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This coming season at L’Auditori marks the start of a new artistic project spanning the next three seasons. The 20-21 Season, which will be comprised of 210 productions and highlights the role of women, with a significant presence of female orchestra conductors, creators and composers. Furthermore, three new projects will be promoted this season: the International Quartet Biennale, the Mozart Summer Nights Festival and the L’Auditori de Barcelona Choir. As a 21st-century institution committed to sustainability, L’Auditori is reducing its use of paper by half and making a serious move towards digitisation with its new virtual space L’Auditori Digital (auditoridigital.cat), which includes its own record label and a video streaming platform. This strategy will enable it to continue to attract a younger audience, who this year will have the chance to enjoy the entire season for €85 with the new Flat Rate 35 (available to under 35s) or for €50 with the Flat Rate 25 (available to under 25s). Last season, over 340 under 25s showed an interest in L’Auditori events.
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First Movement: The Creation
L’Auditori is entering a new phase in the form of a trilogy programme based on an artistic narrative modelled on a three-phase life cycle that will bring together all its programmes for the first time, representing a process of genesis (20-21 Season: Creation), development (21-22 Season: Love-Hate) and finale (22-23 Season: Death or Return). The venue’s entire programme for September 2020 to July 2023 is rooted in these concepts.
The first part of the journey focuses on Creation, with approaches ranging from God’s creation according to monotheistic religions to the idea of artistic creation as a result of human necessity. In this section, there will be an opportunity to listen to, among others, works such as Haydn’s The Creation or Thomas Adès’ In Seven Days – Piano Concerto with Moving Image.
This season, we will also address the question of whether music can be created out of nothing by looking at works based on other works of music or fragments thereof, such as Luciano Berio’s Rendering, which was composed based on the sketch for Franz Schubert’s Symphony No. 10. Similarly, we will take a deeper look at more recent music created using pre-existing materials, such as music samples and electronic or turntable music.
We will explore the concept of authorship in popular music, improvised music and new sound creation with songs passed along by oral tradition, works with open scores – where the performer becomes joint creator of the work– and proposals for collective creation.
L’Auditori de Barcelona is thus embarking on a new journey in which its entire programme falls under a comprehensive artistic project while opening new doors to the public – in all its diversity – to ensure that it makes space in which to experience music.
A new image for the new artistic project
L’Auditori is also premiering its new logo and image to go with this new artistic project that is to be developed over the next three years. One of the main changes is the addition of the word Barcelona to the institution’s logo as part of a local and international repositioning strategy. A diagonal line has also been added as a key graphic element with multiple meanings: the intersection where the many types of musicians and audiences converge at L’Auditori, and the venue’s strategic position at the new cultural pull intersection at Plaça de les Glòries. But, far from being restricted to the logos, this diagonal line will be present in the entire graphic design for this first movement: The Creation evokes allegorical images of origin such as a storm, birth or primates and will be developed in future seasons.
The image which, like the programme, is in the form of a trilogy, has been designed by the design firm Make it Gas and was the winner of the competition held by L’Auditori and the Festival of Arts and Design.
Thomas Adès and Cassandra Miller, guest composers for the season
The commitment to new creation is in L’Auditori’s DNA. This season, the guest composers will be Thomas Adès and Cassandra Miller, two of today’s most established composers.
Thomas Adés (London, 1971)
Adés, undoubtedly one of the greatest living composers, has been influenced in his work by leading composers such as Benjamin Britten and Héctor Berlioz. Adès sees writing as a lighting of paths through different structures and writes music with a surrealist touch: a recurring action of approaching and drawing back by listening, a game of sorts between opposites that attract and repel each other.
From his chamber and symphonic works there will be an opportunity to listen to Arcadiana (1994), Three Studies from Couperin (2006) and In Seven Days (2008). Furthermore, in autumn 2021 we will premiere the violin concerto Humouresques conducted by Thomas Adès himself, a work jointly commissioned by L’Auditori and the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Danish National Symphony Orchestra and the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra.
