Desvendando um Norte Erudito · Cicle III · 1st Concert

The first concert of the third and final cycle of Desvendando um Norte Erudito took place on 26 May 2022 at the Casa do Vinho in Valpaços — a space dedicated to the wine culture of the Northeastern Transmontana region, a landscape of strong character and deep-rooted identity that directly informed the choice of programme.

The concert opened with Bedřich Smetana’s Quartet No. 1, a profoundly autobiographical work the composer dedicated to his own life — tracing a journey through the joy of youth, love and personal tragedy, culminating in the tinnitus that preceded his deafness. This was followed by the world premiere of Vira, a work for string quartet commissioned by the Quarteto Euterpe from Portuguese composer Sara Marita specifically for this project — a work that engages with the Portuguese popular musical tradition through a contemporary language. The concert closed with Heitor Villa-Lobos’s Quartet No. 1, a youthful work by the Brazilian composer that combines influences from the European tradition with elements of Brazilian popular music, asserting an original and unmistakable voice.

The three programmes of the third cycle shared a characteristic that set them apart from the previous cycles: the choice of works rooted in specific national musical identities — Czech, Portuguese and Brazilian — presented in a region of northern Portugal that rarely hosts this kind of cultural dialogue.