Date
4/12/2025

At the invitation of the Portuguese Academic Philharmonic Orchestra, Inês Cordeiro and Laura Pereira, master’s students in Music Education at the School of Applied Arts (ESART) of the Polytechnic Institute of Castelo Branco, in the violin class of professors Augusto Trindade, Alexandra Trindade, Nuno Vasconcelos and Tiago Santos, took part in an international programme with the Bergen Philharmonic Youth Orchestra in Norway.

The orchestra academy rehearsals took place between 7 and 13 November, culminating in a concert at Grieghallen, concert hall in the historic coastal city. The programme’s repertoire, which marked the tenth anniversary of the ensemble with over a hundred musicians aged between 15 and 25, included Felix Mendelssohn’s Concerto for Violin and Orchestra in E minor, Op. 64, performed by soloist Brage Sæbø, and Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 1, conducted by Tomáš Netopil of the Prague Symphony Orchestra.

The collaboration between the Portuguese and Norwegian orchestras, which has enabled several Portuguese musicians to join the Nordic ensemble, is part of the Young Musicians Empowerment Programme, which promotes artistic and educational exchange between Creative Europe countries through workshops and mentoring programmes. The initiative is supported by the European Economic Area’s financial mechanism, EEA Grants (Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway), through the project ‘Sustainable Orchestras in Europe’.