Spain Santander Worldwide Pageant 2025: Palacio de Festivales de Cantabria, Santander. (DF)
For seventy-four years, the Santander Worldwide Pageant has been some of the established summer time occasions in Spain. Every August, the Palacio de Festivales de Cantabria hosts a few of the world’s main orchestras and soloists in packages of outstanding selection and high quality. The next highlights from this yr’s version illustrate each the richness of the programming and the distinctive stage of efficiency.
10.8.2025 – Bruce Liu (piano), China NCPA Orchestra / Myung-Whun Chung (conductor)
Qigang Chen – 5 components
Ravel – Piano Concerto in G main
Saint-Saëns – Organ Symphony
The go to of the China NCPA Orchestra underneath Myung-Whun Chung was a luminous opening. Qigang Chen’s Wu Xing unfolded with refined writing, new textures, and oriental aromas far faraway from cliché. Chung’s readability of gesture produced exact assaults, completely blended strings, velvet-toned woodwinds, and sensible however by no means harsh brass. With Bruce Liu in Ravel’s Concerto in G, the primary motion had inside swing and jazz inflection, the second a suspended intimacy, and the finale a rhythmic outburst of managed vitality. After Chopin’s Nocturne No.20 as encore, Saint-Saëns’s Organ Symphony introduced a climax of grandeur with out grandiloquence, constructing patiently to a balanced apotheosis. A glowing Bizet encore (‘Les toreadors’ from Carmen Suite No.1) sealed a memorable night.
18.8.2025 – Sonya Yoncheva (soprano), Versailles Royal Opera Orchestra / Stefan Plewniak (conductor).
Arias, overtures and concertos by Handel and Corelli.
The recital of Sonya Yoncheva with the Versailles Royal Opera Orchestra and Stefan Plewniak was one in all extra and brilliance. Their Handel radiated luminosity, expansive and fewer angular than typical English ensembles. Yoncheva, in magnificent vocal type, displayed a timbre of uncommon richness and an expressive depth that appeared to transcend baroque confines. Her ‘Ah, mio cor!’ (Alcina) conveyed fury and despair with versatile legato, whereas Lascia ch’io pianga (Rinaldo) reached the summit of the night with transferring simplicity. The soprano’s theatrical intelligence — leaving the stage mid-aria to interact the viewers — heightened the complicity. A festive sequence of encores culminated in a dionysiac celebration of Rameau’s Air de sauvages (Les Indes galantes) that left the corridor ecstatic.
22.8.2025 – Fairly Yende (soprano), Michael Fabiano (tenor), Oviedo Filarmonía Orchestra / Pablo Mielgo (conductor).
Arias, romanzas and overtures by Verdi, Donizetti, Dvořák, Leoncavallo, Puccini, Chapí, Sorozábal and Giménez.
The lyrical gala of Fairly Yende and Michael Fabiano, supported by the Oviedo Filarmonía underneath Pablo Mielgo, confirmed the Pageant’s operatic custom. Yende’s opening scene (Siam giunti… D’amor sull’ali rosee… Tu vedrai from Il trovatore) displayed agility and allure, whereas Fabiano’s Quando le sere al placido(Luisa Miller) revealed a spinto tenor of strong centre and agency high notes, although at instances missing imaginative colouring. Highlights included Fabiano’s declamatory Vesti la giubba (Pagliacci) and Yende’s enchanting Tune to the Moon (Rusalka), delivered with suspended breath and glowing timbre. Their duets from Otello, Lucia di Lammermoor, and La bohème confirmed pure chemistry, topped by a playful zarzuela interlude and a well-liked medley from movie classics, which delighted the viewers.
24.8.2025 – Khatia Buniatishvili (piano), Melbourne Symphony Orchestra / Jaime Martín (conductor).
Margaret Sutherland – Haunted Hills
Tchaikovsky – Piano Concerto No.1
Mussorgsky – Footage at an Exhibition
The Melbourne Symphony Orchestra underneath Jaime Martín with Khatia Buniatishvili supplied a live performance ‘stuffed with surprises’. Margaret Sutherland’s Haunted Hills revealed agency traces and luminous textures, a deserved homage to Australia’s foremost feminine composer. In Tchaikovsky’s First Piano Concerto, Buniatishvili displayed torrential sound, expansive lyricism, impetuous assaults, and phrasing that made the acquainted sound new — precisely as critics have typically famous about her. Fast tempi and contemporary contrasts created an electrifying studying, adopted by a clear Bach encore. Mussorgsky’s Footage at an Exhibition in Ravel’s orchestration was carried out with fantasy and a focus to element, culminating in a monumental ‘Nice Gate of Kiev’. Two full of life encores — Glinka and Percy Grainger — confirmed the orchestra’s refinement and vitality.
28.8.2025 – Paul Lewis (piano), Tenerife Symphony Orchestra / Víctor Pablo Pérez (conductor).
Beethoven – Piano Concerto No.5
Shostakovich – Symphony No.9
The Tenerife Symphony with Víctor Pablo Pérez and pianist Paul Lewis delivered a program of Beethoven and Shostakovich. Beethoven’s ‘Emperor’ Concerto, taken at brisk tempi (20’12’’, 7’43’’, 8’20’’), emphasised martial character with marked articulation and staccato, according to Beethoven’s well-known ‘Tune of triumph for battle’ annotation. Lewis’s crystalline timbre, improvisatory phrasing, and balanced rubato supplied a deeply private Beethoven, rewarded with Schubert’s Allegretto as encore. Shostakovich’s Ninth Symphony, rigorously formed by Pérez, unfolded as a grand arc of contrasts: neoclassical brightness within the Allegro, pressure within the Moderato, a darkish Largo, and a jubilant finale. The encore, Shostakovich’s funeral march The Nice Citizen, was each coherent and overwhelming.
30.8.2025 – Isabelle Faust (violin), Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra / Andris Nelsons (conductor).
Arvo Pärt – Cantus in Memoriam Benjamin Britten
Dvořák – Violin Concerto
Sibelius – Symphony No.2
31.8.2025 – Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, Orfeón Donostiarra / Andris Nelsons (conductor).
Mendelssohn – Symphony No.5
Brahms – A German Requiem
The 2 closing appearances of the Gewandhaus Orchestra underneath Andris Nelsons supplied contrasting impressions. On August 30, regardless of the orchestra’s splendour and Isabelle Faust’s deeply natural Dvořák, Nelsons’s conducting in each Dvořák and Sibelius felt exact but quick on inspiration, leaving a way of lacking soul. A day later, nonetheless, the Mendelssohn ‘Reformation’ Symphony and above all Brahms’s German Requiem, with soprano Julia Kleiter, baritone Christian Gerhaher, and the Orfeón Donostiarra, introduced redemption: readability, emotional density, and a dramatic arc of true catharsis.
In whole, this yr’s Santander Worldwide Pageant offered fifty occasions, amongst them a recital by Sir András Schiff and a live performance by the Hallé Orchestra of Manchester underneath Kahchun Wong that includes Falla’s Ritual Hearth Dance, Stravinsky’s Firebird Suite, and Mahler’s First Symphony. Because the Pageant approaches its seventy fifth anniversary in 2026, expectations are operating excessive for a celebratory version that guarantees to be much more outstanding.
Darío Fernández
Featured Picture: Sonya Yoncheva and the Versailles Royal Opera Orchestra © Pedro Puente/FIS
For extra concerning the Santander Worldwide Pageant click on right here.
