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This concert brings together two great figures of Catalan music,
Felip Pedrell and
Robert Gerhard, who were also linked by the fact that they were master and pupil in the early 20th century.
Felip Pedrell (1841-1922), a composer and musicologist born in Tortosa, was an eminent exponent of musical nationalism. He counted Falla, Granados and Albéniz among his pupils and published a large quantity of serious and popular Hispanic music. His operas include Els Pirineus (performed in concert version in Catalan at the Liceu in 2003), El Comte Arnau, and La Celestina (1903). The title role in this last opera, based on the work by Fernando de Rojas (1499), is that of an archetypal bawd, while the plot, which has a moralizing purpose, recounts the young protagonists' tragic love affair. The concert will include a few scenes from this opera, which has never been staged.
Robert Gerhard (1896-1970) was the most distinguished Catalan musician of the 20th century. After Pedrell's death, he continued his studies in Vienna and Berlin with Arnold Schoenberg. He returned to Barcelona in 1928 and devoted all his energies to renewing the music of his homeland. However, his loyalty to the Catalan autonomous government of the 1930s forced him into exile and he settled in Cambridge. His cantata The Plague -based on Albert Camus' novel and relating a supposed outbreak of plague in Oran in the 1940s - was premiered at London's Royal Festival Hall in 1964. The speaker represents the characters, the chorus echoes the sufferings of the population, while the orchestra evokes the atmosphere of disaster with extensive use of the percussion section.
Ana Ibarra, Marina Rodríguez-Cusí, Angelica Mansilla, Jeffrey Dowd, Josep Miquel Ramon, Stefano Palatchi y otros.
The Symphony Orchestra and Chorus of the
Gran Teatre del LiceuConductor:
Antoni Ros-Marbà.