Music

Fundación Banco Santander supports the following artistic and educational initiatives of Fundación Albéniz and the Escuela Superior de Música Reina Sofía.

Fundación Banco Santander is one of the principal sponsors of the artistic season of the Teatro Real in Madrid.

In 2025, the theatre was able to stage the opera Eugene Onegin, with music by Tchaikovsky and a libretto based on Pushkin’s novel in verse by the same name, thanks to the support of the Foundation. This new co-production with Den Norske Opera & Ballett in Oslo and the Gran Teatre del Liceu in Barcelona, which premiered at the Madrid opera house on 7 September 2010, marked the 225th anniversary of the Russian writer's birth.

Ten performances of this remarkable version—with Christof Loy as stage director and Gustavo Gimeno as conductor—were given between 22 January and 18 February.  The cast, featuring Kristina Mkhitaryan (Tatyana), Iurii Samoilov (Eugene Onegin), Bogdan Volkov (Lensky), Victoria Karkacheva (Olga) and Maxim Kuzmin-Karavaev (Prince Gremin/Zaretsky), performed one of the Russian composer’s most memorable operas with the Teatro Real orchestra and choir.

In 2025, Fundación Banco Santander sponsored two concerts of the musical season of the Gran Teatre del Liceu in Barcelona. His commitment to musical patronage was recognized with the awarding of this institution's gold medal.

On 4 May, the symphony orchestra and choir of the Gran Teatre del Liceu performed with pianist Javier Perianes. The programme consisted of one work by Debussy and two works by Ravel to commemorate the 150th anniversary of his birth.

On 2 July, the soprano Asmik Grigorian and baritone Matthias Goerne sang several pieces by Richard Strauss and Richard Wagner united by a common theme in the history of opera: lamenting the cruelty of fate in the face of adversity. 

Fundación Banco Santander supports the Orfeó Català Choir School, which provides vocal training and music education to more than two hundred children and young people between the ages of six and twenty-five.

The school consists of five choral ensembles—Cor Petits, Cor Mitjans, Cor Infantil, Cor Jove and Cor de Noies—which will supply the future singers of the Orfeó Català. A creative team of conductors, pianists, voice teachers and music theory instructors is responsible for training the singers’ voices and giving them the experience and techniques they will need to join a professional adult choir.

The school’s choirs participate in more than seventy concerts each year and do exchanges with other choral ensembles and orchestras in Spain and abroad. Their extensive repertoire ranges from a cappella pieces to symphonic choral works.

Fundación Banco Santander is a Friend of Honour of this internationally renowned amateur choral ensemble made up of more than two hundred voices (sopranos, altos, tenors and basses).

Orfeón Donostiarra gives over thirty concerts a year and attends the most important musical events in Spain and Europe, where it performs a large repertoire of opera and zarzuela choruses, symphonic choral works, folk songs and polyphonic music.

In 2025, the ensemble also participated in several charitable events, like the benefit concert given in the cathedral of Valencia to help flood victims, a youth solidarity concert to benefit Cáritas, and the RenHacer Festival, the proceeds of which go to support research into extremely rare childhood diseases and disorders. 

At the 74th Santander International Festival, the Foundation sponsored two concerts given by the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig—the oldest civic symphony orchestra in the world, founded in 1743—under the baton of principal conductor Andris Nelsons at the Cantabria Palace of Festivals.

On 30 August, the German ensemble played Symphony No. 2 in D Major, Op. 43, by Jean Sibelius, and Violin Concerto in A minor by Antonin Dvořák with the prestigious violinist Isabelle Faust.

On 31 August, the programme featured Mendelssohn’s Symphony No. 5 in D Major and Brahms’s German Requiem. On this occasion, the orchestra was accompanied by the voices of soprano Julia Kleiter, baritone Christian Gerhaher and the Orfeón Donostiarra. 

In 2004, Fundación Banco Santander decided to let the musician Asier Polo use a cello crafted in 1689 by Francesco Ruggieri, a prestigious luthier of the Cremona school. His instruments, carved from wood of the finest quality, are famed for their beautiful sound. When building this cello, Ruggieri followed the model learnt from his master Nicolò Amati, although he made the body larger and the F-holes shorter and wider. This instrument is also valuable because it pre-dates the modern cello, whose proportions were established by Stradivari around the year 1700.

Asier Polo’s career as an artist and educator has garnered him numerous distinctions, including the National Music Prize in 2019. He has performed as a soloist with some of the world’s leading orchestras and plays at major musical events. He currently teaches at the University School of Music of the Conservatorio della Svizzera Italiana in Lugano, Switzerland.