the “Luso-Brazilian Modinhas”, a kind of eighteenth-century song accompanied by an instrument, mixing popular and erudite characteristics, for voice or solo voices , harpsichord, pianoforte, viola (guitar), Portuguese guitar or even a small chamber ensemble.
The Cantos do Sabiá group joins the soprano Margarida Simões, the tenor Carlos Reis and Vanessa Gonçalves, on guitar.
The festival continues on May 18, with a concert on “The Baroque Sonata in Dialogue with Sacred Aria”, by the group Ars Eloquentia and by the soprano Susana Duarte, in the Church of Our Lady of Grace of Penafirme, in Póvoa de Penafirme.
Bach works were written for voice and continuous bass, as well as the sacred cantata BWV 202, titled “Weichet nur, betrübte schatten” (“Apartai vos, Tristes Sombras”, in translation), will be interpreted.
On May 25, students of the Luís António Maldonado Rodrigues Music School give the third concert in the Church of Turcifal, presenting solo instruments, choirs and chamber music groups, to take the spectator to an authentic journey through the past, in dialogue with contemporary music.
The festival ends on June 8, with the concert “The sonata ‘of Chiesa’ [church] baroque and classical,” in the Church of Grace in Torres Vedras.
The violinists Zófia Pajak and Marcos Lázaro, the cellist Vânia Moreira and Daniel Oliveira, in organ and harpsichord, promise to make a trip by chamber music of the baroque and classicism, favouring the genre “Sonata da Chiesa” or “Sonata de Igreja“, instrumental genre present in the liturgy.
They will be interpreted sonatas of the most emblematic composers of these two periods, such as Handel, Mozart, Albinoni and Domenico Zipoli.
Also on June 8, a workshop of ancient instruments is held at the Church of Grace, an opportunity for the public to contact and learn about ancient instruments of the European tradition, such as the harpsichord, the baroque flute and the baroque violin.
