Palau de la Música 2025-2026: a ritual of 179 concerts

Barcelona179 concerts (plus 180 educational service concerts), 120 Catalan ensembles and performers, 29 premieres, and 45 Catalan composers are scheduled to be performed. These are some of the details of the 2025-2026 season at the Palau de la Música, which was presented this Wednesday. Among the 179, of course, There are those of the great international names of the Palau 100, Grans Veus and Palau Òpera cycles that were detailed a few weeks ago.: Zubin Mehta, Janine Jansen, Daniele Gatti, Yuja Wang, etc. What wasn't said then has been said now. For example, that it will be a season "marked by three anniversaries of three figures of our cultural heritage," as Joaquim Uriach, president of the Orfeó Català-Palau de la Música Foundation, has said.

The three personalities are the architect Antoni Gaudí, whose death will be one hundred years old in 2026; and the composers Manuel de Falla—on the 150th anniversary of his birth—and Juli Garreta, whose 150th anniversary and centenary of his death are being commemorated, and who is already being honored this season. The presentation also revealed other key points of the season, such as the Mexican Gabriela Ortiz and Josep Ollé from Tortosa as guest composers; that the Trio Fortuny and the Frames Percussion group will continue the artistic residency, and that the Kebyart quartet will begin it; that there will be a new cycle dedicated to the sound of copla; that Angela Hewitt will remember that half a century ago she first played the Goldberg Variations by Bach; and that the Avex Ensemble will perform the film's soundtrack Blade Runner composed by Vangelis.

"'In heaven we will all be orpheonists,'" wrote Gaudí in a dedication to the Palau. And at the architect's funeral, the Orfeó Català sang Tomás Luis de Victoria's Requiem," recalled the general director of the Palau de la Música, Joan Oller. Honoring this connection, the season will revive the Fantasia del quebridizo, from the opera Gaudí by Joan Guinjoan, performed by the OBC; Gaudí Symphony, by Albert Guinovart. It will also premiere Gaudí's Seven Dreams, by Olivia Pérez-Collellmir, and a work commissioned by Joan Magrané "They will be different approaches to Gaudí," notes Oller, given the compositional differences. Psyche, in 1925, and the Concerto for harpsichord and five instruments, in 1926. Both will be performed in the 2025-2026 season, in addition toThe witch love (by the Julià Carbonell de las Terres de l'Ebre Orchestra), The three-cornered hat (with the Vallès Symphony Orchestra) and Nights in the Gardens of Spain (with Franz Schubert Filharmonia and pianist Judith Jáuregui).

Magrané is part of what the Palau de la Música calls Generation C: "contemporary Catalan composers and choirs," as explained by Mercedes Conde, the institution's deputy artistic director. "It's an open list that also includes Anna Capmany, Josep Ollé, Carles Prat, and Bernat Vivancos, composers who have a predilection for choral singing," adds Conde. Works by all of them will be performed in the 2025-2026 season. Josep Ollé, as a guest composer, will be scheduled for seven concerts, premiering two pieces, one of which will be a Te Deum written to close the Millennium of Montserrat at the monastery where the Orfeó Català will sing. "Barça's La Masía and the Orfeó Català's choral school are benchmarks for moving the country forward," says Josep Ollé, taking advantage of the good form of Barça football.

From the other guest composer, Gabriela Ortiz, winner of three Grammys with the album Diamond Revolution And championed by Gustavo Dudamel and the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Palau de la Música will premiere two commissioned works. Other works by Ortiz will be featured in concerts by the Vallés Symphony Orchestra, the Cosmos Quartet, pianist Noelia Rodiles, violinist María Dueñas, and Gio Symphonia and Frames Percussion. "Gabriela Ortiz began with Mexican folk music and later earned her doctorate in London in composition and electronic music. She moves between tradition and the avant-garde," explains Conde, who, to conceptually connect the new season at the Palau de la Música, appeals to ritual and the motto "make the Palau your rite."