Josep Pons leaves the Liceu "proud of the orchestra"

Barcelona"Look at this lectern, it's historic. It's very beautiful", says Josep Pons (Puig-reig, 1957). He is in the pit of the Liceu, the chosen space for a press conference "special and sensitive", as Víctor Garcia de Gomar, artistic director of the Rambla theatre, says. Pons is saying goodbye to the musical direction of the Gran Teatre del Liceu after fourteen years of work. The farewell is twofold. On the one hand, from the pit, with Falstaff, Verdi's opera which is performed there until July 19; on the other hand, from the Liceu stage, conducting with Symphony No. 8 by Mahler on July 24.

In these years, assures Garcia de Gomar, "Josep Pons has turned the pit into a laboratory of sensibilities" and has built "a sonic memory" avoiding "gratuitous monumentality" and creating according to "an aesthetic of revelation rather than effect". Faced with "the noise of dazzling", he prefers to "illuminate", considers the general director of the Liceu, Valentí Oviedo, who is grateful that "this humanist, this wise man" has generated "a sense of self-esteem" in the orchestra. "He has been a leader with the baton and in team management", concludes the president of the Liceu's board, Salvador Alemany.

Pons, who is happier living "in music" than in "the music world," appreciates the praise, but immediately tries to divert attention by talking about Mahler's "Eighth". "It's a colossal work," he says about this symphony that speaks to us of love. "In the first part, of a love that emanates from divinity, a song of the spheres. And in the second, from the final scene of Goethe's Faust, it proposes an initiatory journey that begins with the hermits of Montserrat and is a kind of angelology that culminates in the mystical song of the eternal feminine," summarizes Pons, who could spend an eternity explaining the musical details of this "orchestral thesis," "the Everest of the symphonic world," an expedition that will be accompanied by the Cor del Liceu, the Cor Nacional d'Espanya, the Polifònica de Puig-Reig, and the Cor Vivaldi Petits Cantors de Catalunya, as well as exceptional soloists: Michael Spyres, Elisabeth Teige, Nicholas Brownlee, Albert Dohmen, Jacquelyn Wagner, Elena Villalón, Beth Taylor, and Mihoko Fujimura. "We have what has been the great Wotan, Albert Dohmen, and the Wotan of the present and future, Nicholas Brownlee," celebrates Pons. In fact, next season Brownlee will be Wotan in Das Rheingold (The Rhine Gold), curiously, the first opera Pons directed as principal conductor of the Liceu in 2013, and with Dohmen leading the cast.

Centrality and visibility

The legacy that Pons leaves is an orchestra that has grown from 67 to 94 members, with a recognizable sound, reliable in all operatic repertoire, with symphonic scope and solid enough for other conductors to draw interesting nuances from it. "I admired the color and flexibility in the recitatives that Giovanni Antonini drew from it in The Marriage of Figaro by Mozart a few weeks ago. It was beautiful. It has happened to me with many conductors. I felt proud of the orchestra," assures Pons. He leaves, therefore, satisfied that "the project" he designed fourteen years ago has been "completed to the letter". "It will close almost like a door latch," he adds.

The path has not been easy. In fact, was about to give up when the economic crisis shook public budgets. "We started in September 2012, and by June they had laid off fifteen people," he recalls. The project was ambitious because it was urgent, and it required constancy, dedication, and money. Fourteen years later, the budget for the choir and orchestra has grown from 7.7 million to 12.5 million euros, and Pons is leaving having fulfilled the motto with which he embarked on the adventure: centrality and visibility. "The orchestra was peripheral at home. In the same training curriculum, it was stated that it was an orchestra born to accompany voices. It had no its own entity," explains the maestro from Puig-Reig, who always highlights "the impeccable attitude of the musicians." It was also necessary to "make it visible," bring it to the stage, and make it shine in symphonic and chamber repertoires. Following the model of the Gewandhaus in Leipzig, the Staatskapelle in Dresden, and the Staatskapelle in Berlin, he promoted the creation of a music department and envisioned a way to organize and improve. "During the crisis the theater suffered, he was very clear that there are two ways to do things: tighten your belt or roll up your sleeves. And rolling up your sleeves is the philosophy of maestro Pons," recalls Oviedo.

"Some call it magic, elf or tickle. Each calls it what they can, but we all know what we're talking about. It's ineffable, and we all work to make it happen," says Pons, who from now on will pursue this tickle as chief conductor of the Deutsche Radio Philharmonie. However, the link with the Liceu will remain, now as honorary musical director. "In the future my greatest happiness will be when I come to the Liceu and listen to the orchestra: how well conceived!", concludes Josep Pons.