The Algarve International Music Festival (FIMA) will start this Friday, March 2, in Loulé, and will take classical music to nine municipalities in the Algarve over the next three months. The event, organized by the Orquestra Clássica do Sul (OCS), will feature renowned national and international artists and will have a lot of Algarve, including a work called «Suite Al-Gharb», inspired by the region.
O kick off for the festival is given at the Cine-Teatro Louletano, at 21 pm on Friday, with the concert “Sons do Destino”, in which the Portuguese soprano Elisabete Matos will join the Orquestra Clássica do Sul. From then on until the 24th of May, OCS will roam around the region, spreading classical music.
«We are going to have 15 concerts, in several municipalities in the region. The main idea of having an Algarve music festival is to have a cultural offer that spreads throughout the region. In other words, it would be much easier to concentrate everything in one city, like Faro or Loulé, but what was intended was to create a series of concerts, with a great diversity of artists and orchestras, and take them all over the Algarve, so that there is a democratization of access to classical music here», he explained to Sul Informação Rui Pinheiro, principal conductor of the Orquestra Clássica do Sul and artistic director of FIMA.
The idea “is to have here three months of very intense activity and of the highest artistic level”, with national and international guests. “It will be a period of enrichment and an opportunity to do what we cannot do on our regular schedule, which is to bring important names and iconic artists. I think the public will really like it», said the conductor.
The program will be diversified and even give rise to collaborations with other artistic expressions. «We are going to have a partnership with the theater, in this case with the actor Diogo Infante. We are going to do a fantastic work by Stravinsky, the History of the Soldier». There will also be an incursion into the world of dance, in this case, a partnership with the Chilingirian Quartet, of traditional Armenian dances and music.
«We will also have very special concerts of a strand that we want to support, which is contemporary Portuguese music – people who are writing for us and who are writing today. We are going to present a very interesting work, which will be based on perfumes. It will have several movements, each dedicated to a specific perfume, whose fragrance will be spread throughout the room. Here there will be an appeal to the senses», he said.
This last piece will be written by Bruno Soeiro, composer invited by OCS to create some works specifically for the Algarve orchestra. «In addition to perfumes, he is re-orchestrating a very interesting work by Eurico Tomás de Lima, a little-known Portuguese composer, called “Suite Al-Gharb”. There are eight pieces written at the beginning of the XNUMXth century and each one portrays an area of the region: it speaks of Praia da Rocha, of Estoi… They are, in the end, small postcards from the region that were set to music, for the piano. This version for orchestra will be premiered at FIMA», announced Rui Pinheiro.
This is, therefore, a festival that has a lot of Algarve. “I think that's what makes sense. It could be an international festival anywhere. But, as we are in Portugal, particularly in the Algarve, we have to take advantage of this connection», believes the OCS principal conductor.
Another highlight of the program will be “the concert dedicated to Iberian music, even to make a counterpoint between what is done in Portugal and Spain, with composers such as Luís de Freitas Branco and Joaquín Rodrigo. We will also have a guitar concert with Gaëlle Solal, an absolutely fantastic guitarist».
The highlights of the 2018 edition of FIMA also go to the Doppio Ensemble, a piano and violin project by two Portuguese performers, and to the presence of the Orquestra Filarmonia das Beiras, conducted by Maestro Ernst Schelle and accompanied solo by Vladimir Tolpygo, at violin. Martin André and Peter Stark are other guest conductors, as well as violinists Francesca Dego and Pedro Meireles and cellist Paulo Gaio Lima.
This will be the 33rd edition of FIMA, but only the second since the festival was reissued. «There was a break at FIMA, which is one of the oldest festivals in the country, and the Orquestra Clássica do Sul was invited to reissue the event last year. And as we didn't want to change our name, to guarantee continuity, last year we did the 32nd edition and this year we're going to the 33rd edition. In practice, this is the 2nd of the new era», framed Rui Pinheiro.
The invitation was closely linked to the creation of “365Algarve”, a cultural and tourist entertainment program that financially supports a set of cultural offerings throughout the region, during the low tourist season.
FIMA's artistic director does not hide that the support of “365Algarve” plays a “fundamental” role for the realization of the event and that “it is the piece without which the festival could not be done”. It's the money that comes from this program that gives OCS “margin to do something special”, outside the orchestra's regular schedule.
This is, moreover, an event likely to take the name of the orchestra further, and, by association, the region. «Having this possibility to work with foreign conductors and soloists, this allows putting the orchestra's name even more on the map. Not that it wasn't, before this, because OCS has always had an international profile, even in terms of the musicians that make it up and the people we invite. But, the fact that it is a festival somewhat condensed and with a slightly higher artistic profile, I think it gives us a greater prominence», believes Rui Pinheiro.
The concerts of FIMA – Algarve International Music Festival take place in the municipalities of Albufeira, Castro Marim, Faro, Lagoa, Lagos, Loulé, São Brás de Alportel, Silves and Tavira. The complete program can be consulted here.
Tickets can be purchased on the FIMA website.
Photos: Fabiana Saboya |Sul Informação
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