A necessary program and repertoire

Ours is an increasingly noisy world. Information bombs and shrapnel bombs rain down. Utterly ineffective high-ranking officials contradict each other about the old world order and submission to downright psychopathic governments, when what is needed is peace, silence, rest, and, above all, music that makes time seem to stand still. It's an illusion, based on the premise that music is, precisely, an art of time.

But there are experiences that allow us to live with illusion for a couple of hours. For example, the concert on Wednesday at the Palau de la Música, the first of two performances given by the Balthasar Neumann instrumental and choral ensemble in the modernist hall, under the impeccable direction of Lionel Sow.

The first part of the evening could not have been more perfect, with the Mass without nameby Pierluigi da Palestrina, performed in the orchestrated version by none other than J.S. Bach. The members of the Balthasar Neumann also had the good sense to intersperse the different parts of the Ordinary of the Latin Mass with a chorale by Johann Hermann Schein, a Gregorian chant arranged by Michael Praetorius, and, once the Mass had concluded, Psalm 101. Sicut cervusLorenzo Donati's (born in 1972) piece, based on a text that had been presented at the beginning of the concert with music by Palestrina himself, was performed. The piece, which closed the first half, was played with a sense of shared passion throughout the Palau de la Música auditorium, generating a unique, immersive, and highly effective sound.

The purity of the Balthasar Neumanns' sound shifted, in the second half, to the 19th century of Bruckner and his Mass No. 2 in E minorWith exclusive accompaniment by wind instruments (woodwind and brass). A good rapport between instrumentalists and choir members, once again under Sow's precise and restrained direction, although it must be acknowledged that the Brucknerian Mass is not the best in his catalog and that the musical interest dipped slightly in intensity.

A necessary evening, then, and a much-needed repertoire. Because in the world we live in, believers and non-believers alike continue to need good doses of spirituality and transcendence. Especially when it is delivered as well as it was, by the German ensemble.