The first half of the year was a very busy time for Santander Orchestra
Performance at the 23rd Ludwig Van Beethoven’s Easter Festival, participation in the 55. Santander Jazz on the Oder Festival with Leszek Możdżer and the music played during the event in Madrid before the UEFA Champions League – busy times for Santander Orchestra.
The opening of the concert season in 2019 was the 23rd Ludwig Van Beethoven’s Easter Festival. Santander Orchestra once again received a special invitation from Elżbieta Penderecka. Symphonic concerts conducted by Maciej Tworek took place between 4 and 9 April, 2019 in Kielce, Katowice, Warsaw ad Olsztyn, attracting the audience of 2,000 viewers. In every city, the orchestra was accompanied by a soloist, Yutong Sun, winner of a number of prestigious international awards, including the award in the 19th Paloma O’Shea Santander’s International Piano Competition. In Warsaw, there was also a special appearance from Nikolay Didenko, a Russian bass who graduated from the Moscow Academy of Choral Art, both as a singer and a conductor. His repertoire included compositions of Ludwig van Beethoven and Dmitri Shostakovich.
Santander Orchestra in a jazz style
In April, for the first time in the project history, Santander Orchestra showed a different face playing jazz music. The young musicians performed on one stage with Leszek Możdżer, Tia Fuller and Lars Danielsson during the 55th Santander Jazz on the Oder Festival for an audience of 600 people. The #Symphosphere project was a combination of very distant musical worlds. The background for the improvisations by the American saxophonist Tia Fuller and Leszek Możdżer included electronic music, orchestra music and quasi-techno sounds. The artists participating in the project guarantee top quality music experience and the tour will continue in autumn with as many as five concerts in five different cities: Warsaw, Lublin, Katowice, Szczecin and Gdańsk.
Playing with the Champions
On June 1, 2019 the UEFA Champions League final game took place at the Wanda Metropolitano stadium in Madrid Among the artists invited to play music for the guests participating in the accompanying events, Santander Orchestra was the only ensemble representing Poland.
During a 40-minute concert conducted by Adam Sztaba, Santander Orchestra performed for the first time new renditions of Hans Zimmer’s film music compositions and some popular hits, like the Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody.
The orchestra presented the same repertoire on two more occasions in Poland, on June 9 during the Kostrzyn Na Fali Festival and on June 15, at the Gdańsk University of Technology.
Only in the first half of the year, more than 5,000 people listened to the music played by Santander Orchestra live.