A season marked by heroes at the Palau de la Música Catalana

The Palau de la Música Catalana is warming up for the 2024-2025 season with over 100 concerts. The program, with 14 premieres and nine commissions, will have heroes as its leitmotiv, focusing on the miracle of creating and interpreting music; a specifically... and titanic activity. It will delve into this figure, but also into that of anti-heroes, through the music of composers such as Wagner, Strauss, Bach, Vivaldi, Händel, Mahler, and Beethoven.

As it could not be otherwise, there will be space for high-level orchestras. Within the Palau 100 cycle, the star cycle of the Fundació Orfeó Català-Palau de la Música Catalana, one will be able to listen to the Vienna Philharmonic and the Royal Concertgebouw of Amsterdam. Likewise, the Luxembourg Philharmonic Orchestra, Orchestre des Champs Élysées, Philharmonia Orchestra of London, and the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra will perform. Next year will also see the return of choral ensembles such as the Collegium Vocale Gent and the Balthasar Neumann Chor.

But there will be much more. Great voices will once again stop at the modernist stage with the Palau Great Voices cycle, with examples such as Juan Diego Flórez, Iréne Theorin, Sarah Connolly, Philippe Jaroussky, Serena Sáenz, Diana Damrau, Jonas Kaufmann, and Andrè Schuen. Not only great lyrical personalities will visit the Palau; very relevant interpreters of their instruments will step onto the modernist hall accompanied by an orchestra, in chamber format or in individual recitals: Joshua Bell, Grigory Sokolov, Arcadi Volodos, Fazil Say, Alice Sara Ott, Arnau Tomás, Sara Cubarsi, Denis Kozhukin and many others.

Homage will also be paid to the enigmatic compositional talent of Juli Garreta, considered by many as the "Catalan Strauss" and applauded by Stravinsky. A discreet watchmaker from Sant Feliu de Guíxols who never perceived himself as a genius but who created some of the most vibrant scores of his generation, comparable to the best European composers. The Palau will take the opportunity to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the birth and the 100th anniversary of the death of this anti-hero with six concerts, among which the GIO Symphonia will stand out.

Between heroes and anti-heroes, the Palau will have guest artists in the new season. One of them will be the Barcelona composer Raquel García-Tomás, with six concerts, reviewing already known works from her audacious repertoire and premiering others of new creation. With three commissioned works, one of them will even aspire to revise, reinvent and deepen the very essence of a genre as canonical as the waltz. A commitment to local talent as seen in a program made up of 59 Catalan composers. The second guest composer of the season will be the American Steve Reich, one of the promoters of the musical current of minimalism, a living legend of music and a beacon for generations of musicians who can be enjoyed at the Palau with interpretations of some of his most memorable pieces.

The commitment to local talent is one of the hallmarks of the house, which is why this year a new residency will begin with Frames Percussion, one of the most prominent groups in the current music scene, winner of the Ernst von Siemens Foundation's 2024 Ensemble Award. They will be protagonists of the Palau for the next two seasons, and in the first they will interpret works by the guest artists, Raquel García-Tomás and Steve Reich. In addition, the Trio Fortuny ---composed of Joel Bardolet, Pau Codina and Marc Heredia--- will maintain its artistic residency at the Palau in this 2024-25 season, delving into the musical universe of Shostakovich, Bach, Mozart, Josep Maria Guix, Beethoven and Schumann.

All of this, accompanied by the presence of leading figures from a new generation of conductors who are taking off in the current music scene, such as Klaus Mäkelä ---who will debut in Barcelona with his concert at the Palau---, Teodor Currentzis, Daniel Harding, Gustavo Gimeno and Pablo Heras-Casado. One of the most outstanding events of the program will be the visit of the New York conductor Marin Alsop together with the violinist María Dueñas.

Great works from the symphonic repertoire of the history of classical music by Richard Strauss, Gustav Mahler, Anton Bruckner, Dmitri Shostakovich or Ludwig van Beethoven will be revisited. In addition, contemporary repertoire will be incorporated, with compositions by the Korean Unsuk Chin and the American Jessie Montgomery.

As it could not be otherwise, there will be space for high-level orchestras, such as the Vienna Philharmonic and the Royal Concertgebouw of Amsterdam

Also present will be the Freiburger Barockorchester, with its conductor René Jacobs, and the ensemble internationally recognized as the best in interpreting the Vivaldian repertoire, the Accademia Bizantina, led by its founder and director, Ottavio Dantone.

Symphonic music for everyone

With a focus on bringing classical music to new audiences, the Palau will invite them to discover it through unique projects such as the national premiere of Dream requiem by Rufus Wainwright, with the Orfeó Català and the Orquestra Simfònica de Barcelona i Nacional de Catalunya (OBC) as performers under the direction of Ludovic Morlot.

Also featured in the Palau Fronteres cycle will be Bach & forward, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, and Hergest Ridge, with the latter paying homage to Mike Oldfield's second album. There will even be a concert with video game music, which, after its recent success, will be repeated in two sessions, again with the Orquestra Simfònica del Vallès.

Subscriptions and tickets

The sale of cycle subscriptions and à la carte subscriptions (from three concerts) is now available online or in person at the box office. Individual tickets can also be purchased.

For those under 35, there are 50% discounts on tickets for concerts organized by the Fundació Orfeó Català-Palau de la Música Catalana. Currently, nearly 10,000 young people are registered in the Grada Jove community, which they can join for free to access these benefits.

More information and tickets at palaumusica.cat.