The violinist Abel Tomàs is making his debut with the orchestra, which premières as part of its musical repertoire the Concerto for violin by Roberto Gerhard

 

The Orquesta Sinfónica de Tenerife, conducted by Edmon Colomer, will offer its Gerhard and Schumann concert, which will involve the debut of the violinist Abel Tomàs in the orchestra season. This new concert takes place in the Auditorio de Tenerife on Friday, 16 June at 19:30 p.m. The evening will begin with the premiere in the repertoire of the Symphony Orchestra of the Concerto for violin by Roberto Gerhard. This piece, written in exile between 1942 and 1945 by the Catalan masestro, includes a large part of his musical influences, from Albéniz to Granados, to the dodecaphonic language of Arnold Schönberg. In addition to the autobiograhical allusions, the score deals with the pursuit of his development as a composer, concluding with a tribute, to the then banned sardana.

After the break, the orchestra will perform Symphony nº 2 in C major, op. 61 by Robert Schumann.  Written in 1845, when the author was beginning to show the first symptoms of deteriorating mental health, this piece, with reminiscences of Bach and Mozart, embodies his state of mind, and ends by appealing to the strength to live.

Edmon Colomer, in addition to founding the National Youth Orchestra of Spain (JONDE) in 1983, was princal conductor of the Tenerife Symphony Orchestra between 1985 and 1986, and founder of the Orchestra of Cadaqués in 1988. Likewise, he has conducted other orchestras such as Simfònica de Balears, Simfònica del Vallès and Filarmónica de Málaga in Spain; Orchestre de Picardie in France; Daejeon Philharmonic in South Korea; in addition, he has been the guest conductor of the Eastern Music Festival in the United States.

His recognitions notably include “Chevalier dans l’ordre des palmes académiques,” a distinction awarded by the French Ministry of Culture in 2002, and he has been an academic in the Reial Acadèmia Catalana de Belles Arts de Sant Jordi since 2019. In 2020 and 2021 the Regional Government of Catalonia invited him to curate the Any Robert Gerhard.

Colomer records for radio and TV programmes in Europe, North and South America, Korea, and Japan for labels like Auvidis-Naïve, Assai, Harmonia Mundi, Calliope, Triton, Naxos, Ensayo, Virgin, and Philips. He has carried out the recordings with the National Youth Orchestra of Spain, Simfònica de Barcelona i Nacional de Catalunya, English Chamber Orchestra, London Sinfonietta, Orchestre de Picardie, and with the choirs of Radio France, BBC, and Orfeó Català.

Abel Tomàs began his music studies within his family environment, before becoming a pupil of Zakhar Bron and Serguei Fatkouline at the Reina Sofía Higher School of Music and with Víktor Tretjakov at the Hochschule für Musik Köln. Aged 16, he joined the internationally renowned Cuarteto Casals, a chamber group with which he maintains very intense artistic activity with concerts in European concert halls and tours around Latin America, the United States and Japan. The quartet obtained the 2006 National Music Prize, the 2005 City of Barcelona Prize and the 2016 National Award of Catalonia.


The Catalan violinist has won several national and international competitions in Spain and Argentina. As a soloist he has performed with several groups. noteworthy of which are Orquestra Sinfónica of Barcelona, Orquesta Sinfónica of Vallès, and the Orquesta Sinfónica of Euskadi. He has worked under the direction of James Judd, Junichi Hirokami, Victor Pablo Perez, Carlo Rizzi, Rubén Gimeno, and Zubin Mehta.


Aside from his concert activity, Abel Tomàs teaches chamber music classes at the Higher School of Music of Catalonia in Barcelona, he has been guest professor of chamber music at the Musikhochschule in Cologne. He was also a guest professor at the Escuela Forum Musikae in Madrid and at the Higher Conservatoire in The Hague.

The Asociación Tinerfeña de Amigos de la Música (Tenerife Association of Friends of Music) will give a free talk beforehand. On this occasion, Lourdes Bonnet Fernández-Trujillo will analyse the pieces that comprise this musical event between 18:30 and 19:15 in the Avenida Hall, located in the hall of the Auditorio de Tenerife.

The tickets for this penultimate season concert can be purchased until the day of the concert on the website www.sinfonicadetenerife.es, at the auditorium's box office and by dialling the phone number 902 317 327 from Monday to Friday from 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., Saturdays from 10:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m.