The 34th Ciudad de Ubeda’ International Music and Dance Festival will be a memorable one. A performance by the RTVE Orchestra under Nuno Coelho’s baton will conclude the festival. It will feature the ‘Symphony no 33 in Si Mozart’s flat major K319’ and Gustav Mahler’s ‘Symphony no 1 (Titan). The closing concert will wrap up eight weeks of music. It will also be recorded by RTVE and broadcast on ‘The concerts at La 2′ or Radio Clasica. It will take place in the Hospital de Santiago’s courtyard starting at ten o’clock at night.
After staging memorable concerts at previous festivals, the orchestra of the public entity will be returning to the city of hills. Last year’s edition featured cantaora Marina Heredia as well as guitarist Juan Manuel Canizares. The recital will be recorded for broadcast internationally and nationally. This is a long-held dream. It is true that the plan was not completed as planned when it was first attempted in 2018. The plans were waterlogged by a storm which unloaded the equipment just as it was being started.
The recital will open with Symphony number 33 by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791). It was written in 1779 and does not contain clarinets, as the Salzburg orchestra was smaller and didn’t have them. It is divided into four movements, namely ‘Allegro andante moderato, ‘Andante modrato, ’Menuetto, and ’Allegro ansai’. This symphony, in its original form, was composed in three movements. The ‘Minuetto” was added to Vienna three years later.
After Mozart, it’s Gustav Mahler (1896-1911), post-romantic composer/conductor and his “Symphony number 1” (Titan). It was written by him in 1884, but he did not complete it until 1888. The author conducted the premiere in 1889. It bore the title of an symphonic poem, which was in the form a symphony, to confirm that it was a programmatic, programmatic symphony. It can be divided into four movements: “Spring and Endless”, “Full Sail”, “Shipwreck”, which is a Callot-like funeral march, and “From Hell to Paradise”.
Nuno Coelho will lead the orchestra. He has been a conductor of some of the most distinguished ensembles and also participated in major stage projects. He was born in 1989 and studied violin in Klagenfurt, Brussels, before he began conducting at the Zurich School of the Arts, where he worked with Johannes Schlaefli. He was awarded the Radio Portugal Contest’s first prize and was a finalist at the Nestle Festival Young Conductors Contest as well as the Salzburg Young Conductors Contest. He was awarded a scholarship by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation in 2014, and was admitted to Dirigentenforum at the German Music Council in 2015. This council named him one the ‘Conductors Of Tomorrow’. He was also the Cadaques International Orchestral Conducting Competition winner in 2017.
After a year and a half of developing a program that included almost thirty concerts and other activities, the 34th “Ciudad de Ubeda” International Music and Dance Festival will be ending. It featured outstanding classical soloists like Joaquin Achucarro and Olga Peretyatko; prestigious orchestral formations such as Spanish Radio Television Orchestra, City of Granada Orchestra or the Accademia byzantina; well-known artists of other musical styles such as Estrella Morente, Tomatito, Marcat Dance, which is the artistic home of multi-award-winning Jaen choreographer Mario Bermudez Gil.
This project was started 34 years ago by the Ubeda Friends of Music Cultural Association. It is a non-profit organization that draws on the energy and drive of citizens and has been supported by both the private and public sectors. It is a success because it has the support and cooperation of many administrations, entities, and companies that each year make the cycle possible. Its governing institutions, along with Amigos de la Musica are the City Council of Ubeda and the Provincial Council of Jaen. They also include the National Institute of Performing Arts and Music of Spain, the Junta de Andalucia.
