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.

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.

"This is the place to be; what happens here matters to the world," declared Joan Oller, the general director of the Palau de la Música Catalana, from the magnificent Elbphilharmonie building in Hamburg, by the river. The auditorium, which resembles a gigantic ship anchored in Elbe, is considered one of the finest concert halls in Europe. This Friday, the iconic venue hosted a sold-out concert: in the main hall, with an audience of 2,100, the Barcelona Symphony and National Orchestra of Catalonia performed, while in the smaller hall, Tarta Relena, winner of the 2025 National Culture Prize, took the stage. Shortly before the concerts, more than a hundred Germans gathered in the Elbphilharmonie's inner courtyard. This was just one small part of a week in which the Auditori di Barcelona, ​​the Palau de la Música Catalana, and the Institut Ramon Llull presented a sonic map of Catalonia in various German cities.

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.

There were smiles among the Dutch audience leaving the century-old Concertgebouw concert hall on Friday night. The hall, which looms large over Amsterdam's great museums, the Rijksmuseum and the Van Gogh Museum, opened in 1888 and is considered one of the finest in the world, especially for its acoustics. Gustav Mahler, although he disliked Amsterdam, considered it his second musical home. On Friday, Catalan talent from both the last and present centuries could be heard. The 101 musicians of the Barcelona Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Ludovic Morlot, performed Maurice Ravel (Ziburu, 1875 - Paris, 1937) and George Gershwin (New York, 1898 - Los Angeles, 1937), but also Eduard Tolrà (Vila) Barcelona, 1962), Pau Casals (Vendrell 1876 - Puerto Rico, 1973) and José Río-Pareja (Barcelona, 1973).

The musical Sea and sky; the opera Carmen; Three Spanish dances, by Enric Granados, and A Midsummer Night's Dream, by Felix Mendelssohn will be the stars of the free concerts that will take place on July 9 and 10 (9 pm) on the beach of San Sebastián, Barcelona. This is a new edition of Classic on the beach, an initiative of L'Auditori, the Gran Teatre del Liceu, the Palau de la Música and Barcelona City Council, with the sponsorship of the La Caixa Foundation and the support of Casa Seat-Cupra, Hutchison Ports Best, El Corte Inglés and Aigües de Barcelona.

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.