Repertoire

Sofia Gubaidulina: Concerto for viola (1996) 35′
Pablo Carrascosa Llopis: XY (2019) 12′ – World premiere, commissioned work
Aleksandr Scriabin: Le poème de l’extase (The Poem of Ecstasy), Op. 54 (1905-08) 21′

Artists

Barcelona Symphony Orchestra (OBC)

Lawrence Power, viola
Ilan Volkov, conductor

Program

In the same way as works like Igor Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring, Arnold Schönberg’s Gurre-Lieder (Songs of Gurre), or Gustav Mahler’s Symphonies, The Poem of Ecstasy, by Alexander Scriabin, is a cornerstone of the radical musical transformation that took place during the early 20th century.
Scriabin’s music feeds off a mystical and theosophical conception of the musical act, intimately linked to a correlation between sonic space, light and colour. While it is in piano music that the composer reaches the highest levels of abstraction, the five symphonic works that complete his oeuvre are foundational monuments of modern symphonic language. The Poem of Ecstasy is a song of praise to liberated action and energy, to the cosmos, to spirit and to eternal creation, to consciousness, and to ecstatic time.

Sofia Gubaidulina shares with her countryman Alexander Scriabin a spiritual conception of sound. In her Viola Concerto, the composer builds a tense, mysterious and elegiac structure from minimal elements. The timbral factor is decisive in this work, which uses the presence of a solo quartet tuned a quarter-tone below the orchestra.
XY, by Pablo Carrascosa Llopis, was a commission by L’Auditori as part of his period as a guest composer during the 2019-2020 season. Carrascosa’s music works with the tension between popular music — particularly metal and electronica — and the classical tradition.