Gulbenkian dedicates cycle to Pierre Boulez at the opening of the music season

These concerts are scheduled for next week, on the 8th, 12th and 13th, and, according to Gulbenkian, "they highlight the diversity and depth of the work of the French composer", who was born in March 1925, in Montbrison, and died at the age of 90, in January 2016, in Paris.

At the opening recital on Monday, pianist Tamara Stefanovich will lead the way with Boulez's Sonata No. 2, confronting pioneering expressions from different eras.

The 2nd Piano Sonata, "a work of great expressive force", according to Gulbenkian, will culminate a journey that begins in the late Baroque of Domenico Scarlatti, continues with the pre-classicism of Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach and Antonio Soler, the post-romantic counterpoint of Ferruccio Busoni, and flows into the modernity of Béla Bartók, preceding the contemporaneity of Boulez.

On Friday, September 12, the Gulbenkian Orchestra, under the direction of conductor and composer Pedro Amaral, the new artistic director of the Teatro Nacional de São Carlos, will perform "Pli selon Pli," based on poems by Stéphane Mallarmé, a work for soprano and orchestra, "one of Pierre Boulez's most emblematic creations," emphasizes the Gulbenkian Orchestra. The soloist will be soprano Camila Mandillo.

The 'Boulez Cycle' ends next Saturday, September 13, with the return of the Ensemble Intercontemporain, to the Gulbenkian Grand Auditorium.

Founded by Boulez himself, the ensemble, led by maestro Jean Deroyer, will present a program centered on "Le Marteau sans Maître," for contralto and six instruments, which reaffirms "the relevance and timeliness of the composer's language." It also includes "Incises," for piano, "Sonatine," for flute and piano, and "Dialogue de l'ombre double," for solo clarinet and electronics.

"A major figure in contemporary music, Boulez distinguished himself with his writing of enormous structural rigor and poetic imagination, having also played a fundamental role in the dissemination of the great composers of our time," reads the Gulbenkian program notes.

The foundation also remembers conductor Boulez, who directed "some of the most prestigious international orchestras", and the "founder of reference institutions", such as the Institut de Recherche et Coordination Acoustique/Musique (IRCAM) and the Ensemble Intercontemporain.

The first performance of the Gulbenkian Choir and Orchestra, in the 2025/2026 season, takes place today, outdoors, with the now traditional concert in Vale do Silêncio, in Lisbon, integrated into the city's Street Festivals.

The direction is by maestro Pedro Neves, head of the Metropolitan Orchestra, in a program "designed for a varied audience", with "great musical moments from cinema" and "major works" by composers such as Aaron Copland, John Williams, Ethel Smyth, Richard Wagner, Dmitri Shostakovich, Dmitri Kabalevsky and Giuseppe Verdi.

Until May next year, the season includes more than 120 concerts.

Beethoven, Mahler, Brahms, Schumann, Shostakovich, Alban Berg, Hans Werner Henze and Magnus Lindberg are some of the composers featured in the different programs.

Among the "great performers" are pianists Grigory Sokolov, András Schiff and Elisabeth Leonskaja, Mitsuko Uchida, Christian Zacharias and Alexander Melnikov, violinist Isabelle Faust, conductor Jordi Savall, the ensemble Il Pomo d'Oro, the quartets Belcea and Casals.

This is the last Gulbenkian Music Season under the artistic direction of musicologist Risto Nieminen, who is retiring after 16 years as head of the foundation's Music Service. On April 1, 2026, the leadership will be handed over to musician Fredrik Andersson, former director of the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra.

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