Popular music makes it possible to immediately identify a culture. It is born and flourishes in the vicissitudes of life: celebrations, sorrows… and also in everyone’s encounter with themselves. It’s no wonder that many composers who follow the written musical tradition – which tends to be more formal and reflective – have always appropriated it, either as a source of inspiration or as a starting point for different flights. This is what Béla Bartók and György Ligeti did, evoking their origins in territories that today make up Romania. So did Luciano Berio, in songs that take us to regions scattered around the globe. Vasco Mendonça gives voice to words that cross the Atlantic in poems by Tracy K. Smith and Terrance Hayes.
Folk
Lisbon Metropolitan Orchestra
Vasco Mendonça American Settings, version for contralto and orchestra
G. Ligeti Romanian Concerto
L. Berio Folk Songs
B. Bartók Romanian Dances
Cátia Moreso mezzo-soprano
Conductor to be announced
Photo: Cátia Moreso@ António Ignês
