Spain Santander International Festival 2025: Palacio de Festivales de Cantabria, Santander. (DF)
For seventy-four years, the Santander International Festival has been one of the most established summer events in Spain. Each August, the Palacio de Festivales de Cantabria hosts some of the world’s leading orchestras and soloists in programs of remarkable variety and quality. The following highlights from this year’s edition illustrate both the richness of the programming and the exceptional level of performance.
10.8.2025 – Bruce Liu (piano), China NCPA Orchestra / Myung-Whun Chung (conductor)
Qigang Chen – Five elements
Ravel – Piano Concerto in G major
Saint-Saëns – Organ Symphony
The visit of the China NCPA Orchestra under Myung-Whun Chung was a luminous opening. Qigang Chen’s Wu Xing unfolded with refined writing, new textures, and oriental aromas far removed from cliché. Chung’s clarity of gesture produced precise attacks, perfectly blended strings, velvet-toned woodwinds, and brilliant but never harsh brass. With Bruce Liu in Ravel’s Concerto in G, the first movement had internal swing and jazz inflection, the second a suspended intimacy, and the finale a rhythmic outburst of controlled energy. After Chopin’s Nocturne No.20 as encore, Saint-Saëns’s Organ Symphony brought a climax of grandeur without grandiloquence, building patiently to a balanced apotheosis. A sparkling Bizet encore (‘Les toreadors’ from Carmen Suite No.1) sealed a memorable evening.
18.8.2025 – Sonya Yoncheva (soprano), Versailles Royal Opera Orchestra / Stefan Plewniak (conductor).
Arias, overtures and concertos by Handel and Corelli.
The recital of Sonya Yoncheva with the Versailles Royal Opera Orchestra and Stefan Plewniak was one of excess and brilliance. Their Handel radiated luminosity, expansive and less angular than typical English ensembles. Yoncheva, in magnificent vocal form, displayed a timbre of rare richness and an expressive intensity that seemed to transcend baroque confines. Her ‘Ah, mio cor!’ (Alcina) conveyed fury and despair with flexible legato, while Lascia ch’io pianga (Rinaldo) reached the summit of the evening with moving simplicity. The soprano’s theatrical intelligence — leaving the stage mid-aria to engage the audience — heightened the complicity. A festive series of encores culminated in a dionysiac celebration of Rameau’s Air de sauvages (Les Indes galantes) that left the hall ecstatic.
22.8.2025 – Pretty Yende (soprano), Michael Fabiano (tenor), Oviedo Filarmonía Orchestra / Pablo Mielgo (conductor).
Arias, romanzas and overtures by Verdi, Donizetti, Dvořák, Leoncavallo, Puccini, Chapí, Sorozábal and Giménez.
The lyrical gala of Pretty Yende and Michael Fabiano, supported by the Oviedo Filarmonía under Pablo Mielgo, confirmed the Festival’s operatic tradition. Yende’s opening scene (Siam giunti… D’amor sull’ali rosee… Tu vedrai from Il trovatore) displayed agility and charm, while Fabiano’s Quando le sere al placido(Luisa Miller) revealed a spinto tenor of robust centre and firm top notes, though at times lacking imaginative colouring. Highlights included Fabiano’s declamatory Vesti la giubba (Pagliacci) and Yende’s enchanting Song to the Moon (Rusalka), delivered with suspended breath and glowing timbre. Their duets from Otello, Lucia di Lammermoor, and La bohème showed natural chemistry, crowned by a playful zarzuela interlude and a popular medley from film classics, which delighted the audience.
24.8.2025 – Khatia Buniatishvili (piano), Melbourne Symphony Orchestra / Jaime Martín (conductor).
Margaret Sutherland – Haunted Hills
Tchaikovsky – Piano Concerto No.1
Mussorgsky – Pictures at an Exhibition
The Melbourne Symphony Orchestra under Jaime Martín with Khatia Buniatishvili offered a concert ‘full of surprises’. Margaret Sutherland’s Haunted Hills revealed firm lines and luminous textures, a deserved homage to Australia’s foremost female composer. In Tchaikovsky’s First Piano Concerto, Buniatishvili displayed torrential sound, expansive lyricism, impetuous attacks, and phrasing that made the familiar sound new — exactly as critics have often noted about her. Rapid tempi and fresh contrasts created an electrifying reading, followed by a transparent Bach encore. Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition in Ravel’s orchestration was conducted with fantasy and attention to detail, culminating in a monumental ‘Great Gate of Kiev’. Two lively encores — Glinka and Percy Grainger — confirmed the orchestra’s refinement and vitality.
28.8.2025 – Paul Lewis (piano), Tenerife Symphony Orchestra / Víctor Pablo Pérez (conductor).
Beethoven – Piano Concerto No.5
Shostakovich – Symphony No.9
The Tenerife Symphony with Víctor Pablo Pérez and pianist Paul Lewis delivered a program of Beethoven and Shostakovich. Beethoven’s ‘Emperor’ Concerto, taken at brisk tempi (20’12’’, 7’43’’, 8’20’’), emphasized martial character with marked articulation and staccato, in line with Beethoven’s famous ‘Song of triumph for battle’ annotation. Lewis’s crystalline timbre, improvisatory phrasing, and balanced rubato offered a deeply personal Beethoven, rewarded with Schubert’s Allegretto as encore. Shostakovich’s Ninth Symphony, carefully shaped by Pérez, unfolded as a grand arc of contrasts: neoclassical brightness in the Allegro, tension in the Moderato, a dark Largo, and a jubilant finale. The encore, Shostakovich’s funeral march The Great Citizen, was both coherent and overwhelming.
30.8.2025 – Isabelle Faust (violin), Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra / Andris Nelsons (conductor).
Arvo Pärt – Cantus in Memoriam Benjamin Britten
Dvořák – Violin Concerto
Sibelius – Symphony No.2
31.8.2025 – Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, Orfeón Donostiarra / Andris Nelsons (conductor).
Mendelssohn – Symphony No.5
Brahms – A German Requiem
The two closing appearances of the Gewandhaus Orchestra under Andris Nelsons offered contrasting impressions. On August 30, despite the orchestra’s splendour and Isabelle Faust’s deeply organic Dvořák, Nelsons’s conducting in both Dvořák and Sibelius felt precise yet short on inspiration, leaving a sense of missing soul. A day later, however, the Mendelssohn ‘Reformation’ Symphony and above all Brahms’s German Requiem, with soprano Julia Kleiter, baritone Christian Gerhaher, and the Orfeón Donostiarra, brought redemption: clarity, emotional density, and a dramatic arc of true catharsis.
In total, this year’s Santander International Festival presented fifty events, among them a recital by Sir András Schiff and a concert by the Hallé Orchestra of Manchester under Kahchun Wong featuring Falla’s Ritual Fire Dance, Stravinsky’s Firebird Suite, and Mahler’s First Symphony. As the Festival approaches its 75th anniversary in 2026, expectations are running high for a celebratory edition that promises to be even more remarkable.
Darío Fernández
Featured Image: Sonya Yoncheva and the Versailles Royal Opera Orchestra © Pedro Puente/FIS
For more about the Santander International Festival click here.