The Cuenca Religious Music Week will be celebrating its 50th edition with a programme reflecting the rich experience it has gathered over the preceding forty-nine years of its history.

The Spanish renaissance composer Tomás Luis de Victoria will be one of the fundamental reference points of the festival programme in 2011, the year which marks the 400th anniversary of his death. He will be given a special prominence, and we will be able to enjoy works from his Easter repertoire over several days, as performed by Schola Antiqua and the Ensemble Plus Ultra under Michael Noone’s direction. This edition of the festival will also celebrate the centenary of the death of Mahler and the 200th anniversary of the birth of Franz Liszt – there will be concerts in honour of both composers.

One of the characteristics of the Cuenca Religious Music Week since its very beginnings has been the support it has given to contemporary composers. Continuing this tradition there will be premieres of two commissioned works - by Jesús Torres and the Cuenca born composer Manuel Millán de las Heras on Palm Sunday and Easter Saturday respectively. The concert in the Iglesia de la Merced will be given over entirely to Jesús Torres’ work Apocalipsis. Manuel Millán’s Aunque es de Noche for solo cello references Saint John of the Cross. There will be other premieres. The first of them a Spanish premiere which will take place on the Saturday before Easter in the cathedral – Mathias Pinscher’s She-cholar haba ani under the direction of Pieter Jelle de Boer. The second will be on Holy Tuesday – Petit Livre d’heures - which will take place in the Church of San Miguel, performed by the Ensemble Intercontemporain under the direction of Yves-Marie Pasquet. We will also be hear another premiere – that of José Rio-Pareja’s work Entheos, on Holy Saturday in the Museum of Abstract Art.

In this special edition of the Cuenca Religious Music Festival we will be paying special homage to Schola Antiqua, one of the key musical ensembles of the festival, in recognition of their dedication and their contributions over the years. On Easter Monday they will be in the Monastery of the Concepción Francisca to perform music from manuscript fragments dating from the 12th and 13th centuries which were retrieved from the Provincial Historical Archives.

The festival’s own productions

In the section of the festival’s own productions, this year we will be repeating the Family Concert format. These will take place in the Auditorium on the Saturday before Easter in a programme dedicated to Hector Villalobos and his ballet Uirapuru. Then on Holy Saturday the auditorium will host a work, produced in collaboration with the Sociedad Quixote - an original choreography by the Compañia Plan B, for Job A Masque for Dancing, with the music provided by the Halle Orchestra.

In this edition of the festival the guest country will be France and, thanks to close collaboration with the French embassy, there will be French artists taking part every day. Within the framework of this initiative will also be the exhibition Espectros, by Axelle Fossier, which forms part of the series Reseña de Arte Digital, Disco Duro organised by the Antonio Saura Foundation.

In order to celebrate such a significant occasion as the 50th anniversary of the festival, there will be two new and interesting initiatives outside of the festival itself. In collaboration with the UCLM and the Cathedral of Cuenca there will be a series of organ concerts that will take place over the whole year as well as a training course for experts in this instrument. Furthermore the Religious Music Week will travel throughout the province of Cuenca, thanks to the patronage of Caja Rural, to celebrate seven concerts in different municipalities of the Cuenca region - using the same musicians and with the same level of artistic quality as those concerts that are organized within the festival itself.