Repertoire

Víctor Visuerte: Pantagruèlic. Assignment for the composition classroom at ESMUC (2025) 8’
Martin Ellerby: Euphonium Concerto (2013) 22’
Oliver Waespi: Out of Earth (2015) 40’

ARTISTS

Barcelona Symphonic Band (BMB)
José R. Pascual-Vilaplana, conductor
Adrià Cisneros, euphonium

Programme

The Festival Emergents provides a stage to showcase recent compositions featuring innovative approaches for versatile orchestras. The concert will begin with a piece by Víctor Visuerte —head of the composition department at the Escola Superior de Música de Catalunya (ESMUC)— highlighting the true extent of the creativity to be found among new generations of composers.

Martin Ellerby’s Euphonium concerto is remarkable for the prominence of an unusual instrument, the euphonium or saxhorn, a wind instrument from the brass family that is notable for its conical shape. The name, of Latin origin, means “well-sounding”, and Ellerby’s concerto, performed by Adrià Cisneros, demonstrates the instrument’s capacity to articulate extraordinarily agile melodies.

The last of the programmed pieces bears the disturbing title Out of Earth. Conceived by Oliver Waespi in 2015, it is an extensive and complex work of symphonic flight, which —thematically oriented— seems to develop from a consciousness far removed from the Earth. In addition to vibrational speculations that subtly emulate gravitational forces, the ensemble experiences moments of exaltation during tutti sections.