The pianist, harpsichordist, and conductor Dani Espasa (la Canonja, 1974) is one of the most knowledgeable and prolific musicians in Catalonia. In 2005 he founded the Vespres d’Arnadí orchestra, a group of top-level musicians dedicated to the performance of Baroque pieces with historical instruments and criteria, which performs continuously in theaters and auditoriums in our region. In recent years, the ensemble has undertaken a huge task of unearthing lost works of ancient music, some by Catalan composers, such as Domènec Tarradellas and Carles Baguer. They are now the resident ensemble of the Peralada Festival, and this Maundy Thursday, April 2, they will inaugurate the Easter edition with a version of Il Cristo condannato, by Antonio Caldara, composed in 1717 and unpublished in modern times. The work will be revived in the church of El Carme under Espasa's direction, with Montserrat Seró and Josep-Ramon Olivé among the soloists, and the participation of the Cor Francesc Valls.

Major news for lovers of Richard Wagner's music. On August 29, 2026, the Bayreuth Festival Orchestra, an absolute benchmark ensemble in the Wagnerian repertoire and considered one of the best opera orchestras in the world, will perform at the Palau de la Música, fourteen years after its last visit to Catalonia. The concert will mark the beginning of a historic tour that will take the German ensemble to various venues in Spain, also coinciding with the closing ceremony of the 40th anniversary of the Perelada Festival.

Sònia Iontxeva is one of the regular voices at the Peralada Festival and this Friday she returned to present her latest album, George, a tribute to the writer George Sand. In the recital closing the 39th edition of the festival, the Bulgarian soprano was accompanied by pianist Olga Zado, mezzo-soprano Ekaterine Buachidze, and Catalan violinist Sara Balasch, four women who emulated the musical and poetic evenings that brought together Parisian intellectuals and late poets Alfred de Musset and Pauline Viardot. The dramatized performance combined music, poetry, and the soprano's reading of letters and literary fragments by George Sand.

Memorable night at the Peralada Easter Festival, the day after the opening concert, with the absolute premiere of the Responsories of Holy Week by Bernat Vivancos: a piece for the heart a cappella, written for six voices, which revisits from the present the Christian tradition of the Lessons of Darkness, typical of the Renaissance.

The Vísperas de Arnadí ensemble has recovered Johann Adolf Hasse's oratorio from oblivion. Sanctus Petrus et Sancta María Magdalena, and with it has inaugurated the third edition of the Peralada Easter Festival, in clear harmony with one of the axes of the event, the recovery of musical heritage. The work, composed for string orchestra, continuo and second voices and premiered in 1758 in Venice, had not yet been heard live in Spain.

The Peralada Festival is one of the institutions most committed to the premiere of new Catalan musical works. In this year's Easter edition, held from April 17 to 20, the composer Bernat Vivancos (Barcelona, ​​​​1973) presents the commissioned work Responsoría Hebdomadae Sanctae: A contemporary review of the lessons of darkness of Holy Week, written for the heart a cappella, which aims to bring new sounds to the original spirituality of the Christian liturgy. Vivancos is one of the most prolific Catalan composers of the 21st century, heir to the musical tradition of the Montserrat choir school, trained in Barcelona, ​​Paris and Oslo, with his own compositional style, eminently contemporary but at the same time eclectic and timeless.