The recent announcement of Juanjo Mena's retirement from concert halls and auditoriums due to a cruel and irreversible illness added interest to the OBC's weekend concert. Attending it as a farewell to one of the great conductors of our time felt like a moral obligation. And we were there.

The Barcelona Municipal Band reaches its 140th anniversary in top form, reaping the rewards of work carried out with perseverance, determination, and boldness. Salvador Brotons, initially, and José R. Pascual-Vilaplana (Muro, 1971), who has led the band for the last eight years, have broadened both the repertoire and the audience of this ensemble, which will celebrate the anniversary on Sunday, March 1st, with a grand concert at L'Auditori (6 pm), featuring the Montserrat Choir and the orchestra. The program includes... Angel of Mercy (2015), by David Maslanka; Symphony of Lieds (2013), by Johan de Meij, and the world premiere of Chibola Mu Lumba (2025), by Héctor Parra, a work commissioned by L'Auditori for the occasion and based on traditional music from the African region of Katanga.

Teodoro Currentzis's presence in Barcelona is a regular occurrence, especially thanks to Ibercamera. Therefore, any musical event featuring one of the most sought-after conductors on the international scene is welcome. However, Monday's concert was perhaps the "easiest" of those offered by the Greek-born conductor, compared to the superb ensemble MusicaAeterna. "Easier" because, although Richard Wagner is a highly complex composer, his orchestral passages (preludes, vanes, or numbers that link the scenes of many of his musical dramas) hold immense appeal for a wide audience.

The Auditori de Barcelona hosted an evening dedicated to the great Broadway and West End hits in a concert jointly organized by TRAM, Barcelona's tram system, and ARA. The event, conceived as a musical celebration open to all audiences, drew a large and diverse crowd. For the past four years, this event has combined popular music with a symphonic format, coinciding with the Christmas holidays. Once again, the success of this Christmas event filled the Pau Casals Hall to enjoy the best melodies from the cinematic universe, timeless classics, and the best of pop culture.

Baroque concert (1974), the fascinating novel by Cuban author Alejo Carpentier, is the spark that ignited the imagination of musician David Albet, founder of the ensemble BCN216 and professor at Esmuc. "Four or five years ago, I rediscovered the book in a friend's library. I reread it and felt the urge to create a stage-musical piece, using early music as a pretext, a journey with time jumps from 18th-century Venice to Wagner, Louis Armstrong, and an electronic piece." The spark spread. The first to receive the call was set designer Pol Roig, who happened to be in Venice, the city where Carpentier imagined an encounter between Vivaldi, Handel, and Scarlatti. "I had just visited Vivaldi's Ospedale della Pietà," recalls Roig, marveling at the coincidence. As the idea began to take shape, musician Dani Espasa, director of the ensemble Vísperas de Arnadí, quickly joined the project. "I see myself reflected a lot in the book, and it's full of musical references," Espasa explains.

Some gestures are worth an entire concert. Laurie Anderson has the audience at L'Auditori under a spell when she starts playing. Junior dadThe song by Lou Reed and Metallica. Suddenly, the voice of Reed, Anderson's late partner, is heard. The screen in the background shows an image of him, not very clear but unmistakable. She picks up her violin and walks toward the screen, as if she wants to merge with the memory. You'd have to be a bad soul not to be moved. It's just one of the many memorable moments of the concert Laurie Anderson gave last Monday in Barcelona as part of the Jazz Festival program. A deconstructionist by nature, the 78-year-old American artist is currently on tour with Sexmob, the group of Steven Bernstein, a musician steeped in the New York jazz avant-garde associated with the Knitting Factory. All of this translates into eight musicians on stage, with a vast array of timbres and, above all, the ability to present different interpretations of Anderson's songs and covers, such as their performance ofIn hard rain's a-gonna fall, by Bob Dylan, based on the arrangement by the Kronos Quartet, and the wonderful It is a lovely day by Arthur Russell

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.

Víctor Medem (Barcelona, ​​​​1977), until now artistic director of the Schubertiada and Ciudad de Clásica, makes his debut as director of L'Auditori on July 1st after winning a public competition in which the evaluation committee considered his project to be "ambitious, solid and with personality", and with "a narrative roadmap".

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.

Ibercamera closes its 41st season with a splendidly Viennese concert, featuring the Barcelona debut of Czech conductor Petr Popelka, principal conductor of a Vienna Symphony Orchestra that performed at L'Auditori on Wednesday night. To win over music-loving audiences, Popelka couldn't have chosen a better repertoire: the opening The consecration of the home, by Beethoven; the Violin Concerto, by Mendelssohn; the Dynamized vouchers, by Josef Strauss, and a suite of The Rosenkavalier, by another Strauss, in this case Richard.

