Temporada Darcos
Innovate the present, write the future
The beginning of the history of Darcos took place in 2002, with the first concerts of the Ensemble Darcos in Portugal. Since its inception, ensemble Darcos has taken on a transformative role in Portuguese chamber music, inviting international musicians to its formation and expanding it to the most varied formats, standing out for its authorial profile with artistic direction of Nuno Côrte-Real.
The ensemble’s artistic capacity for artistic malleability, whose base training includes musicians Filipe Quaresma, Paula Carneiro, Reyes Gallardo, Gaël Rassaert, Pedro Wallenstein and Helder Marques, made sense to add a musical programming line that would complement it, guided with the same objective: to boost, enrich and diversify the musical Portuguese. In this sense, the 1st edition of the Darcos Season began in 2008, founded by Côrte-Real. As the Ensemble expanded its national and international activity, so did the Darcos Season, it would quickly assert itself as one of the country’s most prestigious music programming agents.
For the past 14 years, The Darcos Season has offered the public a diverse schedule, regularly programming in its agenda acclaimed musicians and soloists (António Rosado, Artur Pizarro, Filipe Pinto-Ribeiro, Mats Lidström, Massimo Spadano, Giulio Plotino, Junko Naito, David van Dijk, Ana Bela Chaves, Johannes Lörstad, Miquel Bernat, Adriano Jordão, Giulio Rovighi, Gabor Szabo, Phillippa Mo, Xuan Du, George Hlawizcka, Laura Saucedo , Guillaume Grosbard, Jadenir Lacorte, Risto Vuolanne, among many others); orchestras (Mahler Chamber Orchestra, Orchestra Sinfonica Giuseppe Verdi (Milan), Symphony Orchestra Of The Principality of Asturias (Oviedo), Huberman Phillarmonic, Festival of Extremadura (Badajoz), Orquesta Symphony of Castilla y León (Valladolid), Orquesta Ciudad de Granada, Real Filharmonía de Galicia (Santiago de Compostela), Camerata du Rhône (Lyon), Portuguese Symphony Orchestra, Lisbon Metropolitan Orchestra, Northern Orchestra, Algarve Orchestra, Filarmonia das Beiras Orchestra , Cascais and Oeiras Chamber Orchestra, Orchestrutopica, Metropolitan Academic Orchestra, Yogistragong Indonesian Gamelão), choirs (Choir of the National Theatre of São Carlos, Coro Ricercare, Chamber Choir and Lisbon Cantat Symphony), as well as singers in their lyric programs (Nicola Ulivieri, Elisabete Matos, Cátia Moreso, Ana Quintans, Eduarda Melo, Luís Rodrigues, Dora Rodrigues, João Rodrigues, Sara Braga Simões, Bárbara Barradas, Ana Paula Russo , Lara Martins, Marco Alves dos Santos, Job Tomé, André Lacerda, Inês Simões, André Henriques, among others).
In the scenic productions stand out collaborations with actors (Paulo Pires, João Grosso, Maria Emília Correia, Catarina Rôlo Salgueiro), directors (Ricardo Neves-Neves, João Garcia Miguel, João Botelho, Carlos Antunes, João Henriques, Mário João Alves), and writers (José Luís Peixoto, Pedro Mexia, Vasco Graça Moura, José Maria Viera Mendes, Martha Asunción Alonso). From these collaborations emerged original hits such as Agora Muda Tudo and A Canção do Bandido, both awarded as Best Work of Classical Music by the Portuguese Society of Authors in the years 2018 and 2019, respectively.
Throughout its years of activity, The Darcos Season had the privilege of ordering several works to the most prestigious and promising Portuguese composers (Eurico Carrapatoso, Carlos Caires, Sérgio Azevedo, José Eduardo Rocha, António Vitorino d’Almeida, João Madureira, Daniel Davis, Sara Ross, João Ceitil, Diogo da Costa Ferreira, Bernardo Beirão, André Lisboa), as well as interpreting works already written by portuguese national creation (Luís Tinoco , António Pinho Vargas, Fernando Lapa, Carlos Marecos).
The Darcos Season is funded by the Municipality of Torres Vedras, the Lisbon City Council and DGArtes, among many other public and private partners. One of the institutional partners is RTP – Antena 2, which regularly records and broadcasts a substantial part of the Ensemble and Darcos Season concerts. This archive highlights the recording for television, in January 2010, of songs by Cole Porter with arrangements by Nuno Côrte-Real. This project was starring Sonia Alcobaça and Rui Baeta in partnership with Camerata du Rhône, and took the group to Lyon, France.
The educational service of the Season has been conducting a series of masterclasses with renowned national and international musicians (Elizabete Matos, Mats Lidström, Massimo Spadano), as well as family programming, with the regular Workshop for Kids and Graúdos, where the initiation to musical practice is addressed, and the project Lagarto Pintado, children’s songbook where the most famous songs of the musical imaginary Portuguese are revisited. Like this last project, we highlight the recording of the album Cante, with the Ricercare Choir, where we listened to new readings of the traditional Portuguese galician repertoire. This project was developed in partnership with Casa de Cante de Serpa and Maria Rita Ortigão Pinto Cortez.
In the disco field, Volúpia was the first album of the group, entirely dedicated to the chamber work of Nuno Côrte-Real, released in October 2012 by Numeric. This was followed by Mirror of the Soul (Odradek 2016), Lizard Painted (Artway 2019), Agora Muda Tudo (Odradek 2019), Sing (Odradek 2020), and more recently Time Stands Still, edited by Artway in 2020. In 2021 we await the release of Hukvaldy Cycle by NAXOS, where we find the musical universe of Leoš Janáček revisited by Sérgio Azevedo, and Florbela Porter, a transatlantic cross between music by Cole Porter and poems by Florbela Espanca music by Nuno Côrte-Real.
In addition to its internationalization program, the Darcos Season’s mission is to value musicians and music in Portugal. In addition to the above mentioned, musicians such as José Pereira, Ana Madalena Ribeiro, Ana Pereira, Nuno Inácio, David Costa, Fausto Corneo, Raquel Cravino, Emanuel Salvador, Paulo Gaio Lima, Elizabeth Davis, Marco Fernandes, Marco Pereira, Raquel Massadas, Nuno Abreu, Duncan Fox, Teresa Valente Pereira, Lídio Correia, Ettiene Lamaison, Sandro Andrade, Marcos Magalhães, Andreia Marques, Jean-Marc Burfin, Paulo Lourenço, Nicolay Lalov , Pedro Teixeira, Jorge Alves, Júlio Guerreiro, Paulo Carmo, Nuno Pinto, Nuno Silva, Luís Gomes, André Conde, Reinaldo Guerreiro, Elmano Pereira, Nuno Sá, João Paulo Santos, Joana Gama, Elsa Silva, Mariana Godinho, Maria Luísa Freitas, Mário João Alves, Elsa Cortez, Armando Possante, João Rodrigues, Jorge Martins, Inês Simões, Patrícia Quinta, André Henriques, Inês Madeira, Paulina Sá Machado, Sérgio Charrinho, among others.