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Princess of Asturias Awards 10/13/2017

TM the King and Queen of Spain to preside over the twenty-sixth Princess of Asturias Awards Concert

Next Thursday, 19th October, at 7:30pm in the Prince Felipe Auditorium in Oviedo

The Foundation will make 1,000 tickets available for the final rehearsal on the 18th, which will be open to the public 

©FPA

TM The King and Queen of Spain are to preside over the 26th Princess of Asturias Awards Concert, organized by the Princess of Asturias Foundation. The concert will be held at 7:30pm on Thursday, 19th October, in the Prince Felipe Auditorium in Oviedo.

The Princess of Asturias Foundation Choir will perform Ivan the Terrible, op.116 by Serguéi Prokófiev alongside the Principality of Asturias Symphony Orchestra (OSPA) under the baton of Miquel Ortega and with the participation of soloists María Luisa Corbacho (mezzo-soprano) and Alfredo García (baritone), with Jorge Moreno as narrator.

Final rehearsal for the 26th Princess of Asturias Awards Concert

The final rehearsal, which will be open to the public, will take place at 8:30pm on Wednesday, 18th October. Tickets to attend the rehearsal will be available from the Prince Felipe Auditorium box offices from 14th October onwards, from 10:00am to 2:00pm and 4:00pm to 7:00pm. The Foundation will make 1,000 seats available for those interested in attending the rehearsal. A maximum of two tickets will be made available per person.

Miquel Ortega
Born in Barcelona in 1963, Miquel Ortega made his debut as a conductor in 1990. He was assistant conductor of the choir at the Gran Teatro del Liceu in Barcelona from 1980 to 1989, concertmaster of the opera season at the Teatro de la Zarzuela from 1990 to 1993, principal conductor of the Pablo Sarasate Orchestra, Pamplona (now the Navarre Symphony Orchestra) from 1994 to 1995 and principal guest conductor at the Théâtre Français de la Musique (Théâtre Impérial de Compiègne) from 2002 to 2006. His experience as a répétiteur –responsible for correcting the tuning and diction of singers, reviewing the piano part of the music that corresponds to each one and organizing all the voices before the performance– has made him one of the leading experts in lyrical theatre in Spain. He was nominated for the MAX Awards in 1997 for his conducting of Leonard Bernstein’s West Side Story. He is a member of the French music reference and support committee in recognition for his work in recovering classical and contemporary titles at the aforementioned Théâtre Imperial de Compiègne. Singers such as Montserrat Caballé, José Carreras, Jaume Aragall and Carlos Álvarez have asked for him to conduct their recitals and recordings.

His work as a composer is being increasingly interpreted, while he himself conducted the premiere of his opera The House of Bernarda Alba in Brasov (Romania) in 2007 and at the festivals held in Santander and Perelada in 2009. In 2010, he premiered his ballet Bestiario, commissioned by the Teatro Real, and later his new opera El Guardián de los Cuentos, with libretto by Andrés Martorell, commissioned by the Navarre Chamber Opera. In June, the Cordoba Symphony Orchestra premiered his work Suite de danzas iberoamericanas, under the baton of Lorenzo Ramos, while the National Theatre of Catalonia is to premiere his chamber opera Después de mí, el diluvio [After Me, the Flood], conducted by Ortega himself, in October. He has conducted at the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires, the Lindbury Studio at Covent Garden, London, the Capitole in Toulouse, the Liceu in Barcelona, the Cité de la Musique, Paris, the Teatro Real and Teatro de la Zarzuela in Madrid, the Kennedy Center, Washington, the Teatro São Carlos in Lisbon, the Edinburgh Festival and the Lausanne Opera, among other venues. He is currently Principal Guest Conductor of the Cordoba Symphony Orchestra.

