Stravinsky was right: Juli Garreta needs more presence in Catalan theatres and auditoriums

GironaJuly Garreta (Sant Feliu de Guíxols, 1875-1825) is one of the most important Catalan composers in the history of music. Heir to the great masters of European Romanticism, he composed around fifty works of symphonic and chamber music, always displaying an exquisite gift for melodic creativity and a great mastery of orchestration. Qualities that he also transferred to the eighty sardanas that he wrote, all of a high level and very original, key to raising the quality and richness of music for copla. This 2025 the Generalitat celebrates the Garreta Year, coinciding with the double anniversary of the 150th anniversary of the composer's birth and the centenary of his death.

The year of tribute is kicked off by the concert More Garreta!, The concert will be presented on Sunday 2 March at the Auditori de Girona and on Tuesday 4 March at the Palau de la Música Catalana, by the GIO Symphonia, conducted by its director, Francesc Prat. The title of the concert refers to the spontaneous expression exclaimed by Igor Stravinsky in 1924 upon discovering the work of the Guixolense maestro, fascinated by his writing, demanding greater presence of his work in theatres everywhere. A request that, coinciding with this year's anniversary, Francesc Prat extends to the present: "Juli Garreta is fundamental because in Catalonia, at the end of the 19th century, unlike France or Germany, we did not have any musical reference of our own. And 150 years later it is from authors like Garreta that we have built the aesthetic corpus and our culture. And he continues: "It should not be Stravinsky who tells us that Garreta is very good, we need to start believing it ourselves because, if we treat our references and musicals like that, we will be able to achieve our goals and achieve our goals." turn off and let's go, and I say it expressly in Spanish."

From Garreta, the Girona orchestra will perform Print II, his first orchestral composition, from 1907, as well as the symphonic transcription, arranged by the composer himself, of the jovial rhymed third movement of the Sonata in C major for piano, titled Sardana. Likewise, the symphonic version of the Romance for violin and piano, which Albert Guinovart has adapted into symphonic format, with violinist Joel Bardolet as soloist.

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Garreta's three works will be interspersed with the epic opening Coriolanus, by Beethoven, and theSiegfried Idyll, by Wagner, two of his great references (along with Richard Strauss), to show the influence of the Germanic symphonic tradition on the composer from Sant Feliu de Guíxols. The program also aims to place Garreta's work in the musical context of the time and will feature the Spanish song of Albéniz, Cordova, in Guinovart's own orchestral arrangement.

In Barcelona, ​​​​in addition to the symphonic pieces, the concert will feature the writer Jordi Lara, author of the novel A machine to wake up birds at night (2008), about the world of copla, which has a chapter expressly dedicated to Garreta, from which Lara himself will read some fragments between pieces. "He really is a great composer, but he was also a very unknown author, with a group of mysteries surrounding him. People wondered how this musician, who was a watchmaker and lived in Sant Feliu de Guíxols, fascinated by the sea and the Gavarres, could have never studied wonderful harmony or orchestration," explains Lara.

The double concert of the GIO Symphonia will precede the official inauguration of the Garreta Year, which will be held at the Palau de la Música on Wednesday, March 12, the exact day of his birth. The event will be attended by the Minister of Culture, Sònia Hernández Almodóvar, and will serve to present all the concerts of the commemoration.