Easter usually tests the Europeanness of this country’s cultural life. In Central Europe, it is a period of great musical celebration, linked to one extent or another to the spiritual nature of these dates. And in Barcelona and the rest of Catalonia, strides are being made in this direction, regardless of whether the public is a believer or not.
The Liceu, without going any further, has for the first time placed The Messiah in the period of the passion and death of Jesus and not in the nativity, while the Palau de la Música has not been content to program a Bach Passion with some leading international training: this time he wanted to produce it.
In the same way, Peralada has launched, already in its 2nd Easter edition, to commission a contemporary darkness service. And like every year, the Cervera Easter Festival highlights Catalonia’s musical heritage of yesterday and today. Here is a possible musical guide for these days.
The Palau de la Música and the Orfeó Català have a long relationship with Bach’s Matthew Passion, as they were the first to premiere it in Spain, in 1921, almost a century after Mendelssohn rescued it from the forgotten in the same Leipzig where the brilliant singer had conducted it for the first time a century earlier. This was explained yesterday by the deputy artistic director of the room, Mercedes Conde, who two years ago proposed to launch a project that would unite Catalan singers and choirs with a specialist in the Germanic repertoire such as Christoph Prégardien, who has been the Evangelist of this quintessential oratorio, who has been directed by such batons as Leonhardt, Koopman, Harnoncourt, Gardiner, Herreweghe…
But in addition to his extensive career as a choir singer, lyric tenor and conductor, Prégardien is a renowned pedagogue who has been teaching in Cologne for 20 years. And if last year he held an academy at the Schubertíada in Vilabertran, now he has found at the Palau a project that suits him: in this Passion he conducts Vespres d’Arnadí, the Orfeó Children’s Choir and the Chamber Choir of Palau, more soloists who leave their ranks (Mireia Tarragó, Mercè Bruguera, Guillem Batllori or Pau Armengol, who will play Jesús), who will also sing the choral parts.
“Here I can combine my experience in all these fields”, says Prégardien, sitting in a chair located where the first stone of the modernist building is. Speaking of this concert on the 25th, which will be held the day before at the National Auditorium in Madrid, he adds: “I agreed to work with these young soloists from ensembles because I trust this institution, but I made it a condition that they come in Cologne for a previous work”. For the long and complex role of Evangelist, he chose, of course, a young German student of his. “The German language is already difficult for the Germanic-speaking singers themselves, it was better not to risk it. Apart from that, we have worked a lot on diction and expression, and I am satisfied and sure that they will all have a professional career”.
The tenor defends this passion against that of Saint John, “in which the role of Jesus seems monolithic, a king on high who sings very beautifully, but nothing more”. In that of Sant Mateu, he is a human being, he argues. “You have to show the emotional state of the personality you play. And in this Passion, Jesus is a poor man full of fears, someone very human and with emotions that each have their own color to connect with your soul. And you don’t have to be someone who believes in God, you just have to believe in the human being”, affirms this artist educated in Catholicism.
The director of the Cor de Cambra del Palau, Xavier Puig, who highlights “the generational novelty of choir singers/soloists that we didn’t have years ago”, will in turn lead the Vallès Symphony in a Passion according to St. John that counts with a new play by Sergi Belbel and narrators such as Enric López, Mercè Pons or Meritxell Yanes, all claiming genuine human passions in times of political correctness. It starts today at the Faràndula in Sabadell, tomorrow is at the Palau, Sunday in Tarragona and on April 5th in Terrassa, with the Madrigal Choir, among others, and the voices of Marta Mathéu/Elionor Martínez, Eulàlia Fantova or Josep- Ramon Olivé.
The second edition of Easter in Peralada starts with the fascinating San Giovanni Battista by Alessandro Stradella, which marks the meeting of the great Roman oratorio inherited from Carissimi with Cavalli’s Venetian opera. Vespres d’Arnadí takes on the challenge in the voices of Xavier Sabata, Giulia Semenzato and Elena Copons. The following day, the Bachcelona Consort debuts in this square in the Empordà with the Solistes Salvat Beca Bach, which for Daniel Tarrida, director of the project, means “playing for the Champions”. They will address Bach’s unique version of the Stabat Mater, in which he changed the text, since the Lutheran liturgy does not include the veneration of the Virgin, and added voices (viola) that do not appear in Pergolesi’s original. The project, which completes arias for Easter cantatas, visits the Antigua Music Festival in Tenerife the day before and on April 1 goes to Gliwice, Poland.
And since a few years ago, composer Joan Magrané from Reus has been thinking about putting music to the responsories for Holy Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays, Peralada has not hesitated to give him a commission: this Tenebrae Responsoria (Fira Sixena in Parasceve) which will premiere on Friday (11 p.m.) at the Carmel church and which will dialogue with those composed by François Couperin in 1714, which will be performed on Saturday by the soloists of the Orchestra and Choir of the Versailles Opera. “This Easter festival is a meeting point between music and spirituality and follows the line of other festivals in Europe – points out Oriol Aguilà, artistic director -, with elements such as the South Korean pianist Yunchan Lim, who is not very Setmana Holy but very Peralada”.
The 14th edition of the festival that started yesterday investigates Catalan musical traditions to discover their influence on current creators and performers. Organized by La Paeria, the only festival dedicated to Catalan music this time has 10 productions (14 concerts in 5 venues) and honors Ricard Lamonte de Grignon, on his 125th birthday, and Josep Valls i Royo, on the 25th anniversary of his death.
To the former, Salvador Brotons dedicates part of tomorrow’s inaugural concert, at the Paranymf of the University, with Julià Carbonell de les Terres de Lleida: they will perform a re-reading of the composer on Father Antoni Soler, in addition to premiering a work by Marc Migó and perform the colorful Symphony no. 3 of the same Brotons. Cellist Arnau Tomàs (Quartet Casals) and pianist Mercè Hervada pay tribute to Josep Valls on the 28th.
On the 24th there is an interdisciplinary show, Nu.A, by Núria Andorrà; on the 27th the book La viola tenor Parramon about this unique instrument by the Barcelona luthier Ramon Parramon is presented, and on the 29th there is a double concert (11.30 and 1 pm) by Albert Guinovart at the Municipal Auditorium, where he explores three different poetics of Catalan piano. The Revolutionary Quartet documentaries are shown. Gerhard’s enigma and Alicia’s hands with a display dedicated to De Larrocha. Xavier Puig conducts the closing concert Francesc Andreví and Ramon Carnicer: two Lleida natives in Madrid.
