He has had a hectic summer, his agenda is almost that of a rock star, but Ludovic Morlot lands in Barcelona with the “nerves” of someone who meets a new partner and with the “anxiety to do it well”. “We all know that this takes time because you have to build solid foundations. And that’s what I have to do now, to build a strong castle.”
The new head of the Barcelona and National Symphony Orchestra of Catalonia (OBC) has presented his first program that he will conduct this weekend. And he did it together with the director of L’Auditori, Robert Brufau, and the artist Marc Vilanova (Capellades, 1991), a saxophonist whose creative restlessness has led him to investigate everything about sound.
The public of the OBC will meet this weekend with his Phonos installation in the hall of the Pau Casals room. A gigantic sum of 208 loudspeakers with which it seeks to make human beings aware of the infra-frequencies to which they are exposed.
Morlot, for his part, has already been active this summer with the OBC, recording pieces by Hèctor Parra and Bernat Vivancos that will be released this fall on the digital portal of L’Auditori. For the French maestro, winner of five Grammys and who will continue as the main guest conductor of the BBC Philharmonic in London, the best approach to the Catalan repertoire has been from composers of his own generation, “in order to expand in both directions, with before and after.”
His challenge with the OBC in this first week of rehearsals and concerts is based, he says, on listening. “You have to focus on the little things. I’ve been given a wonderful instrument that I don’t know yet and the journey begins with listening to it so I can make it sound better.”
For this, he warns, nothing better than Mahler’s Fourth Symphony, his favorite among the bohemian composer’s corpus, and one of the most intimate and chamber music, which allows him to develop the orchestral work in a close way, with an attentive listening. common of the members of the OBC. In it Mahler turns towards a rich timbre at the service of a luminous, nostalgic and beatific vision of the sky, expressed by a child. Soprano Carlyn Sampson will give voice to the piece.
“I am often asked if Mahler is my favorite composer and the answer is no more than some others, but the OBC plays him often and well, and this Fourth was perfect for the resurrection theme that this season of L’Auditori addresses, ‘Death and return’. The final coda is extraordinary, the music collapses as if everything had been a dream, an illusion”, he points out, about a lied about a popular poem from The Horn of Youth that follows a third movement of tragic depth.
“I could have chosen the Fifth, but it seemed to me that we could start with cheaper music, chamber music -he continues-. Thus the sound is not more powerful but richer, full of soul. For me, a full sound is not so because of the volume but because of the emotions it contains”.
Mahler is also one of “the few on whom we can agree with what he really wanted.” The French director considers that in the case of a first contact with the OBC, Mahler is better than a Mozart or a Beethoven, in which there are many issues still unresolved.
“I don’t want to transform the sound of the orchestra, what I want is to add spice to its ingredients. And staying true to the composer in the different styles, whether it’s Mozart, Ravel or Messiaen. That’s what I want: control the ingredients but not change them I just hope they understand what kind of sound I want and that we meet halfway.”
With some new musicians, the OBC will perform a program that kicks off with a commission from the Berlin Philharmonic to Hans Abrahamsen, guest composer of the L’Auditori season together with Russia’s Sofia Gubaidulina. His piece Let me tell you is a cycle of songs of refined and precise writing with movements of great lyricism on the homonymous novel by Paul Griffiths that takes Ophelia from Hamlet as the protagonist. A theatrical score that has been celebrated throughout Europe since its premiere.
