Madrid, June 23, 2022.- This afternoon, the closing ceremony of the 2021-2022 academic year of the Reina Sofía School of Music and the awarding of distinctions of the institution took place in Auditorium 400 of the Reina Sofía National Art Center Museum, under the presidency of Her Majesty Queen Sofía.
The event began with the intervention of Paloma O’Shea, Founding President of the School, in which she took stock of the important activity of this center of higher education throughout the last year.
“It has been 30 years since the dream of establishing a top-level international music school in Spain became a reality. Everything that the School has achieved since then—the thousands of young people who have become musicians with us and the hundreds of thousands of people to whom we have brought music—we owe in large part to the initial confidence that Her Majesty Queen Sofía gave us and to her 30 years of constant encouragement, personally presenting diplomas and distinctions and presiding over closings, boards of trustees and important events.
This year, the School’s 30th Anniversary, has the support of ASISA and Mutua Madrileña, and the tour that took us to Europe at the beginning of the year was sponsored by ADMAF – Abu Dhabi Music & Arts Foundation – and IF International Foundation, in addition to Maestro Andrés Orozco-Estrada himself, who generously conducted the performances of our Freixenet Symphony Orchestra at the Teatro Real, Sala Reduta in Bratislava, Liszt Academy in Budapest and Musikverein in Vienna,” explained Paloma O’Shea.
“We are a space for public-private collaboration. It is easy to imagine the importance that companies and individuals have in a School that, being mostly privately funded, nevertheless offers top-level international education under a free tuition system,” stressed the founding president of the School.
“I am very proud of the auditions that you have just won in the main European orchestras: among many others, in the Concertgebouw of Amsterdam, Bavarian Radio, Berlin Radio, Tonhalle of Zurich, NDR of Hamburg and National Orchestra of Spain, where four of you have entered. In those positions, or wherever life places you, I ask you to continue advancing as musicians, because music is not a place that is reached, but a path that is traveled”, Paloma O’Shea wanted to convey to all the young musicians who make up the School.
Next, Her Majesty Queen Sofía presented the Diplomas to the most outstanding students in the following professorships: violin, viola, cello, double bass, flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, horn, trumpet, piano, singing, composition and chamber music (string quartets, wind quartets and groups with piano).
Subsequently, Queen Sofía presented the Medal of Professor Emeritus of the School to Professor Galina Eguiazarova, holder of the Banco Santander Foundation Piano Chair since the 2000-2001 academic year, who is leaving teaching; and the Plaques of the School, for their decisive contribution, to professors Paul Goodwin (Société Générale Historical Interpretation Program), Heime Müller (String Quartet Department), Gustavo Núñez (Bassoon Chair) and Christoph Poppen (Telefónica Violin Chair); to the Banco Santander Foundation, for its patronage of the “Concert Cycle for Schoolchildren”, to Doña Patricia O’Shea and posthumously, to Professor Blanca Calvo (History of Music) whose plaque was presented to her husband, José Canet.
Likewise, they received the Medal of Honor, the highest distinction awarded by the School, created by the sculptor Julio López Hernández for their outstanding collaboration with the institution:
H.E. Huda Alkhamis-Kanoo, founder of the Abu Dhabi Music & Arts Foundation (ADMAF), patron of the School since 2015; the principal conductor of the Freixenet Chamber Orchestra of the School Sir András Schiff, and Telefónica, principal patron of the Violin Chair of the School since 1999, whose President, José María Álvarez-Pallete, collected the award.
The ceremony concluded with a concert by the Freixenet Symphony Orchestra of the Reina Sofía School under the baton of the Hungarian maestro Sir András Schiff himself.
Program: Brandenburg Concerto No. 3 in G major, BWV 1048 by Johann Sebastian Bach and Concerto for Piano and Orchestra No. 17 in G major, KV. 453 by Wolfgang A. Mozart, with soloist Tomás Alegre (piano).
