25 Years
To all Amigos/as
From Helga Hampton
NEWSLETTER
May 9, 201
Dear Amigos,
With our 25th Birthday Party now a fond memory, I should like to thank all the Amigos who were able to come to Os Agostos on Thursday, April 28th to celebrate this event. I was, and am, very proud to have been able to remind the assembled festive crowd of the contribution the Amigos de Musica have made to the cultural life in the Algarve over a quarter of a century. I thanked Marie Huber and the Centro Cultural de Sao Lourenco where IT all began so many years ago and promised – with the help and generous collaboration of Maria and Antonio Farajotta, our new hosts at Os Agostos – a future commitment to this cause, calling it a Great Achievement. And I am sure I am speaking for everybody who was present that the festive mood was fittingly accompanied by warm sunshine and cold bubbly on the lovely terraces.
Paul Crossley, “our” Paul Crossley as I am tempted to call the Maestro – came out of retirement for us and for this occasion – and he gave the occasion the most celebratory note with a programme of great piano music. The encore he most movingly dedicated to amigos no longer among us, was by the way, a Bach prelude, known as “Siloti-Bach, prelude in B min”.
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Now on to business:
The Amigo May concerts are upon us. Alexander Schimpf will be playing for us on
Tuesday, May 17th and Thursday, May 19th, 2016
with a programme of music by Brahms, Scriabin and Beethoven on the first night, and Chopin, Sieber, Poulenc, Bartok and Debussy on the second. Reservations are coming in steadily – there were good features about this German pianist in the Resident as well as in the Entdecken Sie Algarve newspapers – so if you have not made your reservations, hurry, send your email asap to
With the two June concerts, given by Daria Tchaikovskaja, on Tuesday 21st and Thursday, 23rd, 2016, our 2015/16 season will be coming to an end.
Invitations to renew membership will be sent out in the middle of June, and the first of our habitual 16 concerts for the 2016/17 season are fixed for September 27th and 29th, 2016, when the British pianist Charles Owen will be coming to us. The first evening concert will be preceded by the AGM.
At the last AGM in 2015, you may remember, it was decided to adjust the annual Amigo membership fee for the coming season to EURO 200.00, with all benefits unaltered. This will, by the way, be the first adjustment since 2009.
Our April artist, Sa Chen, did not bring any of her CDs and many of you asked me for a link to order.
Sa told me to go on line at www.prestoclassical.co.uk where her latest recording, incl. Chinese compositions, is available.
More good news: the Amigos have an additional Sponsor! Blevins Franks, the investment planning company located in Almancil, joins Quinta Properties in helping the Amigos. Senior Partner Gavin Scott will hopefully be able to come often himself and with clients from time to time to enjoy our
hospitality. Thank you very much Gavin ! The additional funds will be used to finance the complete overhaul of our Yamaha piano during the coming winter pause.
Finally, a plea for help from me, who cannot read music: I am frantically looking for a page turner for Thursday, May 19th. Alexander Schimpf is planning to give us the Portuguese premiere of a composition by the composer A. Sieber, for which he needs the pages turned. Our habitual helper is not available that evening. Who can/will be??? It is just for this one piece during the first half of the Thursday concert. S.O.S.
No Newsletter should go out with explicit thanks to all the people who are responsible in the making of our events. Cristina, in very first place for her efforts to keep us accounted for and properly seated.
This is not always an easy task, as the corrida for good seats is often a bit frantic. It would help very much if early arrivals would limit themselves to “reserving” only seats for themselves and their partner instead of bagsing an entire row of chairs. Cristina will not lose her charming smile over this, but we DID have a few complaints. I am personally still of the conviction that there are no bad seats in our auditorium; alas, what do I know, I cant even read music !!
Thanks also to Maria and Antonio, our hosts, for always receiving us in total preparedness, and to Paula for attempting to tempt us with ever new bits and bites.
I’d also like to send a few thanks out to where it might be heard, for finally sending us some more warm and dry evenings very soon.
I look forward to greeting you next week. Don’t forget to make your reservation, and, indeed, cancel a once made reservation as soon as you see that you will not be able to come. We now operate with a waiting list for all our concert evenings – Phone 914797980
Kindest regards,
Helga Hampton