Cassandra Miller (Metchosin, Canada, 1974)
The music of Canadian composer Cassandra Miller deliberately steers clear from the idea of creation out of nothing. Her entire production is a constant projection of echoes and shadows of fragments and references to other works. In fact, her composition work consists of diluting these references to the point of imperceptibility.
In terms of Cassandra Miller’s work, there will be an opportunity to listen to About Bach for string quartet, Bel Canto for soprano and ensemble, a new piece for voice and electronics, and even the world premiere of a symphonic work commissioned by L’Auditori.
From Cererols to Gerhard, L’Auditori brings back Catalonia’s musical heritage
The commemoration of the fiftieth anniversary of the death of Robert Gerhard, one of the leading composers of the 20th century, is a new milestone in L’Auditori’s heritage project. Although Gerhard’s music will feature prominently in L’Auditori’s various programmes, he will not be the only Catalan composer included in them: L’Auditori de Barcelona plans to include 58 Catalan musical heritage works in this season.
The music of Joan Cererols, Ferran Sor, Carles Baguer, Joan Manén, Gaspar Cassadó, Juli Garreta, Ricard Lamote de Grignon and Eduard Toldrà, among others, will be performed by the Barcelona Symphony Orchestra, Barcelona Symphony Band and the instrument, choral and solo performers who will perform at L’Auditori during this and subsequent seasons.
Along the same lines, the design of L’Auditori de Barcelona’s heritage project is based on a commitment to the promotion of current cultural assets, either through performances of works by established composers or through specific commissions ranging from Jordi Cervelló, Albert Sardà or Josep Maria Guix to Raquel García-Tomás, Núria Giménez Comas and Miquel Oliu, to name but a few. The 20-21 season will see the release of 36 new works.
As part of the Pau Casals Orchestra Centennial, the OBC will tour our region with music performances by this historic ensemble.
The new International Quartet Biennale opens the season
L’Auditori’s 20-21 Season will kick off with the first Barcelona International Quartet Biennale, a four-day event featuring some of today’s leading ensembles and including concerts, masterclasses and talks. The event, which will be co-curated by Cuarteto Casals, will feature other quartets including Novus, Artemis and Diotima, among others.
Although the biennale will focus specifically on Joseph Haydn as one of the main pillars of this genre, it will also feature renowned composers such as Thomas Adès (guest composer of the season), Josep Soler and Jordi Cervelló, among others, as well as creators such as Raquel García-Tomás, Luis Codera Puzo and Octavi Rumbau, with absolute premieres or conscious reviews of past works.
Eight female guest conductors at the OBC
The Barcelona Symphony Orchestra will take the lead at the Biennale with a season revolving around the theme of creation from different points of view. With a large number of international figures and an ambitious programme, the orchestra is taking a significant step in favour of female talent in the field of conducting and has invited eight female conductors to lead the OBC: Marta Gardolińska, Zoi Tsokanou, Giedrė Šlekytė, Ruth Reinhardt, Anja Bihlmaier, Elim Chan, Shi-Yeon Sung and Laurence Equilbey.
In addition to Kazushi Ono as principal conductor and Jan Willem de Vriend as principal guest conductor, the OBC will perform under the batons of Nuno Coelho, Matthias Pintscher, Ludovic Morlot, Nacho de Paz, Duncan Ward, Francesc Prat, Josep Caballé Domènech and Vassily Petrenko, among others.
Regarding the repertoire, the works to be enjoyed revisit the founding myths of origin or genesis, such as Franz Joseph Haydn’s oratorio The Creation, Richard Strauss’ Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Thomas Adès’ In Seven Days, Alberto Ginastera’s Popol Vuh or the premiere of the symphonic poem “En el temple i el cec de naixement” from Josep Soler’s opera Jesús de Natzaret.
The idea of change will lead us not only towards Richard Strauss’ Metamorphosen but also to György Ligeti’s Lontano and Olivier Messiaen’s wonderful Turangalîla-Symphonie, which will open the season.
