Sincrotró-Alba: The premiere of the third symphony by Joan Guinjoan

Posted by Toni Cruanyes on May 5, 2010  |  1 Comment

On Friday 7 May, the expected premiere of Sincrotró-Alba, the third symphony by Joan Guinjoan, will take place. The work, organised into three movements, is fruit of a commission from the Synchrotron Consortium, whose particle accelerator in Cerdanyola del Vallès was inaugurated on 22 March, and who wish to celebrate its activation with an orchestral work inspired in the monumental scientific laboratory called Alba, which means ‘dawn’, a direct allusion to the first light of the morning, which dispels the darkness and unveils the landscape of a new day.

The programme, performed by the Orquestra Simfònica de Barcelona i Nacional de Catalunya (OBC) under the baton of Ernest Martínez Izquierdo, will be opened by the work The Unanswered Question by Charles Ives, and will conclude with Rachmaninov’s popular second piano concerto.

Sincrotró-Alba is the most important piece composed by Joan Guinjoan in the last few years.

(Castellano) Ainhoa Arteta vuelve hoy a los escenarios

Posted by Leticia Martin on April 27, 2010  |  No Comments

Hypermusic Prologue and Hèctor Parra in Accents

Posted by Leticia Martin on May 6, 2009  |  No Comments

Issue no. 38 of the review Accents published by the Ensemble Intercontemporain is dedicated to Hèctor Parra’s Hypermusic Prologue.

Hypermusic Prologue is a unique project for intercommunication between science, music and art. It explores the traditional opera form in order to generate a type of dramatic expression for the 21st century, its ideas and creative processes, including recent research into physics and its parallelisms in music and art.

The main character, a composer and scientist, experiences deep tension between his “earthly love” and his “passion for knowledge”. This tension is built up dramatically through the contradictions between his life with his lover, limited in space and time, and his conviction that there is a much bigger world waiting to be explored.

This opera represents an opportunity to foster the search for more expressive forms for the drama and the musical possibilities. Its object is to find aesthetic structural connections through sound between that most abstract of the arts – music – and the highest concepts of theoretical physics, as researched by Lisa Randall and others. We hope the result will be a novel and fascinating creative experience.

The review is free and can be downloaded here.

A symphonic spring for Ramon Humet

Posted by Leticia Martin on May 4, 2009  |  1 Comment

This season is proving to be a prolific one as regards Ramón Humet’s symphonic activity. The performances of “Escenas de pájaros” by the Montreal Symphony Orchestra conducted by Roberto Minczuk and the OBC conducted by Rubén Gimeno have been followed by a premiere: “Sol de primavera”, a work commissioned by the Auditorio Nacional de Música to mark its 20th anniversary. The work was performed for the first time on the 3 May at the Auditorio Nacional, and on 5 May at the Auditori Nacional de Cataluña, by the JONC conducted by Manel Valdivieso.

Following this premiere, Ramón Humet will also be present at the Festival de Verano (Summer Festival) in Tarragona, where “Gagaku” will be premiered by the OBC, who will also play “Un vent transparent” at the Auditorio de Vilaseca on 19 June.

El Gato con Botas (Puss in Boots), reduction for piano

Posted by Leticia Martin on April 24, 2009  |  No Comments

El gato con Botas, an opera by Xavier Montsalvatge with a libretto by Nestor Luján based on the story by C. Perrault, has been newly published as a reduced version for piano and voice.

This opera, composed by the Catalan composer in 1948, is one of the liveliest examples of contemporary Spanish opera and has been staged on several occasions – the latest was a co-production by the Teatro Real and the Liceu – both in its original version and as the adaptation made in 1996 by Albert Guinovart for chamber ensemble.

