Pedro Carneiro conducts the Sond’Ar-te Electric Ensemble at a concert at the World New Music Days 2025 in Portugal, with works by the Portuguese composers Patrícia Sucena de Almeida and Rui Penha. Yet, it is also a journey to the East of Europe with works from Poland, Russia, and Latvia: “To bee or not to bee?”, a piece by the composer Agata Zemla, who is also a biologist; “Bagatelle 5”, for ensemble by the Russian composer Dmitri Kourliandski; “Turning the Wheel”, by the award-winning Latvian composer Krists Auznieks; and a recent piece by the Estonian composer Tatjana Kozlova Johannes, “Just Air”, for piano and ensemble. The concert will occur at the Casa da Música in Porto.

Bagatelle 5 (2023), for ensemble

Bagatelles is a cycle of pieces I started in 2016. Each piece focuses on a simple everyday object (ruler, knitting needle, wrapping paper, balloon, music box, etc.). The sound of each object generates free associations, which become the stimulus for the ensemble material. The ensemble complements or amplifies the sound properties of the object, entering into a dialogue with it or creating the environment in which the object exists. For me, this relationship must be built not on material analysis but on free association and intuition. The 5th Bagatelle is the first piece I composed in 2023, after a year of silence following the beginning of the Russian war against Ukraine and my immigration.