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Christmas has arrived in Barcelona and the city is throwing itself into a calendar of cultural activities for the next few weeks. We recommend a series of concerts that will be held at L’Auditori, the Palau de la Música Catalana and the Gran Teatre del Liceu.
1. The participatory Messiah at L’Auditori de Barcelona
One of the most anticipated Christmas concerts will be held next Friday, December 23 at L’Auditori. Again this year we have the pleasure of listening to Georg Friedrich Händel’s best-known oratorio, The Messiah. The concert is organized by the Messies Participatiu Association of Barcelona and is special in that the voices of amateur singers intertwine on stage with those of professional musicians. The 500 singers of the association are accompanied by the Granollers Chamber Choir, the El Virolet Children’s Choir and the Vozes Symphonic Choir. The solo voices are the soprano Elionor Martínez, the contralto Cristina Segura, the tenor Jorge Navarro and the baritone Josep-Ramon Olivé. The orchestra, noted for its baroque repertoire, is Vespres d’Artadi and Manel Valdivieso will be conducting.
The amateur singers of the participatory Messiah, aged from just 15 to 90, come from very diverse professional backgrounds. Teachers and university professors, businessmen and professionals from the world of commerce, doctors, designers, lawyers, architects, researchers and journalists.
2. The Nutcracker at the Palau de la Música
On Christmas Day and the Epiphany, Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker arrives at the Palau de la Música. The orchestra interpreting the most famous Christmas ballet is the Orquestra Simfònica del Vallès. The production presented this year includes other artistic disciplines such as storytelling and illustration.
On stage, as well as the orchestra, there will be a giant screen where illustrations made with sand created by the Borja Ytuquepintas’ company will be projected live. All this will be accompanied by the narration of Luis Posada, a dubbing actor who has given voice to actors such as Johnny Depp and Leonardo DiCaprio.
3. The traditional Saint Stephen’s concert
The Orfeó Català celebrates its most Christmas concert every December 26 at the Palau de la Música. Saint Stephen is an important festival in Catalonia. Since 1913 the musical tradition of this concert has been maintained. Currently, not only can you attend the live performance, you can follow the televised broadcast on TV3. Over more than 100 years, the only times that this annual event has been missed was due to force majeure. In 1933 the concert was postponed until December 30, as the day before Saint Stephen, Christmas Day, the president of Catalonia Francesc Macià died. A few years later, in 1936, the outbreak of the Civil War meant the concert was canceled until 1945. The great snowfall of 1962 made the musical tradition of the 26th at the Palau impossible and in 1975 the concert could not be held due to the restructuring of the choir.
The motto for this year 2022 is “Make way” and the special guests are the Friends of the Arts. Adrià Aubert i Blanch will be in charge of the stage direction and Anna Romaní is the choreographer.
The concert will show the interaction of all the choirs that are part of the Orfeó Català and it will be the first time that Pablo Larraz will conduct the concert. Apart from the traditional Christmas plays, this year the Christmas carol suite ‘I va arribar’ Nadal by Jordi Domènech, commissioned just for this moment, will be premiered, and the work ‘Advent’ by Ferran Cruixent, composer-in-residence for the season at the Palau, will be performed. These are just some of the pieces to be heard at the concert that will conclude with the same work with which the first concert of 1913 began, the ‘Cant de la Senyera’.
4. New Year’s Eve at L’Auditori
On December 30, the Barcelona Municipal Band celebrates its end-of-year concert with a program focused on one of the most successful American composers of the 20th century, George Gershwin. A pianist and composer noted for creating a perfect mix between classical music and jazz. Gershwin’s was initially self-taught, he later continued his studies with Professor Charles Hambitzer, with whom he discovered the compositions of Franz Liszt, Frédéric Chopin and Claude Debussy. Once he had succeeded in the world of musicals, his interest in further training led him to undertake a trip to Paris. There he wanted to study with the most important composers of the moment, but they rejected him. Maurice Ravel refused to teach him saying: “You would lose your great melodic spontaneity composing in a bad Ravelian style. Why do you want to be a second-rate Ravel, when you can be a first-rate Gershwin?”
At the end-of-year event at L’Auditori, in addition to the Piano Concerto in F and The Porgy and Bess Collection, the composer Albert Guinovart performs on piano ‘Love Rhythm’ a suite on Gershwin themes written by the same.
5. New Year at the Palau de la Música
The first day of 2023 brings us the new year concert by the Vallès Symphony Orchestra. Inspired by Viennese Christmas traditions, the orchestra offers us a program of waltzes and polkas from the Strauss family. Marta Cloquell will be the solo soprano and Oliver Díaz will conduct the concert.
The concert program also includes works by Haydn, Tchaikovsky, Edward Elgar and others. In addition, on this tour of traditional Viennese dances, the orchestra will perform the Polka of the tightrope walker by the Catalan composer Manuel Blancafort.
This work, originally written for piano, is part of a suite of pieces called The Amusement Park. The complete work premiered in Paris in 1924 and in 1932 a performance was produced at the Urquinaona Theater in Barcelona with the dancer and choreographer Joan Magrinyà. A historical recording has been preserved with the interpretation of this piece by the same pianist who premiered it in Paris, Ricard Viñes.
6. The Three Wise Men bring us Tosca at the Liceu
As a climax to the Christmas celebrations, starting on January 4, one of the most performed operas in the history of music, Tosca by Puccini, arrives at the Gran Teatre del Liceu. A new production premiered at the La Monnaie theater, co-produced by the Gran Teatre del Liceu and others.
One of the peculiarities of the production is the incorporation of a different voice in the role of El Pastor. All performances will feature the countertenor Hugo Bolívar. However, the rest of the cast in other performances changes. This is a great excuse to come to the Theater. María Agresta, Emily Magee, Monica Zanettin and the very famous soprano Sonda Radvanovsky in the role of Floria Tosca. Michael Fabiano, Joseph Calleja and Antonio Coranò in the role of Mario Cavaradossi. The bad, bad Baron Scarpia will be played by Željko Lucić and George Gagnidze.
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