Orquestra Sinfónica do Porto Casa da Música . Christoph König

The Orquestra Sinfónica do Porto Casa da Música is at home in a broad range of styles - from jazz to classical, from fado to film music. The modern repertoire, too, can be regularly found on the Portuguese music stands, as seen in this concert's two works by Iannis Xenakis, the Greek avant-garde composer, the tenth anniversary of whose death is being celebrated this year. Xenakis' tone language is said to be rough and unpolished. For 'Ata' (1987), he developed a robust sound landscape with giant shafts of sound that burst forth from the depths of the orchestra with deafening tutti blows. In the later 'Mosaïques' (1993), using quotations from his own orchestral works, he draws abstract patterns within a sound palette of noise and resonance. Beethoven's only opera, 'Fidelio', was originally to be called 'Leonore', after the heroic woman who rescued her consort from the Paris Bastille. The composer wrote no less than four versions of the overture, the third of which grew to monumental proportions. No less monumental is Beethoven's Fourth Piano Concerto. The young French pianist Lise de la Salle (b. 1988) justifies the label the international press gave her as a piano wonder.