The conquest of man’s freedom, man’s progress and the heroic success of the individual takes us to Gustav Mahler’s “Titan” Symphony, Jean Sibelius’ Sixth Symphony and the only opera ever written by Ludwig van Beethoven: Fidelio.
You can also enjoy works by composers who have drawn inspiration from pre-existing works to create new ones. Rendering by Luciano Berio is a reworking of the sketches of Franz Schubert’s Tenth Symphony; Paul Hindemith revisits Carl Maria von Weber with his Symphonic Metamorphoses; François Couperin is re-interpreted by Thomas Adès, Richard Strauss and Maurice Ravel; and Robert Gerhard focuses on traditional Catalan repertoire. This is also the inspiration for this season’s two commissions for the composers Raquel García-Tomás and Cassandra Miller.
In the soloist section, it is worth highlighting the Cuarteto Casals’ debut as a solo quartet performing with the orchestra, as well as figures such as the pianists Pierre-Laurent Aimard, Khatia Buniatishvili and Josep Colom; the sopranos Iréne Theorin, Dorothea Röschmann and Núria Rial; the tenor Ian Bostridge; the violinists Viktoria Mullova, Pinchas Zukerman and Leticia Moreno; the violist Antoine Tamestit; the cellists Narek Hakhnazaryan and Sol Gabetta; and the flautist Emmanuel Pahud, among others< strong>.
For the 20-21 Season, the OBC will be increasing the number of events from 24 to 26, with four extraordinary concerts at a single price of €25 to make the orchestra more affordable for everyone. These concerts will be a double programme of Mahler’s “Titan” Symphony and Raquel García-Tomás’s Revisiting Bach.
The film offering will also be redefined, with the soundtrack being performed live by the OBC. The films for this 20-21 Season, at a single price of €25, will include the animation film Up and the Francis Ford Coppola classic The Godfather.
Mozart Summer Nights Festival
One of the new changes for this season is the arrival of the Mozart Summer Nights Festival, which will explore the work of this composer from Salzburg with the OBC: we will go from Catalan symphonic masters Carles Baguer and Ferran Sor to their much-admired Haydn and the work of the extraordinary French romantic composer Louise Farrenc.
The Festival recovers the spirit of the one with the same name that existed years ago and moves it to the summer. Our resident orchestra will be accompanied by three hugely successful young soloists: the violinist Veronika Eberle, the clarinetist Andreas Ottensamer and the pianist Albert Cano Smit. In addition, it will be conducted by the experts in historically accurate performances Laurence Equilbey, Jonathan Cohen and Andrea Marc.
Leading conductors and soloists and the Barcelona premiere of Lorin Maaze’s “Ring” in the International Orchestra series
The International Orchestra series, co-produced with Ibercàmera and BCN Clàssics, will open in September with a performance of Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony by the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra under Valery Gergiev’s baton, as well as with Sibelius’ Violin Concerto with Janine Jansen. In November, the orchestra from Weimar will provide us with a unique experience: the work composed by the great conductor Lorin Maazel in the late nineteen eighties will be performed in Catalonia for the first time with excerpts from Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen cycle: 15 hours of opera condensed into 90 minutes of symphonic music. A magnificent example of contemporary creativity based on immortal music.
We will kick off 2021 with the Vienna Radio Symphony and Marin Alsop, who will perform Shostakovich’s Seventh Symphony, which was written as the bombs fell during the siege of Leningrad and is an ode to life and freedom. To celebrate the arrival of spring, the Stuttgart Orchestra will perform Gustav Mahler’s The Song of the Earth. And shortly before Sant Jordi in April there is another concert for your diaries: the Amsterdam Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra will perform under Paavo Järvi’s baton, with Yuja Wang on the piano. The May concerts will close with the Tokyo Symphony Orchestra performing Mahler’s sensational Sixth Symphony led by one of the greatest Mahler experts of our time: Jonathan Nott.
