Jorge Croner de Vasconcellos

Son of the violinist Alexandre Bettencourt and pianist and teacher Laura Croner, and grandson of clarinettist Rafael José Croner, composer Jorge Croner de Vasconcellos initially attended the Lisbon Faculty of Arts. A student of the National Conservatory since 1927, he eventually decided to exclusively follow a musical career. Alexandre Rey Colaço, António Eduardo da Costa Ferreira and Luís de Freitas Branco were some of his teachers. He also worked with conductor and composer Francisco de Lacerda. With a scholarship granted by the National Education Junta, he attended, in Paris the École Normale de Musique, courses directed by Paul Dukas, Nadia Boulanger, Igor Stravinsky and Alfred Cortot. When he returned to Portugal in 1938, he became responsible for the subject of Music History at the Music Amateurs Academy. A year later he performed at a concert with singer Arminda Correia and achieved recognition for his recitals in Paris, London and Brussels. After 1939, he became a teacher of Composition, Singing and Music History at Lisbon's National Conservatory. Already in the 1960s he also participated as a teacher in the Estoril Summer Courses. Although his work is not all that vast, the composer left a considerable number of singing pieces, many of which composed from texts of classic Portuguese poets. As far as chamber music is concerned, one should particularly mention the piano repertoire and the arrangements for pieces by Carlos Seixas. Croner de Vasconcellos also explored symphonic music, namely by composing pieces for the National Information Secretariat during the 1940s and the 1950s. He died in Lisboa in 1974. (adapted from text in PMIC)

Joly Braga Santos

Composer Joly Braga Santos was born in Lisbon, 1924. He studied violin and composition at the National Conservatory, where he was a student of Luís and Pedro de Freitas Branco. The latter was the main responsible for promoting his work around the world. During his youth, he took inspiration from Portuguese traditional music, namely folklore and Renaissance polyphony. These influences are clear in the first four symphonies he composed between his 22nd and his 27th years of age, which were almost immediately performed by the national radio broadcast Symphonic Orchestra. In 1948 he was a Higher Culture Institute scholarship holder, having then studied musicology and composition in Venice with Virgílio Mortari, Gioacchino Pasquali and Alceo Galliera. At that time he also attended the International Conduction Course with Hermann Scherchen, where he was a colleague of Luigi Nono, Bruno Maderna and Fernando Corrêa de Oliveira. Again in Portugal, Joly dedicated himself for a long period to orchestra conduction. He only started again to compose more regularly after 1960, having then written his fifth and sixth symphonies. Besides his vast musical legacy, Joly Braga Santos also had an intense activity as a music critic. He was a founding member of the Portuguese Musical Youth, lectured in Composition at Lisbon's National Conservatory, worked at the National Radio Broadcast Company's Musical Studies Cabinet, and was a conductor of the S. Carlos National Theatre Orchestra, of the Oporto Symphonic Orchestra and assistant conductor of the Portuguese radio broadcast Symphony Orchestra. He died in Lisbon in 1988. (adapted from text in PMIC)

