The Mozart Festival presents a series of concerts under the heading Las Matinées del Museo de Belas Arte, three chamber concerts featuring works by major composers such as Beethoven or Rossini, transcribed for chamber ensemble and whose scores now lie in the Library of the Royal Galician Academy. The collection to which they belong, known as the “Marcial del Adalid” collection, was donated by the family of this renowned Galician composer and contains over 2,000 scores with transcriptions of major works by late eighteenth and nineteenth-century composers.

The deeply-rooted musical tradition enjoyed by the city of A Coruña dates back to this same period, when members of the bourgeoisie were able to listen to some of the best-known works of Boccherini, Beethoven or Rossini played by chamber ensembles from transcribed scores. The collection, which has been researched by musicologists such as Xoán Carreira and Carolina Queipo, has revealed scores that are hard to find in Europe but which at the time of publication – the early nineteenth century – were a common source of entertainment amongst cosmopolitan bourgeois circles.

The first concert, scheduled for 12.00 noon on Sunday 31 May in the Museo de Belas Artes, will be given by the Artemis Ensemble and two soloists from the Galician Symphony Orchestra, Raymond Arteaga and Ruslana Prokopenko, who will perform the version for chamber ensemble of Beethoven’s First and Sixth Symphonies.

The following concert will take place on Sunday 14 June, also at 12.00 noon. José María Gallardo del Rey (guitar) and Anabel García del Castillo (violin) will play several Rossini overtures transcribed for these two instruments. Concert-goers will be able to discover a whole new register of sound through performances of such well-known works as the overtures to The Barber of Seville or La Cenerentola, amongst other works by Rossini arranged for violin and guitar by Ferdinando Carulli.

The last concert in the series will be on Sunday 21 June, at the same time as the previous two (12.00 noon). On this occasion the Scherzo Quartet, whose members are all musicians from the Galician Symphony Orchestra, will perform arrangements of Beethoven’s Sonata for Violin and Piano No. 5 (Op. 24) “Spring” and Piano Sonata No. 15 (Op. 28) “Pastoral” for string quartet.

Admission to these concerts is free, but limited to the seating capacity of the Auditorium of the Museo de Belas Artes.

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