Sérgio Azevedo is today the most representative Portuguese composer in terms of musical repertoire dedicated to children. He could not, therefore, be missing in Estórias com Música da Metropolitana. Romance do Grande Gatão is an orchestral work composed in 2011 and based on an adaptation of a text by the writer Lídia Jorge, which tells the story of a cat divided between the affection of two families, one African and the other Portuguese. Amusingly exploring this tension, the score entrusts the clarinet to represent the contradictory spirit of the main character. In this program, cellist Ana Cláudia Serrão will also tell us another story, Fernando Pérez Hernando’s The Red Staircase, this one about an eccentric bird that meets a rabbit capable of indicating simple solutions to life’s problems. At the beginning of the concert, conductor Diogo Costa conducts Haydn’s symphony that we know by the name Tempora mutantur. “Time changes, and we change with it,” so wrote the composer in the manuscript.

The Great Pussycat
Lisbon Metropolitan Orchestra

Joseph Haydn Symphony No. 64, Tempora mutantur
The Red Staircase / story by Fernando Pérez Hernando
Sérgio Azevedo Romance of the Great Pussycat

Ana Cláudia Serrão narrator
Diogo Costa conductor