The programme offered by Casulana Quintet is a tribute to the model career path of both creators, whose compositions can seldom be enjoyed in concert halls. Therefore, we are talking about a symbol of struggle against the traditional marginalization of women in the field of creativity and knowledge rather than about a usual concert. This year, Casulana will play a new programme with a first part where the three movements of the Piano Quintet Op. 67 by Amy Beach will be played. Amy Beach (1867-1944) was an American masterful pianist who can be considered as the first composer of world renown. Amy Beach premiered as piano player when she was 16 years old, but his husband —a doctor twenty-four years his senior and a music connoisseur — encouraged her to compose their own pieces. However, he did not allowed her to have a teacher which forced her to self-teaching. Influenced by the Czech composer Dvórak and European musical nationalism, Beach contributed to develop a classic musical language specifically American and she was promoted by suffragettes as the obvious evidence that women’s artistic creativity had no limitations. Beach herself contributed to this claim with her writings, speeches and statements where she defended women’s artistic abilities on equal terms with men’s.

In the second part of the concert will consist of the performance of the four movements of Gracyna Bacewicz’s (1909-1969) Piano Quintet No. 1. Bacewicz was a Polish pianist, violinist and composer awarded with many international prizes for her works. She also was a concertmaster in the Symphonic Orchestra of Poland Radio until 1938, it was after the Second World War when she focused in musical composition. Starting in her outset with the neoclassical style - characterized by expressive clarity and shortness – she ended up approaching to the experimental avant-gardes of the 1960s without losing at any time her musical personality: if there is something which makes her work unique and special, it is, doubtlessly, the incorporation of folkloric elements (songs, tunes, dances, etc.).

This programme will be performed by Casulana Quintet composed of Esther Vidal (violin), Sabrina Paccuci (violin), Pilar Parreño (viola), Cristina Aguilera (violoncello) and Renata Casero (piano). Five women with extraordinary professional records in the music world, trained by experts such as Imre Rohman, István Gulyás and Ryka Golani. Five women whose main goal, since the birth of their group in 2005, has been to recover the music written by women composers and make it known for the general public. The quintet name pays tribute to Maddalena Casulana, one of the first women composers in Western music history who had her music printed and published. 

Free entrance but limited seats. The tickets will be handed out an hour before the beginning of the concert. We strongly recommend to pick them up in good time.