Robert Brufau (Mollerussa, 1980) speaks slowly, serenely, even coldly. Perhaps because he's holding back an understandable emotion. He has the endorsement of having done things well after seven years as director of L'Auditori de Barcelona, ​​​​the most important public musical institution in the country, both in terms of the volume of activity and the commitments to its heritage and support for new creation that it must fulfill by statute. On July 1, he leaves his position to assume the programming direction of the Konserthuset and the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra. He could have said goodbye with an informal ceremony, to take stock in a relaxed manner. He preferred to insert his farewell into the presentation of L'Auditori's 2025-2026 season. He did so before the press on the stage in Hall 2, surrounded by the team that has supported him in the preparation of the course, whose common thread is the concept of rebirth.

Another impressive concert by Maria del Mar Bonet? Yes, another impressive concert by Maria del Mar Bonet. This time, at the Oriol Martorell Hall of L'Auditori de Barcelona to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the performance at the Olympia in Paris, which was immortalized in an album that has just been reissued. But just enough nostalgia because, as she sings in To alenarThe Mallorcan singer's entire journey "will be to move forward," and she maintains her voice, her intention, and her enthusiasm for moving forward. It's hard to find an artist like Maria del Mar Bonet in the world, so majestic and attentive to the popular and poetic legacy, and so influential on young musicians. This is corroborated by Maria Hein, 21, for whom Bonet is an inspiration, "not only as a singer and songwriter".

In a week served by the excellence of the Kaufmann/Damrau duo and which has included the two passions of Bach, L'Auditori has reserved for Thursday night one of those great little concerts imbued with intimacy, truth and sincerity, at the service of pieces very well chosen by the main performers, conducted on the harpsichord by Francesco Corti.

Barcelona's musical scene has been a lucky one these past few days, as two of its main venues, the Palau de la Música Catalana and L'Auditori, hosted two concerts by the group MusicAeterna, led by Teodor Currentzis. And if Sunday was the Ninth Symphony Bruckner's (which I couldn't listen to), on Monday it was the turn of the Second by Mahler, Resurrection, at L'Auditori and with the help of Ibercamera. I repeat that I was unable to attend Sunday's performance at the Palau, but I have always thought that Mahler proceeds much better in Currentzis: the author's narrative of the Rückert-Lieder It seems more to me ad hoc for the Greek-born conductor, because the tragic element does—it seems—much more for him.

The opera Lohengrin Wagner's opera at the Liceu and a concert by the vocal group Qvinta Essençia at the Collserola Tower are part of the same programme: the sixth edition of the Barcelona Obertura Ciutat de Clàssica festival, which will be held from 19 March to 11 April. As every year, the musical offering is spread out on two fronts. One front includes the concerts and operas that are part of the programmes of L'Auditori, the Liceu and the Palau de la Música, the three institutions of the Festival together with Barcelona Global. "It is an extraordinary project for the programme and the repertoire, and also because it is the fruit of the joint work of the three institutions. It is unusual that they understand each other so well. We are the envy of many," said the director of L'Auditori, Robert Brufau, at a press conference on Wednesday.

The opera Lohengrin Wagner's opera at the Liceu and a concert by the vocal group Qvinta Essençia at the Collserola Tower are part of the same programme: the sixth edition of the Barcelona Obertura Ciutat de Clàssica festival, which will be held from 19 March to 11 April. As every year, the musical offering is spread out on two fronts. One front includes the concerts and operas that are part of the programmes of L'Auditori, the Liceu and the Palau de la Música, the three institutions of the Festival together with Barcelona Global. "It is an extraordinary project for the programme and the repertoire, and also because it is the fruit of the joint work of the three institutions. It is unusual that they understand each other so well. We are the envy of many," said the director of L'Auditori, Robert Brufau, at a press conference on Wednesday.

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.

Enthusiasm has spread this Saturday through L'Auditori in Barcelona during and after the premiere of the suite for choir and orchestra by The lost cat, the opera by Arnau Tordera with libretto by Victoria Szpunberg. More than a hundred singers from the Cor Canta, the musicians from the Original Soundtrack Orchestra (OSTO) and the five solo singers were exultant receiving the ovation of the public, which almost filled L'Auditori, the third stop of a tour that has passed through Vic and Tarragona and that will close on March 2 in Man. It was the encore, and it sounded We are from Raval, the neighborhood anthem, one of the most exciting moments of the work.