Berta Candida Alves de Sousa

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Born in Liege, Belgium in 1906, Berta was a Portuguese pianist, conductor, lecturer, music critic and composer, her family came form Oporto and returned there when Berta was very young. She studied at the Oporto Conservatory under Moreira de Sá, Luis Costa, Lucien Lambert and Claudio Carneyro and graduated in the piano. In Paris from 1927 to 1929, she studied the piano under Wilhelm Backhaus and Theodore Szanto, composition under George Migot and improved her piano technique with Vianna da Mota in Lisbon. She studied conducting under Clement Krauss in Berlin and Pedro Freitas Branco in Lisbon and later attended interpretation courses under Alfred Cortot for the piano and studied the teaching of music under Professor Edgar Willems. She was music critic for the press after 1939. She taught chamber music and the piano at the Oporto Conservatory and performed in numerous recitals and concerts as a soloist, accompanist and conductor. She experimented in sound symmetry together with its creator, composer Fernando Correia de Oliveira and received many prizes and awards, including the Moreira de Sá Prize in 1941.

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            Works for wind band:

• Porto heróico, march (1951)

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            Works for wind ensemble:

• Quinteto de sopros (fl, ob, cl, bsn and hn) (1971)