The Symphony Band focuses its Retrat d’Artista on Franco Cesarini
For the 20-21 Season, the Barcelona Symphony Band will perform absolute premieres and music of varied and diverse styles, with a multidisciplinary activity that is able to combine band music with other art forms such as drama, poetry, puppetry and audiovisual shows. The Swiss maestro Franco Cesarini, a world-leading figure in band music, will visit us as part of the Retrat d’Artista project.
Led by its principal conductor, José R. Pascual-Vilaplana, a broad range of projects will be presented offering performances by renowned soloists such as the pianist Ignasi Cambra, the Kebyart Ensemble and the soprano Maria Hinojosa, among others. This is in addition to the contributions of guest conductors such as Philippe Bach, Carlos Ramón and Salvador Brotons, among others.
The concert to be given by the MAP ensemble, which is formed by Marco Mezquida, Ernesto Aurignac and Ramon Prats, a trip to undreamed-of places, is particularly worth noting. The MAP ensemble, accompanied by the Barcelona Symphony Band, will show us the power of listening as a tool for making music grow.
In addition, as part of L’Auditori and Apropa Cultura’s social project, the Symphony Band will continue to offer its morning programme La Banda ens Apropa (The Band Brings Us Closer), with relaxed sessions aimed at everyone and particularly well-suited to benefit the well-being of all types of audiences.
Early music: Recovering the voices of forgotten female composers
The Early Music season is back with a great selection of leading national and international figures. From the El so original (Original Sound) series, which has been led by Jordi Savall for several seasons, to the events we offer jointly with the Bachcelona Festival or the visit by Musiciens du Louvre with the soprano Emőke Baráth, the music of Charpentier, Monteverdi, Bach and Handel will illuminate our lives once again.
In contrast to this music by such universally well-known authors, at the Festival Llums d’Antiga we will take a detailed look at the female creative world and highlight works by very relevant composers who have been silenced by history, such as Francesca Caccini, Isabella Leonarda, Claudia Sessa, Barbara Strozzi, Hildegard von Bingen and Élisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre, among others. Also featuring are ensembles of the calibre of Graindelavoix, returning to the Festival for a second year, Nevermind and the soprano Roberta Invernizzi, and Qvinta Essençia. In addition, we will discover our own musical heritage with a performance of the work known as the Barcelona Mass by the Ensemble Gilles Binchois and a programme ranging from Cererols to Ferrer devoted to the teachers of the Escolania de Montserrat.
Barenboim and the Hagen Quartett in the Chamber season
Following an unprecedented start with the Barcelona International Quartet Biennale, the Chamber Music season will bring us a historic European quartet, the Hagen Quartett, which is celebrating its fortieth anniversary.
It will also include a variety of formats with a fusion of piano and brass brought to us by Marina Hervàs and Mireia Farrés, Beethoven’s Diabelli Variations with Daniel Barenboim, and Schubert’s Die schöne Müllerin performed by Andrè Schuen and Daniel Heide, as well as the quartets and Nocturne for Piano Trio by the same composer.
This year we will be able to hear, as a violin, cello and piano ensemble, the Trio Fortuny and the Z.E.N. Trio exploring new links between modern and classical works, with a variety of pieces related to the night as well as the nationwide premiere of Bent Sørensen’s Phantasmagoria.
The conservation and dissemination of musical heritage for future generations is a key part of L’Auditori’s mandate. As part of this season, we will be able to hear, among others, three ballets by Robert Gerhard featuring the pianists Jordi Masó and Miquel Villalba, while Roger Padullés and Josep Surinyac will bring us the songs of a poetic and intimate Juli Garreta.
The L’Auditori de Barcelona Choir is born
This season, which comes under the theme of Creation, sees the birth of the L’Auditori de Barcelona Choir, a new cog in the complex workings of our venue which will add to Catalonia’s rich choral tradition. This should allow us to produce symphonic-choral productions to a high standard in partnership with other leading choirs in our musical ecosystem.
