A Saint Augustine about to be consecrated observes from his altarpiece the members of the Trio Orelon who arrive determined to fill this Renaissance hall of the MNAC with romantic music, an enriching contrast to say the least for a sunny Sunday morning. About eighty people with a sticker on their lapel that gives them permission to wander around the museum walk through the spaces dedicated to Renaissance and Baroque art to arrive on time for the appointment with the Ciutat de Clàssica, the festival that runs parallel to the Barcelona Obertura Spring Festival and which, obviously, being free and for citizens, generates waiting lists in the reservation registry.
The public still does not know it - or yes, since it is not the first time that the MNAC gives its spaces to the festival programmed by Víctor Medem -, but the contemplation of that altarpiece of the Consecration of Sant Agustí that the Curtidores brotherhood commissioned Jaume Huguet in 1463 for the main altar of Sant Agustí Vell in Barcelona, and which presides over this room in which a hundred chairs have been deployed in a pim-pam, will take on a new dimension while listening to the Trio for piano and strings in Amy Beach's A minor and Antonín Dvorak's in F minor.
The romantic mood of composers between the 19th and 20th centuries alters the vision of that other Saint Augustine arguing with heretics, as Pau Vergós supposedly paints him, with his stucco reliefs and gold leaf gilding on wood.
The Trio Orelon formed by the Catalan cellist Arnau Rovira i Bascompte, the German violinist Judith Stapf and the Sardinian pianist Marco Sanna are a bocatto di cardinale in this context; It doesn't matter that the acoustics are not the best. It is not the one at the Tonhalle in Düsseldorf or the Konzerthaus in Berlin or the Gewandhaus in Leipzig, where this award-winning trio has already played – in September they won the ARD competition in Munich – but the uniqueness of the proposal does not go unnoticed by the performers either. .
“We take advantage of this to promote ourselves, we have a CD dedicated to Amy Beach that includes that Trio itself,” says Rovira. He is one of those young local talents or those linked to the city that Medem is in charge of rescuing and highlighting in this festival, since the majority tend to settle in Central Europe.
The musical shower in such unique circumstances ends after 12 noon. Outside awaits sunlight and views over Barcelona, but also the next concert at the Ciutat de Clàssica, which this morning is concentrated in Montjuïc. Medem has dared to ask – to demand, rather – the very young but already outstanding Atenea Quartet (Prix Palau 2022 and Prix Jeunes Solistes Credit Suisse 2023) to prepare a rarely performed work at the 150th Schönberg: his Quartet for strings no. 1 . A work that, Medem insists – and musicologist Toni Colomer confirms in his brief and illuminating previous talk – must be able to be played in the Mies van der Rohe pavilion, since it is its natural place.
The members of the group (Gil Sisquella and Jaume Angelès, violins; Bernat Santacana, viola, and Iago Domínguez, cello) have dedicated hours of hard work to it. They have even had to look for someone to accompany them, since their mentor neither knows the piece nor does he have the courage and time to delve into it, "but we have discovered a gem that should be programmed on more occasions," they say.
Schönberg really dialogues here with the sectioned modernity of Mies. And also with the children playing under the sun that can be seen through the window. An enormous privilege for just 60 people who make up the public...
The day before, these hoolingans from the Ciutat de Clàssica gathered classical fans in an old classroom at the Faculty of Pharmacy – “the vice dean said she had never seen it so full,” explains Medem – and they will continue to do so in nine others. spaces until the 23rd. At the moment the privileged ones total 2,000 people in 14 concerts.