Gianandrea Noseda conducts Albéniz and Granados

Posted by Leticia Martin on April 24, 2009  |  No Comments

The recent tour of the Orquesta de Cadaqués, conducted by Gianandrea Noseda, with concerts in Girona (28 April) and Zaragoza (29 Abril) focussed on Spanish music. The repertoire consisted of pieces by Isaac Albéniz, to mark the centenary of his death, and Enrique Granados, and their works were interpreted using the orchestrations that Albert Guinovart was commissioned to write by Tritó Edicions.

The Orquesta de Cadaqués presented four pieces from the Suite Española (Cadiz, Asturias, Cordoba and Sevilla) by Albéniz as well as his Canciones Italianas, interpreted by Ainhoa Arteta. Las Tonadillas by Enrique Granados completed a first part in which the Orquesta de Cadaqués, Gianandrea Noseda and Ainhoa Arteta paid their own special homage to Spanish music.

The concert programme was completed by F. Schubert’s Symphony nº 4.

David del Puerto presents his third symphony in Cordoba

Posted by Leticia Martin on April 15, 2009  |  No Comments

On Thurday 16 April, at the Gran Teatro at 21:00 hrs, and as part of the busy programme of the Festival Cosmopoética held in Córdoba during March and April, David del Puerto’s third symphony, “En la melancolía de tu recuerdo, Soria”, was presented. It is a work commissioned by the Otoño Musical Soriano and composed in 2007.

Antonio Machado’s poems are the focal point of the work, with José Sacristán as the recitalist and the singers Elena Gragera and Carmen Gurriarán. The orquesta de Córdoba and the conductor Marco de Prósperis, together with these soloists, were given the task of presenting this large-scale work at the poetry festival. This is piece that signifies a point of inflection in the music of the composer David del Puerto.

See www.cosmopoetica.es for further.

New CD with symphonic works by Jesus Torres

Posted by Leticia Martin on March 18, 2009  |  No Comments

This is the first monographic CD of orchestral works by the composer Jesús Torres (Zaragoza, 1965), one of the leading composers of his generation, who in the words of Jose Luis Téllez “attracts attention for both the maturity and the perfection of his writing and the speed and self-assurance with which the musician from Aragon has managed to define a personal style almost right from the beginning”.

The first work, “Sinfonía”, which was commissioned by the Orquesta de RTVE and its conductor Adrian Leaper to mark the 40th anniversary of the ensemble, is one of the composer’s most ambitious pieces to date. The writing of a symphonic work is a great challenge which the composer dealt with very successfully.

Benguerel, Martínez Izquierdo and Rueda, at the CDMC

Posted by Leticia Martin on March 18, 2009  |  No Comments

On Monday 23 March, the Orquesta de Cadaqués ensemble, under the baton of Alejandro Posada, interpreted a programme that included three fundamental works by the composers Xavier Benguerel (Hexagrama), Ernest Martínez Izquierdo (Norte-Sur) and Jesús Rueda (Chamber concerto no 2).

These three works, written in very different languages, present part of the current Spanish music scene.

The concert was completed by one of Arnold Schonberg’s masterworks, Ode to Napoleon, with a solo contribution by the baritone and actor David Moss.

Further information at: http://cdmc.mcu.es/

The Pyrenean Symphony by Guridi included in this season’s Orquesta de RTVE programming

Posted by Leticia Martin on March 18, 2009  |  No Comments

On 19 and 20 March, the Pyrenean Symphony by Jesús Guridi (1886-1961) was presented in Madrid as part of this season’s ORTVE programming at its home in the Teatro Monumental in Madrid. The conductor was Pablo Gonzalez.

In this work Guridi evokes “the spirit of the mountains and the dangers existing there”. It is a very colourful work with descriptive traits. Its modal and rhythmic character clearly expresses the composer’s inspiration in Basque popular music, translated in this work into the characteristic symphonic language of the 20th century.

The writer Gerardo Diego summed up his impressions of the work in a review where he concluded as follows: “And Spanish music can now lay claim to a symphony that may be compared without hesitation with the illustrious Alpine, Cevennian and Carpathian heights and pinnacles of the musical landscape.”