The new ensemble, led by the conductor Xavier Pastrana, is a professional choir that will perform four concerts over the 2020-2021 Season; three with the OBC and one a cappella. With the OBC it will perform two of the greatest Catholic sacred works: Mozart’s Mass in C minor and Haydn’s Creation. It will also perform The Plague, a late work by Robert Gerhard based on Albert Camus’ novel of the same name that is extremely relevant in the current context. The solo voice programme, for its part, is set in 1936 Barcelona, with a young Benjamin Britten sitting in the audience for the opening ceremony of the fourteenth International Society for Contemporary Music Festival which that year was held in the city thanks to Robert Gerhard’s influence. The main focus of the programme is choral music written by composers such as Bridge, Schönberg and Stravinsky during the English composer’s youth, although it will also include music by some of the Catalan composers selected for the 1936 ISCM Festival concerts, such as Ricard Lamote de Grignon and Juli Garreta.
Sampler Series: New Sound Creation
Sampler Series, L’Auditori’s new sound creation project, explores the possibility of creation ex-nihilo in the form of an ambitious journey from Karlheinz Stockhausen’s Mikrophonie (1964) to John Luther Adams and the turntables of Otomo Yoshihide and Philip Jeck.
The fragmentation and reconfiguration of elements of Cassandra Miller‘s music, Bernhard Lang‘s Monadologie series and Alfredo Costa Monteiro‘s games of chance and randomness in In Order to Avoid Disorder will be some of the highlights of the Sampler Series in a season that will take us from free jazz to electronic manipulation, helping L’Auditori maintain its position as the epicentre of avant-garde music in Catalonia.
The Sessions, shaking up today’s music scene
L’Auditori’s Jazz Sessions are making way for the Sessions, increasing the range of music included in this programme.
The transformation of material is the foundation on which the creative process of the versatile singer, composer and performer Joana Gomila is based. Her latest work, Paradise, involves folk, jazz, electronic music, improvisation and poetry in this process. The offering of the MAP – Marco Mezquida, Ernesto Aurignac and Ramon Prats – ensemble with the Barcelona Symphony Band is also worth noting. Lluc Casares’ music, on the other hand, is characterised by a combination of composition and improvisation, two creative elements there is always space for in his arrangements.
The dialogue between the past and the present is a recurring path in artistic creation. In Para Lole y Manuel (For Lole and Manuel), Alba Molina reviews the important legacy of her ancestors.
Every season, L’Auditori invites local jazz musicians to reinvent classics from other genres. In this year’s edition, the new ensemble Barcelona Art Orchestra will revisit Nino Rota’s soundtrack of the film The Godfather. Four years after making their debut in L’Auditori, Los Aurora are back with a project based on the music of Manuel de Falla. On this occasion, they will be performing their latest album, which features their characteristic mix of flamenco, jazz and popular music.
The Catalonia College of Music (ESMUC) will add its own touch to the Sessions through two of its most iconic jazz ensembles: the ESMUC Big Band and the ESMUC Jazz Project.
Sit Back, modern music with the best possible acoustics
Sit Back, also having a focus on creation, invites a variety of artists to present their projects designed specifically to be performed using the acoustics available at L’Auditori.
The line-up includes musician and singer-songwriter Nico Roig, who will be performing the songs from the album Yo siempre sueño que sí, in an immersive concert with binaural sound and a line-up rarely seen in previous works. The composition and performance of Australian singer-songwriter Courtney Barnett, one of today’s most talented mistresses of rock, will similarly be full of personality and charisma.
The bold and groundbreaking offering of Lina_Raül Refree is disrupting the pillars of Portuguese music with a new vision of fado involving the introduction of a piano and analogue synthesisers. The exploration and reformulation of traditional music and its crossover with avant-garde music and electronics is also a feature of the project Baiuca, which explores the roots of her native Galicia and techno, global bass and house background.