Ana Telles

Pianist Ana Telles has pursued musical studies in Lisbon and New York. She has graduated from Escola Superior de Música de Lisboa, Manhattan School of Music and New York University. She has studied piano with Sara D. Buechner, Nina Svetlanova, Dmitry Paperno, Sequeira Costa and Alicia de Larrocha, as well as chamber music with Isidore Cohen and Sylvia Rosenberg, among others. She has devoted much attention to the study and interpretation of Messiaen’s piano music and has played all his works for piano and small orchestra plus a few others. She studied privately with Yvonne Loriod-Messiaen. She’s very much committed to the cause of contemporary music and has worked closely with composers such as Philippe Hurel, Emmanuel Nunes, João Pedro Oliveira, Pedro Amaral, Christopher Bochmann, Alain Bioteau, João Rafael, Carlos Caires, Guy Leclerq, Alexandre Delgado, José Júlio Lopes, Joaquim Santos, Thomas Bloch and Lucya Dugloszewski. She plays regularly in Portugal, Germany, France, Italy, Ireland, Cuba, Brasil, Taiwan and the USA, as a soloist or integrated in chamber music groups, and participated in festivals in Portugal and abroad. She played as a soloist with the Gulbenkian Orchestra, Lisbon Metropolitan Orchestra, the Classical Orchestra of Madeira, the “Filarmonia das Beiras” Orchestra and the OrchestrUtópica (all from Portugal), among others. She currently prepares a doctoral thesis on Portuguese composer Luís de Freitas Branco’s piano music at the Paris IV University (Sorbonne) and the University of Évora (Portugal). In addition, she produces musical programmes for the Portuguese classical radio station and teaches at ISEIT (Instituto Piaget), Almada (Portugal). (adapted from text by Ana Telles)

Ana Telles plays Joaquim dos Santos' 1st Piano Concerto (1st mov.), with Orchestra Nova Amadeus, cond. Jean Sebastian Béreau:

Also on You Tube:
http://br.youtube.com/watch?v=-da4nQ1cDM8
http://br.youtube.com/watch?v=YaIuVeasyaQ
http://br.youtube.com/watch?v=BEtnyNlCx8c

António Fragoso

Born at the village of Pocariça, in central Portugal, on June the 17th, 1897, António Fragoso died of the pneumonic flu, on October the 13th, 1918. In spite of his premature death, he wrote a number of pieces for solo piano, songs and chamber music of such quality that, nowadays like in his time, it is believed by many he could have been the greatest Portuguese composer of the 20th century. He started taking piano lessons from his uncle but it was not until he was 17 years old that he moved to Lisbon to study at the National Conservatoire, namely with Marcos Garin, Tomás Borba and Luís de Freitas Branco. He graduated in only 4 years, with the highest classification on his piano exam. By that time, several of his works had already been premiered in concerts in Lisbon and other towns and were highly praised by the critics, as well as teachers and fellow composers. Notwithstanding his youth and notable influences by composers such as Chopin, Fauré and Debussy, his beautiful, melancholy music has an identity of its own, a good example of that being the "Petite Suite", the 7 preludes and the 2 Nocturnes, all for piano, and the song cycles "Poèmes Saturniens" (after Paul Verlaine's poems) and "Canções do Sol Poente". At the time of his passing, António Fragoso was working on his first sonata for violin and piano, of which only one movement was finished.

António Fragoso Association's blog

Available discography

Available DVD

Available scores (free): Nocturno, arr. Glenn Michael Egner; Petite Suite; 7 Preludes.

Miguel Henriques (piano) plays António Fragoso's Prelude (from "Petite Suite"):



António Fragoso's "Nocturne for orchestra", by the Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra, cond. Jesús Ignacio Pérez Perazzo:

António Rosado

Pianist António Rosado began studying music when the was 3 years old, with his father, and graduated at the Lisbon National Conservatoire with the highest classifications. When he was 16 he went to study in Paris, where he had classes with Aldo Ciccolini, his tutor for several years, who said, about him: “António Rosado has something that cannot be taught or learned: the sense of the keyboard.” His virtuosity made him win international prizes such as the Alfredo Casella Competition and the Perosi International Academy’s G. Pella Prize. Those achievements helped establish a notorious career which throughout the years lead him to play many concerts and festivals all over the world, solo or with prestigious orchestras and conductors. He has been invited to play and record for TV and radio stations in many countries. His discography includes CDs dedicated to Enescu, Liszt, Rachmaninov, Mozart, Schumann and the Portuguese composers José Viana da Mota, Fernando Lopes-Graça, Luís de Freitas Branco and Armando José Fernandes. In 2008, António Rosado was decorated Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres by the French Government.

Available discography.

António Rosado plays Fernando Lopes-Graça's Piano Sonata No. 2, 2nd movement.