Nuno Vieira de Almeida

Nuno Vieira de Almeida studied music in Lisbon with José Manuel Beirão and Tania Achot, and as a Gulbenkian Foundation scholarship holder, continued his studies in Vienna with Leonid Brumberg and in London with Geoffrey Parsons. He is a distinguished Lied pianist, regularly performing with Portugal's leading singers as well as internationally renowned artists, such as Gundula Janowitz, Peter Weber, Peter Jelosits, Ulla Gustafson, and Gabriele Fontana, both in Portugal and abroad. Almeida has given numerous first performances in Portugal, introducing works by composers such as Schönberg, Webern, Wolf, Von Einen, Schreker, Korngold, Weill, Bernstein, and Britten. He has also premiered works by João Madureira, Carlos Caires, Constança Capdeville, and Paulo Brandão on the world stage. His artistic projects frequently combine music with other art forms, including painting, theatre, cinema, and poetry. He co-authored the radio programme O Texto e a Música with Yvette Centeno and regularly collaborates in theatre and film as both a performer and composer of soundtracks, notably with Manoel de Oliveira (Vale Abraão) and João Botelho (La Valse). A passionate advocate for the revival of works for declaimed voice and piano, many of which he has premiered in Portugal, Almeida has also commissioned new works from Portuguese composers. He is currently a professor at the Lisbon School of Music, where he coordinates the singing class, and he holds a doctorate in Historical Musicology from Universidade Nova de Lisboa, awarded in 2015. His discography includes recordings of the complete works for voice and piano by Luís de Freitas Branco and Joly Braga Santos, a double album of Fernando Lopes-Graça’s vocal and piano works with Elsa Saque, as well as recordings of previously unrecorded works by Lopes-Graça with Ana Maria Pinto and João Rodrigues, and by Viana da Mota. He has also performed Schubert’s Winterreise with Peter Weber, and given a recital of Fernando Lopes-Graça’s works at the Portuguese Parliament. In 2005, Almeida premiered Joly Braga Santos’s Cantares Galegos in its version for voice and piano, alongside Elsa Saque. He has also played a key role in presenting emerging Portuguese talents through the ‘Young Singers’ concert series. In 2021, he made his Portuguese debut with actress Rita Blanco in Richard Strauss’s melodrama Enoch Arden. For the Naxos label, he has recorded three albums of previously unpublished works for voice and piano by Fernando Lopes-Graça. The first two feature collaborations with Susana Gaspar, Cátia Moreso, Fernando Guimarães, and Ricardo Panela, while the third, which has just been released internationally, is recorded exclusively with Susana Gaspar and includes several world premiere recordings alongside some of Lopes-Graça’s most celebrated songs.