Genuine Viennese aftertaste

Ibercamera closes its 41st season with a splendidly Viennese concert, featuring the Barcelona debut of Czech conductor Petr Popelka, principal conductor of a Vienna Symphony Orchestra that performed at L'Auditori on Wednesday night. To win over music-loving audiences, Popelka couldn't have chosen a better repertoire: the opening The consecration of the home, by Beethoven; the Violin Concerto, by Mendelssohn; the Dynamized vouchers, by Josef Strauss, and a suite of The Rosenkavalier, by another Strauss, in this case Richard.

A genuine Viennese aftertaste permeates the sound of the ensemble, right from the string unisons at the beginning of the Beethovenian piece, with that color so characteristic of Austrian orchestras and which, given Popelka's clear, enthusiastic, and precise gesture, reached new heights. The icing on the cake, of course, was the operatic suite in the second half, with an avalanche of good ideas and successes, despite a specific and almost imperceptible error by the brass at the beginning of the prelude.

The rapport between the members of the orchestra and Popelka seemed firmly consolidated, and that, together with the enthusiastic versions of the pieces performed, suggests that we have before us a musician from head to toe who can achieve great things in the future and with the best orchestras in the world.

This complicity was also reflected in the dialogue with Renaud Capuçon during the Mendelssohn concerto. While the romantic rapture we've heard in other versions of the same famous work by the German composer was missed, the truth is that Capuçon displayed a controlled, technically impeccable sound, always at the service of the score and not the empty virtuosity that is sometimes a regrettable trademark of the house of. The French musician crowned his performance with an encore: Meditation from Massenet's opera Thaïs.

Popelka also encores after the extraordinary version of the fragments of The Rosenkavalier: Once again, the Viennese Strauss family, which suggests that, once she becomes a celebrity, Popelka could give us a New Year's morning performance from the Goldener Saal in the Austrian capital, in front of another Viennese ensemble, in this case the Philharmonic. Just wait and see.