MADRID – The legendary State Academic Orchestra of Kazakhstan, Kurmangazy, presented in Madrid on Friday its repertoire of Kazakh folk music and classical tunes at a concert held at the National Music Auditorium as part of the group’s “Melodies of the Great Steppe” tour.

Kazakhstan celebrates its Independence on Dec. 16 and the concert, which received support from Spain’s Ministry of Culture and Sport, aspired to use music as an instrument to strengthen the cultural links between the two countries, the orchestra’s director told EFE.

Director Daueshov Nurkissa said it was the orchestra’s first ever performance in Spain and he was “very happy to make Kazakh culture known here through music.”

He stressed that the most important part of any musical project abroad was “to strengthen the friendly relationship between two countries, between two peoples.”

The orchestra, established in 1934, treated the public to traditional tunes from the Great Steppe performed with Kazakh folk instruments.

“The State Academic Orchestra of Kazakhstan has a history of eighty years,” during which it has performed “its musical notes on stages in more than eighty countries of the world,” Nurkissa said.

Wearing typical Kazakh dress, the musicians performed a program that included works by Kazakh and international composers like Kurmangazy, who gives his name to the band, Latif Hamidi, George Bizet, Manuel de Falla and Johann Strauss.

With the piece Kuy “Conil Ashar” the orchestra put the first notes to a recital in which nineteen compositions were played during more than ninety minutes.

The recital was an extension of the government of Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev’s program “The Course Towards the Future: Modernization of Kazakhstan’s Identity.”

The orchestra performed in 2017 the concert program “Melodies of the Great Steppe” at UNESCO headquarters in Paris, in the Republic of Bulgaria and in Uzbekistan.