From the silence

This is a concert of vital musical contrasts. The young Austrian trumpeter Selina Ott, who will be playing Alexander Arutunian’s Trumpet Concerto, is one of the leading figures in the Festival Emergents and one of the attractions of a programme that also features students from the Escola Superior de Música de Catalunya. The programme also includes Symphony no. 3 by Valencian composer Andrés Valero-Castells, which invites us to reflect on Alzheimer’s disease: a “silent epidemic” that undermines sufferers’ abilities. This will be the first performance of the version for symphonic bands and is dedicated to the composer’s mother and all other patients and carers, a moving artistic reference to a disease we are only too familiar with today. The concert begins with another type of silence, the silence at the bottom of the sea. This is the world premiere of a piece by Salvador Brotons dedicated to the Mar d’Amunt, a small area in the Mediterranean of outstanding underwater beauty.