Each year we have explored a specific theme for PortilloFest. We like to have the flexibility to move according to the times we live in.

 

This 2025 we want to be friends and not only that, we want to be "Irrational Friends," because friendship is the essential relationship of love - as Humberto Maturana used to say - we know that love is what we talk about the most, but it seems to us that it still has an unknown dimension.

 

 

Our invitation is to explore in music the existence of that which is as intangible and invisible as music and which we call "love."

 

Friendship and music will be the resources for this exploration, we will spend the 13 days of the festival creating, dialoguing, inspiring, making music, studying and "making friendship" and in the closing concerts you will be able to listen to three compositions, which are created under inspiration, admiration, playfulness and friendship:

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The first piece will be by Ralph Vaughan Williams, Fantasy on a Theme by Thomas Tallis composed in 1910 and revised in 1919, at a time when copyright still allowed you to use a composition created by another composer to make arrangements and even to make profound changes. It was even a positive sign and a sign of value to appropriate someone else's work, because that someone else was somehow a source of inspiration. Ralph Vaughan Williams honored that practice by borrowing a theme from his great 16th century English ancestor, Thomas Tallis, and expanding it into an elaborate, richly textured fantasia for double string orchestra and solo string quartet.

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The second piece of the concert will be Benjamin Britten's Orchestral Guide for Youth, op. 34 (Variations and Fugue on a Theme by Henry Purcell). Probably two of the UK's most majestic composers are Henry Purcell and Benjamin Britten, so it might be expected that Britten would draw inspiration from his ancestor whom he also admired. So it begins with the whole orchestra introducing Purcell's theme and then each section or family of instruments plays a variation on this theme. Next, the instruments play a variation one by one; the narrator introduces each one at the beginning, so that the sound of the corresponding instrument can be identified and appreciated. Finally, they all come together again to play a grand fugue on Purcell's theme.

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And finally we will finish with the piece by Edward Elgar, in his "Variations on an original theme" written in 1899, the composer offers the opportunity to follow a musical idea through various transformations. In this piece dubbed "Enigma" the composer claimed that the original theme was combined with another theme in his mind - a kind of musical shadow - creating 14 variations with initials referring to nicknames of his particular friends, most of them musicians. The ensemble represents not only their individual personalities, but also personality and musical expression. As the composer liked riddles, it was never known exactly, to which of his friends the initials corresponded, only approximations, but not certainty and that is why it is called "Enigma" Variations, which will be a secret for eternity.

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So as you can see, we have taken care of curate an experience that will make your lives richer. It only remains for us to invite you to this new adventure, you are all very welcome.... We are already waiting for you!