Music lovers in Barcelona and beyond can now open their autumn agendas and start reserving dates. Internationally renowned orchestras such as the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, the London Symphony Orchestra, Staatskapelle Dresden, and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, and conductors such as Teodor Currentzis, Daniele Gatti, and Zubin Mehta will pass through the city as part of the star cycles of the Palau de la Música Catalana, Palau 100, Palau Òpera, and Palau Grans Veus, which will kick off in October.
In total, there will be 21 scheduled concerts, with another six extraordinary ones, bringing together the most recognized conductors with the most outstanding ensembles and soloists from the international music scene. The program is marked by "excellence, quality, and diversity," as highlighted by the president of the Fundació Orfeó Català-Palau de la Música Catalana, Joaquim Uriach. "There will be works beloved by the public, and also works outside the comfort zone," he emphasized alongside the general director of the Palau, Joan Oller.
The most emblematic cycle of the modernist auditorium, Palau 100, will offer 12 concerts and another five extraordinary ones, with top-level ensembles. In fact, the cycle aims to bring the most relevant ensembles and figures from the international music circuit closer to the Barcelona public. It will be within this cycle that the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, the London Symphony Orchestra, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Staatskapelle Dresden, and the Budapest Festival Orchestra, among other internationally recognized ensembles, will perform.
The ensembles will not be the only ones to make the stage vibrate. Some of the most influential conductors globally will perform under the colorful dome of the Palau, such as Teodor Currentzis, Simon Rattle, Myung-Whun Chung, Daniele Gatti, Iván Fischer, and Zubin Mehta. Also starring in the cycle will be performers such as pianists Yuja Wang and Seong-Jin Cho, violinists Anne-Sophie Mutter and Janine Jansen, and cellist Kian Soltani, as well as the voices of Eleonora Buratto, Elina Garanča, Benjamin Bernheim, and Michele Pertusi.
The great conductors, ensembles, and performers will fill the Palau de la Música with essential composers such as Beethoven, Chopin, Schubert, Wagner, and Tchaikovsky, but also with other less common but equally excellent names, such as Anton Bruckner or Jean Sibelius. Through their work, the cycle, which will begin on October 20, will offer a journey from Renaissance music to Romanticism and the 20th century.
In parallel, the most emblematic lyrical voices will take over the auditorium with Palau Grans Veus. The cycle will begin on November 13 with baritone Benjamin Appl, who commemorates the centenary of the birth of Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, of whom Appl was precisely the last disciple. The six concerts of the cycle will also feature tenor Piotr Beczała, sopranos Julia Lezhneva, Sondra Radvanovsky, and Julia Kleiter, and Catalan countertenor Xavier Sabata.
And baroque opera will be the common thread of the fifth season of the Palau Òpera cycle, which will include three concerts and an extraordinary one. Il Mitridate Eupatore by Alessandro Scarlatti will open it on October 15, while on November 9 it will be the turn of Händel's Alcina. Another highlight is scheduled for November 25 with Christoph Willibald Gluck's Orfeo ed Euridice. Händel will also be in charge of closing it, with Giulio Cesare.
Overall, the program aims to bring great figures from the global music scene closer to the Catalan public. To do so, the cost of the three cycles has amounted to 2.2 million euros, above the 1.9 million of last season. A large part of the cost is financed by ticket revenues, as Oller pointed out. In this regard, the general director stressed that prices remain in the same range as current ones, which are set according to the cost of each concert.
The Orfeó Català, in Los Angeles
And the Palau will not only bring music to Barcelona, but will also take it outside the city, and even to the United States. The Orfeó Català will debut in Los Angeles with Gustavo Dudamel and the orchestra he conducts, the Los Angeles Philharmonic. Together with the Cor de Cambra del Palau, they will perform Beethoven's Missa solemnis in February next year. It will do so with three concerts of what Beethoven considered his best work, with the participation of soprano Pretty Yende, mezzo-soprano Sarah Saturnino, tenor Seokjong Baek, and bass Nicholas Brownlee as soloists.
"The challenge is enormous: it is one of the most difficult works in the repertoire. We have to do it three days in a row and we have to do it very well," remarked Oller, who detailed that it will require 120 choristers. This "excessive work" and extremely demanding piece has a special connection with the choir: the first recorded performance of the work dates back to 1927 and was by the Orfeó Català, which a century later is taking it to the other side of the Atlantic.