When three years ago the notary, legislator, university professor and composer Josep Maria Valls (Badalona, 1953) intended to premiere a symphony that would be a hymn to the unity of Europe, the sociopolitical circumstances were far from being so terrible. Brexit was an incipient reality and the covid pandemic was lurking around the corner and, a year later, the invasion of Ukraine. Those first headlines of “Europe at war” gave greater meaning and urgency to his work. Especially when its premiere would be carried out by the Kharkiv Symphony, the Ukrainian city close to the Russian border that was so punished by the war and that until last September was not recovered by the Ukrainian.
“The conductor Yuri Yanko, a great supporter of his country's entry into the European Union, told me that he would like to premiere my Aurora Europa symphony in Kharkiv, a work that I have been working on for seven years and that I have conceived. as a hymn to the formation of the EU, that is, when at the end of the Second World War it became clear that either we were left in the hands of the Soviet bloc or in the hands of the Americans and that we had to defend our culture and our democracy against both blocs ”, Valls points out in conversation with this newspaper. "I am very European, I have always dreamed of a United States of Europe," he adds, while declaring himself a fan of Jean Monnet, the French economist considered one of the fathers of the EU.
The pandemic prevented that premiere, which finally took place last May in Malaga, followed by another audition in Sofia and Munich. Now already in the context of solidarity with refugees. This will be the case this Monday, January 30, of the Music for Ukraine concert, a year later, promoted by the Notarial College of Catalonia at the Palau de la Música Catalana.
The Orchestra and the Choir of the Kharkiv Philharmonic are the stars of this event promoted by various colleges in the legal sector and which is expected to be attended by representatives of the administrations. The benefits obtained from the tickets will go to care projects for refugees from Ukraine due to the conflict through the Red Cross.
"We come together to highlight the social sensitivity of our professions around the situation of so many people who suffer in a conflict that, unfortunately, after a year of its beginning, we cannot and do not want to forget", highlights the dean of the Notarial Association from Catalonia, José Alberto Marín, in presentation of all the collaborating entities: the Bar Association of Barcelona; that of Attorneys; the Dean's Office of Property, Commercial and Movable Property Registrars of Catalonia; the Council of the Catalan Bar, and the Council of Solicitors' Associations of the Courts of Catalonia.
The author of Aurora Europa, one of the pieces that will be played – the award-winning pianist Ayako Fujiki also participates – has ceded the rights to the EU so that they can be used for the reconstruction of Ukraine. “We have to stop talking nonsense about the world being global. If Europe wants to have a role, the first thing it has to do is unite as a melting pot of cultures to form that global world in which the human being prevails, the awareness that we are all equal and in solidarity. But as Jean Monnet said, things have to be done step by step”, says Valls. "I am convinced that the British will return," he adds.
His symphony, four movements without pause (Renaissance, Consolidation, Triumph and Celebration), describes the formation of the EU from that North-South axis from which CECA arose to that East-West in which Spanish castanets sound to the rhythm of music slav. All this with images that reinforce the music, in the manner, he says, of Karl Jenkins' Mass for Peace (The armed man).
