If the reader is part of the Barcelona music-lover sect (or the urban culture ecosystem), they will know that music manager Víctor Medem will be the new director of L'Auditori starting next July. In turn, they will also know that Medem ascends to the throne previously occupied by musician Robert Brufau, an old acquaintance of the house who has directed it for seven years and worked there for about four lustrums, and who will soon go into exile nord enllà ---where they say people are blah blah blah--- as the new programming director of the Konserthuset and the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra. All this is known by the few of us who live hidden inside a staff, and it's normal for less idle people to know nothing about it and stop reading this article upon seeing its title. However, this appointment ---and therefore, a change of era at L'Auditori--- has seemed to me to have an especially scarce echo, both in terms of evaluating the recent past and the future.
Journalistic news or citizen gossip is not the measure of all things, but it is necessary to insist on the weight of this administrative silence within the cultural debate, for what it reveals about the entity itself; and I would say that this whole general climate of sotto voce certifies that, for now, L'Auditori is an infrastructure with rather non-existent relevance. Lovers of statistics will refute me, as always happens in these cases, with a bunch of big data about concerts, initiatives, premieres by local composers, and, in the particular jargon of bureaucrats, alliances that have been woven between the entity and the international market. But if we speak like men, clearly and unpleasantly, I would say that in recent years L'Auditori has not achieved the minimum that must be demanded of a public musical facility. First, that it promotes an idea of the sound art itself and elevates it to the maximum excellence and, second, that it takes care of our heritage.
Said in an even cruder way; the best way to evaluate the health of a music hall is to ask yourself what is the last memorable concert you remember hearing within its walls. Other things no, but this servant has a good sound memory and, in the case of L'Auditori, would answer this question with a silence worthy of master Cage. Parallelly, and unlike entities with a clear, innovative artistic line (and in some cases of great patrimonial care) such as Joan Matabosch's Liceu, Xavier Albertí's TNC, Rigola's Lliure... one doesn't quite understand what L'Auditori's master ideas are or, put more simply, what kind of unique sound experiences a music lover from the city and our country can find there. Part of this is embodied in its neuralgic engine, the Barcelona Symphony and National Orchestra of Catalonia, a formation that ---despite what anyone says--- does not reach the European second division and lives far from artistic ambition.
It surprises me that few people have been surprised that Robert Brufau, instead of continuing with his project, is leaving the Auditori to seek the warmth of the cold in a lower-ranking position. It is also notorious, I insist, that Medem's arrival has not been accompanied by a necessary debate on how to revive an entity that wanders dozing within the sidereal space of our sound life. At home we are not very distrustful, and I am sure that Víctor already has some ideas on how to make the community that revolves around L'Auditori more solid; Medem has proven experience in the private world (note for future public tenders; better if the candidate's former boss is not included in the jury of the matter...), he knows the Germanic model of orchestras remarkably well and has managed the world of lied with hopeful initiatives. But now he will command a totem in which there is little desire for revolution and much, but much, existential parsimony.
One cannot improve the image and profile of an entity without conducting a realistic and uncomplacent analysis of it. As of today, and it is a very common thought among the city's music managers, L'Auditori causes a stench of bad luck that will be difficult to straighten out. Nothing would make me happier than to have sinned as a pessimistic tribune and for the new director to be able to revive the dying man. He has work to do, and will need a lot of strength.