Ciclo György Kurtág and Betsy Jolas at Gulbenkian Foundation

Tonight’s performance at the Grande Auditório of the Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian in Lisbon opened magnificently with the Orquestra Gulbenkian, conducted with exceptional precision and poetic flair by Corinna Niemeyer. The concert began with Betsy Jolas’s A Little Summer Suite (2015). Across its seven short movements—from "Strolling Away" to "Strolling Home"—Jolas explores what she terms "wandering music" (música errante): airy, unhurried gestures that drift and land with effortless spontaneity. It served as a perfect prelude to Claude Debussy’s Nocturnes (Nuages and Fêtes). Debussy, the quintessential guiding axis of modern music, sounded wonderfully lucid here. Niemeyer kept the textures in Nuages completely fluid and vaporous, while Fêtes retained all its rhythmic brilliance without ever falling into heavy-handedness or romantic rhetoric. 

The centerpiece of this sequence was György Kurtág’s Four Poems of Anna Akhmatova, Op. 41 (1997–2008), featuring soprano Hila Baggio. These miniature settings (paying homage to Pushkin, Blok, and Mandelstam) are concentrated, haunting requiems charged with intense interior grief. Baggio gave an extraordinary performance, delivering Akhmatova's verses with chilling accuracy, emotional poise, and remarkable vocal control. A compelling sequence linking French spatial subtlety and Hungarian expressionism. Although I was only able to attend this first part, it was a marvelous experience; I was thoroughly impressed by the hall's acoustics and beauty, as well as the outstanding level of the orchestra.

Source: Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation concert program.