Le tombeau de Couperin / Ma mère l’Oye / Pavane

The Barcelona Symphony Orchestra (OBC) and Music Director Ludovic Morlot – renowned specialist in French repertoire with four Grammy awards – release the complete orchestral works of Maurice Ravel in six CDs between April 2024 and December 2026. The first volume of the collection, recorded at the Pau Casals Hall of L’Auditori with Mike George and Stephen Rinker – producer and sound engineer of the BBC and Chandos label – includes three iconic works by the composer from Ciboure (French Basque Country).

Ludovic Morlot’s precision and control of orchestral color give these recordings great transparency, with meticulously balanced sound and expressiveness that showcase the OBC’s poetic capacity. Additionally, the collection features the editorial revision of the complete orchestral works of the French composer: the Ravel Edition, a project that brings together artists such as Bertrand Chamayou, Renaud Capuçon, François-Xavier Roth, Ludovic Morlot, George Benjamin, Kirill Karabits, or Cristian Măcelaru, among others.

100 Years of Betsy Jolas

Betsy Jolas is renowned for her independent spirit, for refusing to adhere to a specific musical trend or to break radically with tradition. On the contrary, she champions the legacy of the past, saying that she “seek[s] solutions throughout history”. Her sources are the great maestros of vocal music: the polyphonists of the Renaissance, Monteverdi, Mozart and Schumann. This was an unusual approach in the period immediately following the Second World War, when many were seeking a complete break with the past. Nevertheless, her broad-mindedness earned her a good relationship with Pierre Boulez, who booked her as the first woman on the line-up for Domaine musical concerts, and led her to correspond with Luciano Berio and to hold Karlheinz Stockhausen and Elliott Carter in high regard. 

U

Jordi Savall described Bernat Vivancos’ music as a new musical Renaissance: “His extraordinary talent and his profound spirituality are placed at the service of a process that is the invention of a new language which, in spite of its complexity and modernity, is capable of transmitting to us pure beauty and emotion.”

In U, commissioned in 2021 by the OBC and recorded in 3D format in 2022 under the direction of Maestro Ludovic Morlot, the big orchestra is rearranged into three different groups according to tuning. Thus, as in a sea of rich and vibrant colours, waves of richly microtonal textures collide. In this piece, Vivancos represents a longing, the desire to get closer, to make our own that light in the abyss of darkness, that glimmer of hope that we only intuit, an oasis in the desert, and which we glimpse in the middle of thousands of difficulties. The delicate, incredibly fine melody that shines pure, like a crack in a wide wall of sound.

HOMENAJE A LIGETI

No lover of the arts (in their plural representations) can hide the somewhat presumptuous pleasure of feeling – seemingly for oneself – a connection with a creator’s oeuvre whose work is fodder and nourishment for the praise and admiration of a select few. Let this preamble be a tribute to the person and – clearly even more so – the catalogue of composer Sofía Martínez (1965), a catalogue that is quite reduced, staggered over time and savoured. Nor is her presence on the Internet significantly prolific. It is plausible that music like hers requires neither an excessive song and dance nor digital proliferation. In her biographical note, published on her concise and monastic web page, we read: «Her investigations lead her to explore quarter tones and deliciously slow glissandos. Like in quantum physics, the uncertainty principle, where the traditional reference points for both notes and time are lost. It is not about finding the precision of the note, but its most secret part, moving towards an inner path.»

Orchestral Works

Half a century ago, the American Gloria Coates showcased the expressive power of the glissando, brandished as a more than self-sufficient feature with which to create sonorous spaces that our ears could be well comfortable with. Several decades after those first monothematic experiences, in 2021 composer Núria Giménez Comas (1980) presents a work like Nostalgia of light, Yearning for…, an orchestral score in which – albeit with a different method and a different conduct – that characteristic sliding from one note to another, in rapid succession, once again takes centre stage. The glissando is a purely contemporary gesture, one could even say a calling card, a universe in and of itself used in highly diverse environments by the most outstanding creators of the second half of the twentieth century. On this occasion, the value is how our composer from Girona has integrated it into the context of a “luminous” orchestration, in her own words. To be more graphic, and even at the risk of crossing the line into the excessively poetic, we could add ‘Mediterranean’.

ORCHESTRAL FOLKSONGS

Robert Gerhard’s love for Catalonia, for its cultural traditions and for its popular music nourished his creativity throughout most of his artistic life. Where this was most evident was in his “Catalan Folksongs”.

To commemorate the centenary since the birth of his teacher Felip Pedrell, Gerhard composed “Cancionero de Pedrell”, the ‘bouquet of wildflowers for Pedrell’s grave’, as he described it.

Soprano Núria Rial and Catalan conductor Francesc Prat join the OBC to offer a conscientious version of these traditional songs for orchestra.

