Russia, to begin with

A shamelessly Russian start to the musical season. If last week we inaugurated the season at the Liceu with Shostakovich's Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, the Palau wanted to welcome us by pinning us to our seats with a neoclassical ballet by Stravinsky and a symphony by Shostakovich, under the baton of Daniele Gatti and the solid executive machinery of the Vienna Philharmonic. But at the end of September, the Palau de la Música already showed us a Rachmaninoff and a Mussorgsky, by the hand of Guinovart and the Vallès Symphony Orchestra. And well, musically, the writer is more accustomed to the romanticism of the latter than to the almost atonal serialism of the former, I mean that I must be much more from the 19th than from the 20th century, but in the hands of these composers, maturing pays off.

Unlike the Liceu, at the Palau de la Música, the authorities are neither present nor seem obliged to attend the season inaugurations: visibly, this hall reserves the marked dates and the not-so-marked ones for those who truly want to come and enjoy symphonic music and protocol, the purely social or box-seat aspect, or the photocall spirit, is much less abundant.

That's why when you find familiar faces, you know they're not there just because, and since I'm sure I'm leaving someone out, I prefer to say that there were important journalists, important lawyers, important engineers, important businessmen, important Ombudswomen, important violinists, important pianists, and a good part of the board of the Orfeó Català. The president, Joaquim Uriach, attends these events more as a music lover than as an orchestra conductor, and I would almost say that his entire team does the same. The person accompanying me comes from the United States and points out that the hall seems human-sized, not only physically but atmospherically. Well, this has been accentuated much more thanks to a way of doing things, that of the Palau, which every day resembles more its foundational spirit: a palace for the people.

Stravinsky's Apollon musagète, new to me, has also been of human size. A ballet based on Greek mythology, the god of music, who is visited by three muses (who were initially supposed to be nine). The Philharmonic has been reduced to half the stage, little more than thirty instruments, strings and more strings. It seems to start in a classical and almost baroque way, but soon asserts its modern intention and its growing but adorable complexity. The recognized perfection of the orchestra could be taken for granted, but it is always a mistake: it is a pleasure to know that the flight will be free of all turbulence. This piece has seemed to me a kind of musical caress, a kind welcome into a harmless and understanding universe. Sometimes I detected slight memories in the Beethovenian binary syncopations, but above all I have extracted a fanciful Pas de Deux, a tender Apollo Variation and a disturbing Apotheosis. Let's say it has been a very soft, digestible Russia and 20th century, with a calm soul. We will see, after the break, what Shostakovich has to call.

Coming, as I said, from the inauguration of the Liceu, which strongly highlighted how Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk was censored by Stalin, the writer would have expected a work intimidated or at least subjected to the constant bad turns that the communist regime inflicted on the composer: denunciations, purges, eliminations from the repertoire, police and journalistic persecution... But it turns out that today we come to see the Tenth, number ten, from 1953, after the Second World War and especially with Iosif Stalin dead and buried and descended into hell. We come to witness a personal liberation, a joyful revenge. The orchestra fills all the chairs to develop a brief work full of sarcasm, which does not try to be majestic but which relies heavily on decibels and simultaneous execution. This also did not please the post-Stalinist authorities, who expected a pompous work to celebrate the end of the war, but Shostakovich no longer cared about that. He was free, and it shows. It was a denunciation, and it shows. It is full of his personal conflicts and dramas, and it shows in the rage and the discharge of energy that grabs us by the lapels. The contrast with the silence at each end of a movement leaves us, as I said, physically nailed to the anxieties of the 20th century.

When the concert ends, almost to decompress so much tension, Daniel Gatti decides to throw us sugar candies in the form of Brahms' Hungarian Dance No. 5. We leave with this mainstream goodnight kiss and say goodbye to our mythological muses. Yes, this hall is made for human size, I conclude with the person accompanying me. The skin, the vein, the soul always find a shake. And luckily, before and after the work, to be able to take the pulse of our own community.