Date
2/12/2025

The Symphony Orchestra of the School of Applied Arts (ESART) of the Polytechnic Institute of Castelo Branco (IPCB) returned to the Cine-Teatro Avenida auditorium on 28 November for a concert conducted by Mikel Fernandez.

After a week-long orchestral practice internship, the students of the ESART-IPCB music courses performed the four movements of Ludwig van Beethoven’s (1770-1827) ‘Symphony No. 7 in A Major, Op. 92’ and the ballet suite ‘The Firebird’ by Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971).

‘It’s a programme that requires a lot of energy, concentration and knowledge because they are very different aesthetics,’ explains the conductor of Orkest De Ereprijs (contemporary music ensemble) and assistant conductor of Sinfonia Rotterdam (professional chamber orchestra), both in the Netherlands, who studied at the Conservatory of Oviedo and Codarts University for the Arts in Rotterdam, as well as at the Atlantic Coast Orchestra Conducting Academy (Portugal) and the Royal College of Music in London.

The famous piece by the German composer, known for its vitality, orchestral brilliance and rhythmic innovation, ‘is a very festive work, with folk and dance elements,’ which raised concerns about ‘how to manage that energy.’

The equally well-known selection by the Russian composer, based on folk tales and notable for its originality, complex rhythms and orchestral colour, also required ‘grit’ given the ‘diverse palette of dynamics, colours and atmospheres, the many solos and the orchestral part written for strings, woodwinds and especially brass’.

‘It was a pleasure to work with them,’ reiterates the Basque conductor, invited for the first time to conduct the young musicians of the ESART Orchestra, to whom he sought to demonstrate ‘the articulation needed in Beethoven to make it sound purer, and the hardness in Stravinsky’. In Mikel Fernandez’s view, they ‘have a tremendous desire to learn, with the differences in level that each one has, but they want to do it as well as possible. And for a conductor, that’s fantastic’.