The diverse proposal Coros de medianoche [Midnight Choirs] focuses on cultural socio-political assertions and the desire to inspect the mechanisms of popular songs. The prolific composer Enric Montefusco leads the proposal by inviting five artists whose attitude, commitment and talent he admires, Niño de Elche, Maria Arnal, Nacho Vegas and Los Hermanos Cubero, to join this exciting adventure. At the same time and based on their community creation and free experimenting experience, the pan-musical duo Za! will present the macro-project Za! & the TransMegaCobla, with an ensemble that includes the wind quartet and traditional coblatransfolk duo Tarta Relena.
L’Auditori has curated the programme for the Sit Back series in partnership with other members of the music world including Primavera Sound and L’Afluent.
Three Catalan creators in the Scenes season
Scenes, a project in which different artistic disciplines meet, provides fertile ground for creative freedom. Just like a womb, L’Auditori invites three female creators, from their point of view as women, to embark on text, music and even photographic expeditions with the aim of discovering other artistic universes.
One of the women in charge of giving birth to her creation will be Alba Pujol, an extremely versatile stage professional and actress. Her career has gradually become established next to Àlex Rigola, with whom she often works not just as an actress but also as assistant director. This time, Pujol will investigate the field of poetic, symbolic and metaphorical motivation, adding to her choral offering different voices that will link music, verse and drama together.
The artist and photographer Tanit Plana, on her part, has also fully devoted herself to L’Auditori’s commission and undertaken a research and testing project. With her artistic talent and particular brand of visual poetry, Tanit will share her motherly heartbeat to make us reflect on childbirth as a beginning, as a line between life and death, a journey through the abyss of creation.
The third artist is Marina Herlop, a young composer and pianist from Piera who, fascinated by the upheaval that music causes in the soul, has created her own idiosyncratic language. Looking at music as an art form that is expressed by combining sounds, Herlop plays with it making up nonsense lyrics. Her idea based on this generating principle is to build a musical and conceptual scenographic architecture whose basis is the creative process itself.
Festival Emergents, 200 musical newcomers are presented at L’Auditori de Barcelona
The Festival Emergents Barcelona is the leading music event for getting to know those musicians who will be dominating the music scene over the next few years. At L’Auditori de Barcelona you can immerse yourself in any period of classical music – be it early, classical, romantic, contemporary or new music – as well as jazz and popular music, through solo recitals, chamber music, choral music, orchestra and band concerts, and jazz and modern music groups.
The Festival Emergents Barcelona is run in collaboration with Catalonia’s main educational institutions and ensembles such as the National Youth Orchestra of Catalonia, the National Youth Choir of Catalonia and the Jove Capella Reial de Catalunya.
As part of the Festival Emergents, the European Concert Hall Organisation and L’Auditori will present the Rising Stars once again. In addition, the concerts to be given by young talented musicians with the Barcelona Symphony Orchestra and the Barcelona Symphony Band are also worth highlighting.
L’Auditori Digital: A new record label and video streaming platform
This season, L’Auditori de Barcelona is launching L’Auditori Digital (auditoridigital.cat), a platform where the digital albums recorded by L’Auditori’s new label will be published and where concerts can be streamed on demand.
L’Auditori is thus creating its own new high-quality recording area, with a particular focus on its two resident ensembles, the OBC and the Barcelona Symphony Band, with projects designed to bring together the best works of our musical legacy.
Whereas the OBC will record the symphonic works of Ricard Lamote de Grignon, a key member of the Grup dels Vuit, the Band will give visibility to the works of Carles Suriñach and Miquel Asins Arbó, two composers from Barcelona and contemporaries of his who took their music to faraway lands.
This door is also open to L’Auditori’s entire programme, although it will have a particular focus on recording commissioned works both in the OBC’s and in the Band’s case, and in relation to the Education Service, the Sampler Series and the jazz and chamber music seasons, among others.
From the autumn, L’Auditori Digital will provide a video-on-demand platform similar to Filmin or Netflix where subscribers can follow the season’s premieres and concerts.
The digitisation strategy is part of L’Auditori’s commitment to sustainability. Next season, the use of paper will be reduced by 50%, after 20 tonnes of paper – the weight of four African elephants – were used last year.
