This week, the Barcelona Symphony Orchestra is recording works by the composers Sofía Martínez and Núria Giménez Comas. The pieces, conducted by Benjamin Shwartz, have either already been premiered or performed by the OBC or will be this season.

The recording, which is currently being made in L’Auditori de Barcelona’s Hall 1, Pau Casals, will soon be available on the record label presented this season by L’Auditori, which can be enjoyed on the L’Auditori Digital platform. The project reasserts a desire to take a step forward with new works and make high-quality recordings of them complete with all the features of a studio album.

The work by the composer Núria Giménez Comas to be recorded is Nostalgia of light, Yearning for…, which premiered worldwide at L’Auditori de Barcelona this past weekend, and Ad limen caeli (Towards the Doorway to Heaven), a work for chamber orchestra based on fragments, images, harmonies and passages of Johann Sebastian Bach’s Mass in B Minor.

The compositions by Sofía Martínez to be recorded are the three-part work Mañana-Homenaje a Ligeti (Morning – Tribute to Ligeti), which was premiered by the OBC in November, Utopia and A lo lejos (In the Distance).

Núria Giménez Comas
This composer, who has a great interest in mixed music and collaborative projects, has received commissions from ensembles such as Proxima Centauri, Espai Sonor, Geneva Camerata, BCN216, the Cadaqués Orchestra and the Aleph Guitar Quartet; from festivals such as the Ensems and Mixtur festivals; and from institutions such as Radio France, Grame, the Institute for Research and Coordination in Acoustics/Music (IRCAM), Fundació BBVA, the Spanish National Centre for the Dissemination of Music (CNDM), the Centre National de Création Musicale (GMEM) with subsidies from the National Institute of Performing Arts and Music (INAEM), the French Ministry of Culture, Fundació SGAE and the Valencian Institute of Culture. Her works have been performed at the ManiFeste, Présences (Paris), Archipel (Geneva), Biennale Musique en Scène (Lyon), BCNClàssics and Ibermúsica festivals, among others.

She has won prizes in competitions such as the 2nd Eulalio Ferrer International Musical Composition Competition in Mexico, the Choir Composition Competition organised by the European Academy for Choral Conductors (EACC), and the Bourges International Electro-Acoustic Music Competition. She has been awarded the Col·legi d’Espanya-INAEM 2012 award and the 1st prize in the 3rd edition of the Edison Denisov Competition.

She teaches masterclasses and gives lectures on her own music as well as on mixed music at a variety of education institutions in France and Switzerland, such as Instituto Cervantes (Bordeaux), the IRCAM’s Cursus programme, the Zurich University of the Arts’ Computer Music and Sound Technology school (ICST), the Hochschule in Stuttgart, and the Catalonia College of Music (Esmuc), among others.


Sofía Martínez
Sofía Martínez studied the piano under Manuel Carra at the Royal Music Conservatory in Madrid, as well as composition under Carmelo Bernaola at the J. Guridi Music School in Vitoria. In 1992 she moved to Paris, where she took composition courses under Emmanuel Nunes, as well as music analysis, orchestration and composition courses under Marc-André Dalbavie, Alain Louvier and Betsy Jolas at the Paris Conservatory, and Orchestra Conducting at the École Nationale de Musique et de Danse d’Evry with Nicolas Brochot.

She has taken part in courses and symposia with Luis de Pablo, Luigi Nono, Pierre Boulez and Cristóbal Halffter. She has been awarded the “Eresbil” prize for composition, and has also received a special mention for her work Apol·lo i Dafne (Apollo and Daphne) in the composition competition held by the Col·legi d’Espanya and INAEM. She has had works commissioned by the CDMC, INAEM, the French Ministry of Culture, the Basque Government and Quinzena Musical.

She has also made arrangements for the Olaeta Ballets. Between 1996 and 2004 she taught at the École Nationale de Musique de Sevran, the École de Musique de Parmain and the Paris Conservatory XVI. Between 2007 and 2012 she taught composition at the Conservatory of Music of the Canary Islands.