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Madeira Music Festival
Details of the March 2025 edition of a festival based in the North Atlantic
Madeira is an archipelago in the North Atlantic, and its capital city is Funchal. Although its nearest neighbour, Spain's Canary Islands, is about four hundred kilometres south, Madeira actually belongs to Portugal. The annual music festival, Festival Música da Madeira, began in 1959, but there have been several gaps, and next year's festival, 8-29 March 2025, will be only the thirty-eighth edition.
Programme for the 2025 Madeira Music Festival
The festival ran in 2024, but before that was a hiatus of several years. Madeira Music Festival also appears to be one of the world's few musical events not to have a website, although the poster advertising the 2025 festival gives much of the necessary information, apart from details of the music to be performed. There's more information in a short video advertising the 2025 festival.
Watch and listen — Madeira Music Festival 2025 - presentation
There are ten concerts at various venues, and although from a first glance at the poster you might think it's a chamber music festival, the opening concert is orchestral, given by Russian-born Israeli conductor and violinist Shlomo Mintz with the Orquesta Clássica da Madeira - the Madeira Classical Orchestra, based in Funchal. The festival is organised by this orchestra and its artistic director Norberto Gomes. There's also a jazz-themed closing weekend which features Mário Laginha's jazz piano recital then a latin jazz trio and orchestra.
Other highlights include the London Handel Players, the Dialectiae Piano Trio and a recital by French-Hungarian pianist Suzana Bartal, who was born in Romania.
Suzana Bartal. Photo © Jean-Baptiste Millot
The festival's many guest artists come from Argentina, Belgium, Brazil, China, Cuba, France, Hungary, Israel, Italy, Portugal, Romania, Serbia, Ukraine and the United Kingdom.
As already mentioned, the Madeira Music Festival doesn't have a website, but there is more information online about the Madeira Classical Orchestra, here: ocmadeira.pt
Posted 9 December 2024 by Keith Bramich
