WNMD 2025 · CONCERT 24
Sound Steps / Passos sonoros
06-06-2025 · 19h00
Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, Grande Auditório
Lisbon
Bilheteira · Box Office (FCG)
MEET THE COMPOSERS #8 · in-concert talks
Participants: [composers to be announced]
Meet the Composers provides a platform for creators to share their perspectives and shed light on their works.
ORQUESTRA GULBENKIAN
GULBENKIAN ORCHESTRA
José Eduardo Gomes · conductor
Raúl da Costa · piano
Raúl da Costa
CECILIA DAMSTRÖM (Finland, 1988)
ICE (2021), 10’
Individual submission
HAWAR TAWFIQ (Iraqi - Kurdistan, 1982)
M.C. Escher’s Imagination (2021), 10’
ISCM Netherlands section
MURIELLE LEMAY (Belgium, 1990) YCA
augur (2023), 6’
ISCM Flemish section
VASCO MENDONÇA (Portugal, 1977)
Step Right Up – Concerto for Piano & Orchestra (2018), 25’
YCA · ISCM Young Composers Award candidate
CECILIA DAMSTRÖM (Finland, 1988)
ICE (2021), 10'
Individual submission
— Commissioned by the City of Lahti – European Green Capital 2021, ICE embodies the melting polar ices, and winters that become ever shorter, while the alarm signals are chiming. It reflects on the toll of global warming and ecosystem collapse, as millennia-old ice structures vanish. Yet, it offers hope. A rewind symbolizes what could happen if we do take action. ICE creates powerful and threatening images that flow as the orchestra’s strong expressions convey the events with the certainty of a force of nature. ICE stands for both ice and 'In Case of Emergency,' and portrays Earth's struggle for survival.
HAWAR TAWFIQ (Iraqi - Kurdistan, 1982)
M.C. Escher’s Imagination (2021), 10'
ISCM Netherlands section
— Tawfiq drew inspiration for his orchestral work from the view of the world of artist Maurits Cornelis Escher, famous for his exploration of perspective and illusion. Escher's poetry of perfectly illustrated impossible forms is what the composer was most inspired by: Escher actually makes the non-logical logical, spontaneous and lifelike, using elements from nature. In the print Reptielen (Reptiles, 1943), Escher brings his drawn lizards to life and lets them crawl out of the paper. Then, in the 11-minute score, Tawfiq makes these reptiles experience all kinds of musical adventures in imaginative parallel realities.
M.C. Escher's Imagination (2021-rev. 2023) was commissioned by the Concertgebouw Orchestra and the Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra.
MURIELLE LEMAY (Belgium, 1990) YCA
augur (2023), 6'
ISCM Flemish section
— augur is a visionary work expressing our current zeitgeist. The title refers to the avian diviners in ancient Rome. The task of these priests was to perceive the will of the gods from the flight of birds. An extremely important task, because in ancient times no important decisions were made without knowing the will of the gods. augur by Lemay aims to both predict and remember. For instance, snatches of themes and harmonies from Antonín Dvořák's Seventh Symphony of 1875, a work that, like augur, is the expression of a turbulent zeitgeist, echo in her music. But augur, alongside all the difficulties we face today, also foreshadows many positive evolutions. Turbulence and serenity therefore find a harmonious balance and freely unfold a lyrical world.
VASCO MENDONÇA (Portugal, 1977)
Step Right Up – Concerto for Piano & Orchestra (2018)
— The image of a pianist sitting in front of the orchestral musicians is a strange one: he shares the same space as that extraordinary human blur, but is separated by an inert black block, a kind of physical and symbolic barrier. Never exactly in the same place, it dominates the space and is threatened by it. Something similar happens with his instrument: he has a relationship with the orchestra, but there is no real intimacy – it's like a ceremonial relationship. But it's also a relationship of power: because of its sound volume, scope, agility and dynamic response, the piano is also the instrument closest to the orchestra. If the orchestra is a splendid, kaleidoscopic music box, the piano is surely the most dazzling sound machine. The word ‘machine’ is important: in the immensity of things that a piano can be, the precision and clarity of a machine is the appropriate metaphor for my instrument; a mechanism for taking in worlds as diverse as baroque ornamentation or African bell rituals. Materials that ended up defining the character of the three movements (rough and extroverted; interior and crepuscular; processional and undulating), each time seeking a different balance between piano and orchestra, an unstable dramatic relationship between almost equals.
(Vasco Mandoça, 2018)