Twenty years of the L’Auditori Educational Project
The L’Auditori Educational Project commemorates the venue’s 20th anniversary with a renewed commitment to creation, cooperation and learning as part of a comprehensive programme that embraces all types of audiences.
The Social and Educational Project, an unquestionable leader in its field, takes a step forward to highlight links with adult audiences, music students and the most vulnerable groups and to emphasise innovation, music teaching and networking. It will do this by including projects such as masterclasses for music students; becoming involved in the ESMUC Master’s Degree in Performance – which will include orchestra internships with the OBC – and strengthening its links with the UAB’s Institute of Education Science through the pioneering project Els compositors entren a l’aula (Composers Enter the Classroom).
The pre-concert talks known as La Prèvia are being extended and expanded. In addition, the cooperation network with other cultural institutions will also be expanded with the new concert Ullsclucs by Arnau Obiols, which has been jointly produced with Fira Mediterrània.
It was at L’Auditori where Apropa Cultura began, a project that works with the most vulnerable groups to ensure that people at risk of exclusion have access to culture. And, in the social sphere, the Educational Project now includes the project Et toca a tu (Your Turn), which aims to bring music to the country’s prisons, with the aim of promoting integration through choral singing, over the next few years. Other choirs and singers – in this case the elderly – can similarly take part in the Canta Gran (Singing for the Over-60s) project, which promotes active ageing through singing and is being taken by L’Auditori to several Catalan towns.
The digitisation process being carried out in relation to L’Auditori will also be reflected in its Social and Educational Project. This will manifest itself in particular in the Cantània project, whose materials will be added to the online catalogue.
In parallel to this, Apropa Cultura will continue with the huge task of making music accessible to the most vulnerable groups, with activities such as An Orchestral Morning and La Banda Ens Apropa.
Museu de la Música
This year’s exhibition at the Museu de la Música, entitled Paul Casals Orchestra. 100 Years, will depict the aesthetic and social actions carried out by the orchestra and the Workers’ Society for Concerts a century ago.
The Music from the Museum concert season will continue, as will the exhibition Music and Nature on the Island of New Guinea, a collaboration with the La Fontana Foundation to uncover another space of faraway sounds and spirits embodied in instruments.
L’Auditori after Covid-19
We hope to be able to start the season in September as planned, but the timetable for the return of cultural activities in Barcelona is dependent on the progress of the pandemic.
The following steps have therefore been taken at L’Auditori de Barcelona:
- We have prepared an alternative artistic project to the general one envisaged for the season, designed for online streaming and including symphonic, early, chamber, jazz, pop and new music; a picture of what L’Auditori embodies, with the unchanging element of the work carried out each week by the Barcelona Symphony Band and the OBC, which will feature some of Catalonia’s leading artists such as, among others, Cuarteto Casals and Jordi Savall. We plan to record around 40 productions over the autumn, which will be available on the new platform L’Auditori Digital. We have confirmation from some of the artists who will be taking part, including the jazz pianist Marco Mezquida with his MAP trio; the also jazz pianist Xavi Torres, who will be performing his review of Beethoven’s sonatas; the composer Pablo Carrascosa with the world premiere of his work White commissioned by L’Auditori; Nico Roig with his 3D binaural sound project; Joana Gomila, who will be performing her new work Paradís; and the astounding Amics de la Unió Children’s Choir VEUS, among many others. A digital season ticket giving access to the entire autumn streaming programme on the new channel auditoridigital.cat will be available. In addition, access to individual concerts will also be available for purchase.
- From 5 June, you will be able to renew season tickets and buy new ones, but you will not be charged for them until the current uncertainty has been resolved. In September, once we know how and when live concerts will resume or whether we are going to implement plan B streaming, subscribers will be informed of the outcome, and the price of season tickets will be adjusted to the final schedule if necessary. Season tickets may be purchased or renewed on the website.
A-la-carte season tickets, flat fees for young people (under 25s and under 35s) and individual tickets will not yet be made available for purchase. This is for reasons of prudence and responsibility and in order to avoid any unnecessary returns and confusion.
