Pedro Carneiro – London
As a marimbeiro (marimba player), Pedro Carneiro has regularly participated in various music festivals throughout the world. However, on 21st June, things are going to be different. The founder, artistic director and conductor of the Orquestra de Câmara Portuguesa (Portuguese Chamber Orchestra) will appear with his musicians at the City of London Festival for an auspicious beginning to the international launch of this Portuguese group.
—
How is it that some headphones, a computer and huge talent lead to the internationalisation of the Orquestra de Câmara Portuguesa (OCP)? On 21st June, the orchestra will open the City of London Festival, whose theme this time round is the Portuguese-speaking world. When this special group of musicians play standing up and from memory, it means two firsts for them: internationalisation and playing without the aid of sheet music.
The expectations of the marimbeiro, composer and conductor Pedro Carneiro are huge, because this “fantastic opportunity” stems from an invitation by Ian Ritchie, festival director, who, after witnessing one of Pedro’s concerts with the Quarteto Arditi at the Grande Auditório at Fundação Gulbenkian, became curious about the work of OCP. “At the time I had my computer, I borrowed a pair of headphones and I showed him what the orchestra was about, using photos, videos and recordings.” They agreed to meet up in London a month later, which was when the invitation was forthcoming.
[DDET READ MORE]
This was wonderful news as one of the major objectives of the OCP is being a launch pad for new musicians to enter the European market. According to the director, the other purpose is “boost the talent of Portuguese musicians, at a critical age, when they are still studying or have just entered the job market.”
With a total of 34 musicians, this orchestra was founded by Pedro Carneiro and benefits from exchanges with other musicians. “In each programme, there’s a guest rehearser. With the help of Joachim Bernauer, director of the Goethe Institute, we are going to have a rehearser from the Berlin Philharmonic, who is 65 years old and has played with just about everyone. He’ll arrive, rehearse these musicians and tell them that he’s played this or that piece of music 600 times all over the world with conductor X and Y. It’s not something you can get from a book.”
London 1993-2002
A veritable Portuguese in the world, Pedro Carneiro learnt to be a perfectionist from an early age. When he was 17, he emigrated to London with a scholarship from Gulbenkian to attend the Guildhall School of Music and Drama: “There were no higher education courses for percussion in Portugal at the time.” He wrapped himself up in his studies to such a degree that, after six years, he realised he barely knew the English capital at all. “I spent my life studying or running to the Barbican.” Rituals were endlessly repeated. He played with school groups, at small festivals and went to auditions. The school worked as an agent. “There was a person who acted as a link between the students and the programmers. We had marketing classes; we learnt to make demos, which were on cassettes at the time, how to prepare portfolios… The school was highly competitive but very educational”
They were such intense years that, when he finished his course, he felt a huge void in his life. Believing that “London is a difficult and chaotic city”, he did the best he could. He visited the museums from top to toe. “I used to go to the Tate and the Institute of Contemporary Art a lot.” He never felt the need to soothe his nostalgia with visits to Café Lisboa, in Portobello Road nor did he have any contact with other Portuguese people living there. At school he got on with a mix of people. Pedro had the world at his feet and he tried to satisfy his curiosity whenever he could.
What impressed him most was the school library. “For someone Portuguese it was scary, it had about 70 thousand discs, books and sheet music”. He decided to follow the wise advice of an analysis teacher. “He suggested that I go to the library at six in the morning, that I choose a record and listened to it while I read the respective sheet music. He asked me, ‘have you seen how many days there are in a year? How many works can you listen to?’ I did that for some time. At six in the morning, it was only the Asian students and me.”
Hyperactivity and music
The young maestro says that following in the footsteps of his father, a trumpet player and teacher at the Conservatório Nacional since 1975 and co-founder of the OCP, was not a foregone conclusion. However, he remembers “the smell of the resin on the bows, the noise of the orchestra”. According to him, his mother has a fantastic ear: “She’s always humming about the house”.
However, if we want to find the reason behind this marimbeiro’s passion for music, a musician who the German paper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung compares to “a superman from another galaxy”, then we only have to look back at his childhood.
Pedro was a hyperactive child and, as his mother didn’t know what to do with him, he ended up going on tour with his father. At the age of five he started playing the piano, cello and trumpet at Academia Luísa Todi, in Setúbal but Pedro says that music was only one of many activities that occupied his time. “I was never sure about becoming a professional musician, but there was a moment when I realised that I couldn’t play hockey or tennis because music was taking up so much of my time”, whether it was at the Conservatory in Lisbon, the Centre Acanthes in Avignon, where he studied with Sílvio Gualda, or at the Guildhall School, in London.
Now, he’s on the verge of returning to the city with “the feeling like I’m seeing an old girlfriend again”, the conductor is eagerly preparing to play to the Guildhall Old Library, as part of the City of London Festival. The Portuguese orchestra has the honour of opening this year’s festival with Brazilian pianist Cristina Ortiz, on a bill that includes the London Symphony Orchestra and the Monteverdi Choir.
Apart from works by Joly Braga Santos, Luís Tinoco and Beethoven, the OCP will present Chopin’s No. 2 Concerto. This is a tribute to the Polish composer in the year that marks the two hundredth anniversary of his birth, curiously “in the same place where Chopin gave his last public concert.” Make a date in your diary: 21st June, 19h30.
City of London Festival, London
www.colf.org
[/DDET]
by Maria João Veloso
—
