Ibercamera, the longest-running classic season in Barcelona, ??turns 40 this year. Its president, Josep Maria Prat (Barcelona, ??1956), emerged in 1984, continuing the work that Promúsica had started. He was a young man with courage who, at the age of 21, had been appointed manager of the Center d’Estudis Musicals in Vallvidrera by Oriol Regàs, and who already had the Camera Agency up and running, which today brings together great artists such as András Schiff, Maria João Pires, Daniil Trifonov , Quartet Casals or Pinchas Zukerman. But also young people whose tempo and evolution are respected…, which is a privilege in a world where commercial rush and profitability rule.
“We are a team of people at the service of music, artists and the public, and we have a way of acting that makes people see us as an institution,” says the businessman and cultural promoter, proud of his team of ten people. from Ibercamera, plus the five from the agency. Apart from organizing tours (they will reach a hundred performances of Carmina Burana with La Fura dels Baus) they promote seasons in Madrid and Girona.
Today the opening concert of this 40th Ibercamera Season takes place at L’Auditori de Barcelona (8 p.m.), which will feature Zukerman and Olga Sitkovetsky (Pires canceled yesterday due to medical advice) performing Beethoven’s Primavera sonata, in addition to the Orchester National de Lyon and the Orfeó Català conducted by the Danish Nikolaj Szeps-Znaider in the Ninth Symphony.
And you say they’ve had spectacular sales growth?
Yes, we can’t believe it.
For post-pandemic euphoria?
Partly.
40 years ago the world of classical music already feared that the public would age without replacement. Was it crazy to start that cycle?
It’s easy to look at things in perspective and explain them, but to do them, you don’t know why you do them. We left in the context of the fall of Lluís Portabella, who had the only music season with an entity in the city, Promúsica, and also carried the Liceu on his back and had bought the Belter record company. Furthermore, it must be taken into account that the Palau de la Música had been a container for a hundred years, it had never programmed. Until 1991, obsessed by the Olympics, Fèlix Millet invented Palau 100.
Did that affect Ibercamera?
He reached an agreement with our orchestra supplier in Madrid and decided that we had to close. But our great friend Enric Sisquella, who helped us with the programming, saw the trick: they were giving us false dates for the concerts; the orchestras would actually come to Palau 100. I told Millet that I was done, but that he would have to buy the company. And, in the two months that we negotiated the sale of Ibercamera for 70 million pesetas, I asked him to give me the false dates for real, otherwise the banks would not give me credit. And I prepared another season: Mstislav Rostropovich, Isaac Stern, Lorin Maazel, Maurizio Pollini, Maria João Pires, Jessye Norman… La Vanguardia was going to publish it. That same day I was going to sign, I decided I wasn’t selling.
And why do you choose music?
Because I see that it is a more virgin terrain. Pasqual Maragall had a lot to do with it: the last great politician who loved music. I had discovered Bach with Serena Vergano, then my partner, at Ricardo Bofill’s house, where we heard Bach and also Camarón…
He did not represent Camarón…
He proposed it to me, but I said no, because I didn’t have a weapons permit…
Serious?
He wasn’t amused. We were friends. I proposed a Palau if she quit heroin. He left her in March, in June she brought him.
You start with Lluís Claret, with Bruno Gelber…, then Barenboim appears… How do you access the great Soviet pianist Sviatoslav Richter?
Because I loved him, I didn’t stop following him everywhere to bring him to Spain. He was an inaccessible legend, he didn’t talk on the phone, he didn’t have a manager… When I managed to get him to receive me, he told me “I already know you.” The cellist Natalia Gutman had told him about me cutting his hair one day. In 1989 we did the tour. Many artists become addicted to our tours, because we are a machine at their service. Richter once said: “I am a concert man, and on concert days I am a helpless creature before the limits of impending catastrophe.” That’s the artist. And on our part there is great loyalty and a great attempt to understand what they are doing. That is not spoken, it is transmitted. They are ties that are not written. We have never had a contract with any artist. Maybe some from management. But no, not with Gergiev, not with Pires. This is a service.
The first season brought many orchestras, starting with the Israel Philharmonic with Eliahu Inbal…
Yes, but that makes me think about how bad we were at it. We did not have the criteria and rigor of now. We made them big, yes, Ivo Pogorelich canceled and we brought Oscar Peterson, there was a lot of anger and unconsciousness, but we didn’t discuss programs, we accepted the ones they brought us. Now we work better than ever, we are infinitely better than 25 or 40 years ago; Otherwise, we would have disappeared in the middle of what is done in the city.
Doesn’t always showing off your own artists make you fall into repetition?
The programming sequence of works, regardless of who directs or plays them, is very well thought out. The symphonies of Beethoven, Brahms and Mahler are being revealed… Next year Teodor Currentzis will do the Eroica. It hasn’t been done for years…
…on Ibercamera.
It is inevitable to fall into repetition with respect to other programming.
How was your crush on Gergiev?
He once came with Boris Godunov and the Mariinsky to the Palau and began a personal relationship. And until yesterday, when we spoke on the phone. It was important, it pushed us to tour. Our artists, like Gergiev or Currentzis, have been outside the big agencies. They are very free people who have focused on their project and have not played the power game.
Will you return to Barcelona after the cancellations due to the war in Ukraine?
Clear. We are clear that music must be a bridge between cultures and peoples, not a projectile. A week before bringing Currentzis last season we brought the Warsaw Symphony with the Ukrainian flag, and now the Israel Philharmonic will come: we are outside the systematic contamination of art by politics.
