From Baroque to Fado

When one puts it all together in the same sentence, it looks like a recipe for disaster: Portuguese baroque music, traditional fado and Portuguese guitar pieces, an opera singer, a fadista and a chamber music ensemble. The supervisor of this project, Marcos Magalhães, is the director of Músicos do Tejo; in a miraculous stunt, he has pulled it off without sounding like a madman intent on having his own troubled way.

Premiered in the Helsinki Music Centre and recorded in 2016 at the Gulbenkian Foundation in Lisbon, the suite of 20 pieces sets performers the hard task of transitioning from 18th-century written music to 20th-century traditional fado songs (albeit with exquisite arrangements). Magalhães has also added to the mix a Bach cantata; the composition ‘Soneto de Amor’, which Rabih Abou-Khalil wrote for his record with Ricardo Ribeiro that feeds on Arab-Andalus influences; and ‘Luz de Outono’, a contemporary Portuguese guitar piece by Miguel Amaral that would not sound unwelcome in a programme of Stravinsky's music.

A surprising, intelligent, provocative and rewarding musical experience; we’re lucky that there are musicians out there showing this sort of disregard for boundaries and prohibitions.