16 JUNE to 10 JULY 2022
Almada, Portugal
Artistic Director: Filipe Pinto-Ribeiro

Capuchos Festival 2022

Welcome to the 2022 edition of the Capuchos Music Festival!

After a silence of two decades, the Capuchos Music Festival “was reborn” in 2021, with renewed vigor and artistic excellence, in a return praised nationally and internationally. The festival reclaimed its place as a cultural landmark and reconnected with its enthusiastic audience, which, despite the restrictions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, sold out most of the concerts. Artists of the highest caliber, such as Alfred Brendel, Hopkinson Smith, Sergei Nakariakov, Viviane Hagner, and Alexander Kantorow, among many others, graced the 2021 edition, setting a tone of excellence for a future of new challenges, (re)discoveries, and wonders.

The festival opens—and closes—with one of the most mythical and iconic works of Western music: Bach’s Goldberg Variations. A work of absolute beauty and complexity, described by some as “a Rubik’s cube of invention and architecture,” the Goldberg Variations will be performed throughout the festival in three moments and three versions—harpsichord, piano, and string trio—forming the Prelude, Interlude, and Postlude of the Festival. Circular music, without beginning or end… the Goldberg Variations are a supreme artistic manifestation of continuity, eternity, and universality.

The 2022 Capuchos program is also filled with monographic concerts, offering journeys through diverse creative facets and (re)discoveries of works by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Ludwig van Beethoven, Franz Schubert, and Fernando Lopes-Graça.

As a prelude to the festival’s musical journeys, the Capuchos Conversations series in 2022 is dedicated to three important literary anniversaries: the 450th anniversary of the publication of Os Lusíadas by Luís Vaz de Camões, followed by a concert evoking Camões’ “sonic vision,” his era, travels, and environments; and the centenaries of the birth of Agustina Bessa-Luís and the death of Marcel Proust, with a subsequent concert exploring French chamber music “accompanied” by the great music-lover Proust.

Several top-tier international ensembles and musicians participate in the 2022 edition. Highlights include the Vienna Chamber Orchestra, considered one of the world’s leading chamber orchestras, and distinguished artists such as harpsichordist Pierre Hantaï, violist Gérard Caussé (returning to Capuchos after more than 30 years), pianist Konstantin Lifschitz, and Argentine bandoneonist Héctor Del Curto, now based in New York, among others.

The festival also spotlights some of today’s most sought-after young musicians, winners of major international competitions, including Ukrainian violinist Diana Tishchenko (Grand Prix Jacques Thibaud, Long-Thibaud-Crespin International Competition, Paris 2018), Russian pianist Anna Tsybuleva (First Prize, Leeds International Piano Competition, 2015), and French cellist and conductor Victor Julien-Laferrière (winner of the prestigious Queen Elisabeth Competition, Brussels, 2017), in the festival’s first edition dedicated to the cello.

Nationally, we proudly highlight the participation of the Orquestra Gulbenkian, DSCH – Schostakovich Ensemble, Sete Lágrimas, and the Mirandese traditional music group Galandum Galundaina, which will perform a concert dedicated to the music of Terras de Miranda/Northeast Trás-os-Montes, showcasing the festival’s embrace of diverse musical genres, including a concert focused on tango, particularly the music of Astor Piazzolla.

Finally, a moment of gratitude and tribute is dedicated to António Wagner Diniz, co-founder of the Capuchos Festival, together with the late José Adelino Tacanho, who admirably continued and directed this adventure started in the early 1980s. This tribute takes the form of a “Carte Blanche” concert for António Wagner Diniz, featuring a selection of young, talented singers, his disciples, in a performance designed to fulfill two rituals: the passing of the torch and a farewell.
Returning to Bach and the Goldberg Variations, music without beginning or end, a genius testament to infinite continuity…

A heartfelt thanks to all who make the Capuchos Music Festival possible, with special acknowledgment to the Almada City Council, promoter of this commendable initiative, and the festival’s main patron, BPI/Fundação “la Caixa”, celebrating life united through Music!

Filipe Pinto-Ribeiro
Capuchos Festival Artistic Director