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.

On paper, the program for the weekend concert at L'Auditori looked interesting. And judging by the results, the interest was total. Let's start, however, with the second part: given the budgeted value of the former military service, it was obvious that the OBC must have a lot of experience with a work like the Symphony No. 1 in B-flat, Op. 38 Schumann's. And it's true that the overall performance was good, but it's in that repertoire where—I think—our orchestra sometimes reveals an inertia that only the most authoritative conductors can break. And this is not the case with the Lithuanian Giedre Slekyte, a professional conductor who seemed to bow to the status quo without shaking the orchestra's routine foundations. Nothing to say. But nothing to highlight from a second half that was just passable.

No, indeed, this isn't a critique. Or is it? Could it be, given the context of the honoree? Let's take it step by step.

A true virtuoso of the flute, Emmanuel Pahud (a student of Jean-Pierre Rampal), lends his talents to Mozart's first concerto—and, in fact, the only one originally written for the instrument. The Swiss musician explores the piece's discourse and makes it his own with impeccable execution and admirable artistry. cantabile The second movement was distinguished by its well-connected phrases and a sensitivity devoid of affectation and sentimentality. It was pure Mozartian discourse, unaffected yet free of the philological flourishes that can sometimes render original pieces unrecognizable. Well supported by the Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra, expertly conducted by François-Xavier Roth, Pahud closed the first half of the concert, setting the bar very high.

To get the concerts of The harmonic inspiration by Vivaldi corresponding to the cycle of The Four Seasons That they sound like something new means many things. First, that the Venetian composer's pieces are timeless and allow for many readings and rereadings. And second, that for this to happen, talent, imagination, great technical ability, and a willingness to work are essential. This combination came together in Arnadí's Vísperas, once again under the enthusiastic leadership of Dani Espasa. And also, of course, with the prodigious performance of the soloist, violinist Farran Sylvan James.

There are several types of inheritance. And some are legitimate, others fraudulent. In the case of Michael Barenboim and the RAI Orchestra, we are dealing with the former. Firstly, because the son of Daniel Barenboim and Elena Bashkirova has inherited his parents' talent (without reaching his father's virtuosic genius) and defends it with sound arguments, embracing a violin with which he was able to unravel the fourth of the five concertos that Mozart composed in 1775, a discourse beyond the notes. And Barenboim succeeded, with sinuous and delicate phrases not without that sense of humor characteristic of the composer.

For the opening of the official concert season at the Palau de la Música, the institution has opted not for a large-format session (that is to say, with a large orchestra) but for an intimate chamber evening, led by three absolute aces, of indisputable first division: two veterans like the German violinist Anne-Sophi Bronfman and the young Spanish cellist Pablo Ferrández.

Little by little, we're opening seasons. And L'Auditori's season kicked off this weekend with an OBC supported by the new artistic direction of the house headed by Víctor Medem, but prepared by the previous team. The inaugural program can be read as full of good intentions, although on paper it can be said that things go a little further, starting with the choice of repertoire, with the opening of Sestri by Domènec Terradellas, The Death of Cleopatra by Berlioz and the everlasting Novena by Beethoven.

Whether due to the interest in the pieces chosen, the quality of the two ensembles performing on the stage of the Palau de la Música, or the need for refuge from the infernal heat of these days, the fact is that the modernist hall was more than fully booked on Wednesday night. And yet, the Wagnerian evening at the Liceu that same day was also tempting.

The long-awaited return of John Eliot Gardiner In front of The Constellation, three cantatas by Johann Sebastian Bach (BWV 12, 103 and 146) were eagerly awaited, both for what it represents among the music-loving public and for the proposed programme, intended for the third Sunday after Easter and composed in different years (1714, 1725 and 1726).

I doubt the 2024-2025 season of the Barcelona Symphony Orchestra and National Orchestra of Catalonia (OBC) will be remembered for anything particularly brilliant. Over the past nine months, there has been a lack of ideas, imagination, and creativity in the programming, and above all, leadership in the conducting.

There are works that, as Riccardo Muti said in relation to the Solemn Mass Beethoven's works, when performed, represent a musical Everest for the artist who tackles them. This is what happens, for example, with the two books ofThe well-tempered harpsichord or with the fourteen counterpoints that make up The art of escape by Johann Sebastian Bach. Both are encyclopedic works, encapsulating the composer's greatness, his ethics and aesthetics, as well as his musical science. Perhaps due to this highly technical conception—not devoid of sensitivity—which makes them austere and ascetic pieces (inherent, moreover, in Bach's incorruptible Lutheranism), they are rarely programmed. Consequently, being able to hear them in their entirety live is a privilege for the viewer.

Amidst the discussions in the street and in the press about the assembly of Lohengrin at the LyceumOn days of concert season launches for the next academic year, and on a rainy day with the winds rising at the gates of spring, attending the peace of a Quartet Casals concert is a soothing relief from so much outside noise. And yes, the members of the chamber ensemble have done it again: that is, achieving the complicity and communion of the acolyte audience with an exquisite, well-crafted program, and above all with the incentive of attending Cristina Cordero's first viola performance, after Jonathan Brown had left the quartet. All this, in the modernist hall of the Palau de la Música.

When in 2021 Riccardo Muti conducted for the first time in his long career the Solemn masses

Regardless of the Germany's electoral disaster, we have the consolation that the Central European country is a musical cradle of more than proven tradition and that keeps its heritage alive. Theatres, concert halls and orchestras that populate the Germanic lands from east to west and from north to south make us think that if culture and civilization prevail in the form of dialogue, as well as the mastery of the classics, not all is lost.

Among the many duties of every public theatre is the recovery of heritage, especially indigenous heritage. And this includes opera houses. Since its reopening, the Liceu has done its homework half-heartedly, because there have been seasons without titles by our composers and, when there have been, the formula of the concert version has often been chosen.

The Polish thinker Władysław Tatarkiewicz wrote that the artistic work is a conscious human activity, capable of reproducing things, constructing forms or expressing an experience, with results that can delight, excite or shock. It is beyond doubt that every staging is an artistic act that reinterprets and visualizes a previous reality, be it literary, musical, visual or a mixture of the three. In this case, the always controversial Italian director Romeo Castellucci has made an interpretation of death and life as circular cycles from the Requiem and other works by Mozart linked more or less with a death that, for the musician and in accordance with a famous letter sent to his father, was "man's best and true friend."

The Polish thinker Władysław Tatarkiewicz wrote that the artistic work is a conscious human activity, capable of reproducing things, constructing forms or expressing an experience, with results that can delight, excite or shock. It is beyond doubt that every staging is an artistic act that reinterprets and visualizes a previous reality, be it literary, musical, visual or a mixture of the three. In this case, the always controversial Italian director Romeo Castellucci has made an interpretation of death and life as circular cycles from the Requiem and other works by Mozart linked more or less with a death that, for the musician and in accordance with a famous letter sent to his father, was "man's best and true friend."