LA DONNA

Cassandra Miller’s music has been described by Alex Ross as ‘immensely beautiful and immensely haunting’, and by The Observer as ‘generous, engaging and unlike any other music’. Her Duet for Cello and Orchestra was hailed by The Guardian as one of the ‘finest classical music works of the 21st century’.

Cassandra Miller is a Canadian composer based in London. Her written works explore transcription as a creative process and automatic singing as compositional material. La Donna was commissioned by L’Auditori for the OBC.

IN LUCE PRAESENTI

‘There is little music as delicate and evocative as that of Miquel Oliu. Mastery of materials, extraordinarily fluid form, penetrating poetic images, profound silences, and exceptional communicative ability: a brilliant composer.’ This is how composer Ramon Humet presents the music of Miquel Oliu.

Miquel Oliu won the prestigious Reina Sofia Prize for Music Composition in 2015. In Luce Praesenti, commissioned by L’Auditori and premiered by the OBC and Juanjo Mena in 2021, evidences a sound universe full of detail and subtlety. With an orchestration full of French reminiscences, the work sketches a clear and clean structure, without artifice or elements that seek contradictions in its formal development.

Memoria de la Isla Verde

“Memoria de la Isla Verde” marks Sánchez-Verdú’s first compositional venture into the world of symphonic band. It is a work for clarinet and band commissioned by the clarinetist Manuel Martínez and the Banda Municipal de Barcelona. In the composer’s own words, “this piece is a journey and a ritual for solo clarinet and wind orchestra (symphonic band). The green island is an essential figure in the world of Sufism. It is located in a mythical space, and on the peaks of its great Mount Käf —the white mountain— dwells King Simorgh, the king-bird toward which thousands of birds set out on a long and difficult pilgrimage. Simorgh means in Persian ‘thirty birds’ […], the thirty birds that arrive at this space of the green island, and before Simorgh discover that the journey was an inner journey.”

SUCH A VIVID PARADE!

The Banda Municipal de Barcelona and its principal conductor José R. Pascual Vilaplana present the world premiere recording of Such a vivid parade! (Ouverture for Wind Ensemble, 2024) by the composer David Moliner, who describes this work as a score born from the interest of conductor Marcel Ortega in expanding the wind band repertoire. This collaboration results in a creation that explores the expressive possibilities of the wind ensemble, conceived as a dynamic formation with rich gestural potential.

OBRAS PARA BANDA SINFÓNICA

Carles Suriñach (Barcelona, 1915) emigrated to the United States in the 1950s, where he developed an important career as a ballet composer with the prestigious choreographer Martha Graham, in addition to composing symphonic works, concerts and chamber music. This recording includes some of his most notable works for symphonic band.

HYMN AT TWILIGHT

The BMB commissioned Hymn at Twilight (2019) from English master Philip Sparke (London, 1951). With this piece by master Sparke, one of the most performed composers in band programmes round the world, we find ourselves before a score with raw intimacy, in which the band’s palette of colours is developed in an extraordinary way to create atmospheres full of light and sound sensitivity.

URBAN LANDSCAPES

The BMB premiered Symphony No. 3 ‘Urban Landscapes’ Op. 55 (2020) during the 2020-2021 season. The work of Swiss conductor and composer Franco Cesarini (Bellinzona, 1961) stands out for its great stylistic versatility, with one large defining trait: creative craftsmanship based on primary elements that serve as a nexus throughout its structures. In his Symphony No. 3, subtitled ‘Urban Landscapes¡, he pays homage to the Windy City, Chicago, mixing styles typical of 20th century American music (Gershwin, Copland, Reed) at the service of his quest for thematic unity that so characterises him.

VÉRTIGO Y LLAMA

Vertigo y Llama (2018) could be defined as a sound proposal based on the deconstruction of different pre-existing sound materials to give them a new use. Its author, José Miguel Fayos-Jordán (Chella, 1980), is an emerging persona in today’s musical creation, his constant search in this area has led him to create several musical pieces such as the one we present today, in which the verses of Mexican Octavio Paz are mixed with quotes from the Llibre Vermell de Montserrat (Red Book of Montserrat), producing a deconstruction of harmonic spectra throughout the composition.

FOLKSONGS

The works of Miguel Asins Arbó (Barcelona, 1916 – Valencia, 1996) were premiered by conductors of the stature of Eduard Toldrà, Joan Lamote de Grignon, and Ataúlfo Argenta. He contributed as a composer to films such as El cochecito (1961), directed by Marco Ferreri, Plácido (1961), and El verdugo (1963) by Luis García Berlanga, among others. He soon also began composing music for documentaries and television series such as Diego de Acevedo (1967), España siglo XX (1971), Dalí (1980), and España en guerra (1986), among many others. His connection to ethnomusicology and folklore was particularly significant, as he published several songbooks and wrote a large number of original compositions based on or inspired by traditional Valencian and Catalan music. This album includes some of his most outstanding works for symphonic band.