The epic poem Ode Marítima by Fernando Pessoa (heteronym Álvaro de Campos) is undoubtedly one of the greatest examples of Portuguese poetry of all time.

The action of this long and dramatic poem, comparable to Homer's great poems, takes place on a Lisbon pier, among ships of all sizes that come and go, and with them the imagination of the I-narrator travels, a pretext for the most radical thoughts, sometimes of sincere, loving tenderness, sometimes of the most brutal violence and immorality. 

Amidst this almost schizophrenic emotional dynamic, the rhythm of the words reaches disparate degrees of intensity, offering the reader/listener an extreme variety of moods, with slow parts and others of great frenzy with a high output of words, often only enumerative without any dramatic development. The Symphonic Choral Cantata presented here bases its musical structure precisely on this undulating rhythmic amplitude, following the temporal order of the poem, in a continuous and gradual alternation between blocks with static music and others with vertiginous music, between passages of soft and tender choral/symphonic colours, with others of great sound amplitude and violence. 

Orquestra Filarmonia das Beiras
Summer Festival Choir
Musical director Paulo Lourenço

Soloists:
Baritone André Henriques
Cello Filipe Quaresma
Portuguese guitar Miguel Amaral
Narrator Vítor D'Andrade