Little joys of the Barcelona Cathedral resonate in the Pyrenees

BarcelonaFrom cathedral to cathedral. The music that sounded in Barcelona's between 1705 and 1713 during the reign of Archduke Charles of Austria stars in the inaugural concert of the 15th edition of the Pyrenean Early Music Festival (FeMAP), which takes place this Friday, July 3rd, at the Cathedral of Santa Maria de la Seu d'Urgell (Alt Urgell), and is also scheduled for the church of Santa Cecília de Molló (Ripollès) on Saturday, July 4th, and the sanctuary of El Miracle in Riner (Solsonès) on Sunday, July 5th.

"By conviction, we carry out the recovery of Catalan musical heritage, this time with our own production that gathers unpublished material from different archives or that has not been performed for a long time, by Catalan and Italian Baroque authors who resided in Barcelona at the beginning of the 18th century," explains Josep Maria Dutrèn, artistic director of the FeMAP. These are works by composers such as Fortunato Chelleri, Francesc Valls, and Josep Pincanyol. The inaugural concert program, titled "Petites joies de la Catedral" (Little Treasures of the Cathedral), will be performed by the Ensemble Barcelona Comtal, a group formed for the occasion by Marta Esteban (soprano), Guillermo Turia (cello), Eva del Campo (harpsichord), and violinists Ignacio Ramal and Marieta Gil.

The FeMAP 2026 program includes 49 concerts by 23 groups, taking place from July 3rd to August 23rd in 36 Catalan and Andorran Pyrenean municipalities; some are joining for the first time, such as Soriguera (Pallars Sobirà). One of the most notable presences is that of French violinist Amandine Beyer with the ensemble Gli Incogniti, who will perform a concert at the seminary of La Seu d'Urgell on August 19th and another the following day in the cloister of Sant Francesc de Berga. The festival will also feature, among others, the Ensemble Joan March (who will perform the Requiem Mass by the master of the Montserrat school), the Belgian ensemble La Caccia (with a program dedicated to the 14th-century composer Guillaume de Machaut), Bach Collegium Barcelona, and a look at Venetian Baroque by Juan de la Rubia and Adrián Linares.

The FeMAP 2026, which also organizes a social program, has a budget of around 500,000 euros with contributions from the Generalitat, the government of Andorra, the Spanish Ministry of Culture, and the provincial councils of Lleida, Girona, and Barcelona, in addition to the collaboration of the municipalities involved. This year, the La Seu d'Urgell City Council is increasing its contribution by 10%. "And there is the expectation that the Generalitat will compensate for the years of budgetary stagnation in times of inflation and rising logistical costs," says Dutrèn.

Change in direction

The 2026 edition of FeMAP will be one of the last that Josep Maria Dutrèn, the festival's founder, will direct. "We will carry out a progressive handover in two years," says Dutrèn. Alfons Pérez, who has been part of the FeMap team for a long time, will take over this handover. Therefore, the continuity of the project is guaranteed. "This year we have already divided the work," says Dutrèn.