Principality of Asturias Symphony Orchestra (OSPA)
The OSPA came into being in 1991 under the auspices of the Principality of Asturias Regional Government with the primary aim of enriching the region both musically and culturally. His Majesty King Felipe VI is its Honorary President. It is an independent body belonging to the Ministry of Education and Culture and member of the Spanish Association of Symphony Orchestras (AEOS). The OSPA is a reference orchestra both within and outside of Asturias for its versatility, interpretative competence and unquestionable quality. It is made up of sixty-nine professional musicians from various countries of the European Union, Russia, the United States and Latin America and its main activity revolves around the seasons of concerts it offers each year in Oviedo, Gijón and Avilés. The orchestra also carries out intense educational and social work in Asturias, expanding its horizons every year and receiving great acclaim in all the places where it performs.

Outside the Principality, the orchestra has performed in the leading auditoriums and concert halls throughout Spain. It has likewise collaborated with the Bilbao Association of Friends of the Opera and in summer events as important as the Santander Festival, the Festival of Music and Dance in Granada, and the Festival of Contemporary Music in Alicante, as well as in the Religious Music Week in Cuenca and the Musika-Música Festival in Bilbao, where it is regularly invited to play. Standing out among its international tours is the one it made to Chile and Mexico in 1996, where it was to return two years later, and its participation in the Lorient Interceltic Festival in France in 1998. In addition, the orchestra gave a concert in November 2011 before His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI, at the Nervi Hall in the Vatican, under the patronage of the María Cristina Masaveu Peterson Foundation, being the first publicly owned Spanish symphony orchestra to perform in this hall.

Princess of Asturias Foundation Choir
Founded in 1983 and conducted by José Esteban G. Miranda, the Choir is considered one of Europe’s major amateur ensembles and has achieved considerable international prestige. Jesús López Cobos, 1981 Prince of Asturias Award for the Arts, has been the honorary conductor of the Foundation’s three choirs since their creation, a position he currently shares with Krzysztof Penderecki, who received the same award in 2001. In December 2007, the European Parliament distinguished the Choir with an extraordinary acknowledgement “for its outstanding services to the European Union”. Greatly applauded, it has toured Europe and the Middle East and has held concerts in Russia alongside the Saint Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra and the Moscow Virtuosi. One of its most noteworthy performances took place at London’s Queen Elizabeth Hall in 1993 alongside the English Chamber Orchestra. It first visited the United States in 2001, being described by the Washington Post’s music critic as “magnificent”. In 2002, the Foundation represented Spain at the Vatican on the occasion of the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, offering three concerts in Rome. The Choir gave two historic concerts in New York in October 2003 marking Columbus Day, one in St Patrick’s Cathedral and the other at the Lincoln Center. In 2004, it was invited to participate at the marriage of TRH The Prince and Princess of Asturias, performing during the traditional offering of the bride’s bouquet to the Virgin in the Royal Basilica of Our Lady of Atocha. It has also given concerts in São Paulo (Brazil), Nafplion (Greece), Lisbon and Belém (Portugal), in Mexico City and at the European Parliament in Brussels. In October 2011, the Choir performed Cherubini’s Requiem in C minor alongside the Luigi Cherubini Youth Orchestra under the baton of Neapolitan Maestro Riccardo Muti, 2011 Prince of Asturias Award for the Arts. Since its inception, the Princess of Asturias Foundation Choir has been led by outstanding conductors such as Marcus Creed, Friedrich Haider, Arturo Tamayo, Peter Maag, John Neschling, Yuri Bashmet, Alberto Zedda, Paul Mann, Jesús López Cobos, Krzysztof Penderecki, Gustavo Dudamel, Sir Neville Marriner, Marzio Conti and Jonathan Webb. It has also collaborated with the Symphony Orchestra of the State of São Paulo, the Vienna Sinfonietta Classical Orchestra, the Simon Bolivar Symphony Orchestra, belonging to the National Network of Youth and Children’s Orchestras of Venezuela (2008 Prince of Asturias Award for the Arts), and the National Autonomous University of Mexico Philharmonic Orchestra (OFUNAM), among others.

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