The Palau de la Música has announced this Thursday that Els Amics de les Arts will be the special guests of the traditional Sant Esteve concert, which will be held on December 26, and for which tickets have already been sold out. With this news, the house of music kicks off the Christmas campaign, with the slogan “Aquest Nadal, connecta’t al Palau!”. To celebrate the return to normality after the pandemic, the concert will bring together all the choirs of the house on the modernist stage. The subscribers of La Vanguardia have tickets for 20 euros on the newspaper’s purchase website.
Els Amics de les Arts will present two themes, commissioned by the Palau itself. One will be his first Christmas carol, Vides llunyanes, and the second will be the surprise and great expectation of the evening. The Cor de Cambra del Palau and the Orfeó Català will also premiere, among new arrangements and compositions, seven songs from the concert’s musical repertoire. All of this will be broadcast live on
This 2022 edition has many new faces, including Pablo Larraz, the new director of the Orfeó Català, who has joined forces with Adrià Aubert, who repeats as stage director of the Concert de Sant Esteve. “We have been preparing the event for nine months and it has been an effort that, without group cooperation, would not have been possible”, Larraz expressed. A team made up of all the singers of the Catalan institution, with Carol Rovira, Eufòria’s interpretation coach, as presenter, as well as all the directors of the Escola Coral, who will go on stage to direct the formations, accompanied by pianists and Joan Seguí at the organ.
The repertoire will also include works by the resident artists of the Palau, such as the suite of Christmas carols I va arrivar Janus, by Jordi Domènech, which includes the reflective poem by Eduard Escoffet, with a bitter touch, entitled Adorm l’afany . Advent, by the guest composer of the season, Ferran Cruixent, will also be heard.
In addition to the festive touch that characterizes the evening each year, the institution wants the Sant Esteve 2022 concert to adhere to the social and political circumstances we are currently experiencing. For this reason, the axis of reflection of the entire repertoire revolves around the concept of fer camí (to make the way). Aubert has explained that this expression can be understood in two senses: in the positive fact of moving forward or in the negative vision of having to leave behind what we want.
In this sense, the festivity will be marked by a scenography of points of light that will guide the singers and that alludes to the harsh war situation that is being experienced in Ukraine and the fact that many families will not be able to get together for these holidays. In this way, the pieces Wiegla by Ilse Weber —which talks about lives inside the concentration camps— and the traditional Ukrainian song Shchedryck will be performed.
But this concert is not the only attraction this Christmas at the Palau. Its Sant Esteve has been surrounded by a special program that will begin on December 11 with the Bach Collegium Barcelona Orchestra, the Chamber Choir of the Enric Granados Auditorium in Lleida, the soprano María Espada and the winners of the Salvat Beca Bach 2023, who will interpret the masters of the baroque with Handel’s Laudate pueri Dominum and Bach’s Cantata BWV 147.
On December 15, the traditional Messiah by Händel arrives, but this time with some exceptional performers. It will be the Orchester de l’Opéra Royal de Versailles, conducted by the countertenor —and now also maestro— Franco Fagioli, who will be accompanied by the Cor de Cambra del Palau. Another unavoidable appointment will be the one on December 21 with the Collegium Vocale Gent and the Orchester des Champs Élysées, who will offer the Missa solemnis in D major, op. 123 by Beethoven.
The Orquestra Simfònica del Vallès will also fulfill its usual collaboration with the Palau and will offer the most popular and familiar programming of Nadal to the Palau. It will do so with the Festival of Waltzes and Dances, the John Williams Soundtracks concert, Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker and the New Year’s Concert, this one with its obligatory waltzes and polkas from the Strauss family.
The special programming Nadal al Palau offers this year for the first time a subscription with a 30% discount from the purchase of three functions.
To encourage family activities, the Palau has also organized a series of family concerts with Twinkle, twinkle Baby’s Star, a concert-show in acoustic format and very close, on December 10 and 11. BaBeBra
