By: Mexican Agency for International Development Cooperation (AMEXCID)

From August to December, 2016, the Mexican conductor, Alondra de la Parra, will be involved in various of the cultural activities that are part of the Mexico-Germany Dual Year.

Her series of presentations will take place in the second half of 2016, beginning with the outdoor festival Sommer in Lesmona in Bremen, where she will conduct the prestigious Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen. The program includes Bernstein, Tchaikovsky, Prokofiev and Nino Rota.

At the Young Euro Classics Festival, which takes place during August and September, youth orchestras from around the world come together in Berlin. There, de la Parra will conduct the debut performance of a concert for cello and orchestra by Enrico Chapela. She will also conduct the National Youth Orchestra of Germany in playing one of the key works of the repertoire of Mexican music, the “Caballos de Vapor” (Horsepower) suite of Carlos Chávez. The Estanislao Mejia Orchestra from the UNAM has also been invited to participate in the festival for the second time under the direction of its conductor, Sergio Cardenas.

De la Parra, the Youth Orchestra of Germany and the State Youth Choir of North Rhine-Westphalia will all come together at the Beethovenfest in Bonn for another premiere of a work by Chapela, commissioned by Germany’s prestigious international radio station, Deutsche Welle. The concert will take place on September 15, and will include the "Legend of Milan" by the composer from Sonora, Mexico, Arturo Márquez, with the baritone Juanra Urrusti and Pablo Garibay as guitarist.

De la Parra will cap Mexico’s musical performances in Germany by conducting the Radio Orchestra Berlin in December, which will play pieces by Ravel, Stravinsky and de Falla.

These concerts are made possible by the joint support of the Ministry of Culture and AMEXCID (Foreign Ministry) in order to bring the best of Mexican culture to the German public.