The Camerata Romeu: a singular proposal

By: Alina Dupré
Photos: Rolando Pujol

Founded in 1993, the Camerata Romeu, is a musical group of stringed instruments composed by truly virtuous women who have travelled the world with an exclusive repertoire. It springs in the environment of musical culture with a fresh, rigorous and authentic proposal, performing in its permanent see in the concert hall of the Basílica Menor del Convento de San Francisco de Asís church.

The Camerata Romeu was birthed from the dreams of its director, Zenaida Castro Romeo, to create a chamber music orchestra of young talented women, selected among the students that every year finish their studies in the music conservatories; project supported by the Pablo Milanés Foundation, starting with a small repertoire, it soon widened as composers started to write music for this original musical group.

The primary idea was to perform preferably Cuban music. In fact its programs include unknown works of the national and Latin American pentagram - rather absent from concert halls - , as well as music from well known composers like Leo Brower, Esteban Salas, Ernesto Lecuona, Astor Piazzolla or Antonio María Romeu, performed by the camerata in their original versions or rigorously orchestrated conserving their authenticity. The group also plays whole classical music programs, including Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Britten, Elgar, Handel or Vivaldi.

And what to say about Zenaida Castro? Heir of the Romeu family, a family of Cuban musicians and composers of many generations. Praised by important figures of the actual musical panorama, Zenaida has, in the words of Michel Legrand “….the mastery able to simplify the complex, to make the difficult, easy”. The French composer and pianist chose her to lead the National Symphonic Orchestra with him performing at the piano, during the gala in 1989 of the Oratory Concert Legrand wrote on occasion of the bicentennial of the French Revolution, an event of great cultural transcendence that catapulted Zenaida to the hall of fame, adding to this Legrand’s opinion: “I am quite surprised of this version of the oratory concert, never before directed in this manner….a great satisfaction”.

The excellent work of the Camerata Romeu includes more than 400 concerts, tours and international festivals, a vast recording production of the best pieces of universal as well as Cuban chamber music repertoire, performed with an elegant style, distinction, boldness, passion, sensibility and scenic beauty.