Desvendando um Norte Erudito · Cicle II · 1st Concert

The first concert of the second cycle of Desvendando um Norte Erudito took place on 24 April 2022 at the Museu do Côa in Vila Nova de Foz Côa — one of Portugal’s most singular museum spaces, built around the archaeological site of the Côa Valley and its extraordinary collection of Palaeolithic rock art. The relationship between the space and the programme was not accidental: like the art of the Côa, the repertoire chosen explores the human capacity to condense meaning into a refined and essential language.

The programme opened with Haydn’s Quartet Op. 76 No. 2 “The Fifths”, one of the most expressive and harmonically daring works of the composer’s late output. This was followed by the world premiere of Hesitações de Murmúrios, a work for string quartet commissioned by the Quarteto Euterpe from Portuguese composer Ema Ferreira specifically for this project. The concert closed with Joly Braga Santos’s Quartet No. 1 Op. 4 — a work that asserts with confidence the voice of one of the most significant Portuguese composers of the twentieth century, rarely present in the country’s chamber music venues.