A recital by the Casals Quartet closed yesterday the 31st Vilabertran Schubertíada, which in this edition has broken its ticket sales record, with a 12% increase and 5,350 spectators, representing 92% occupancy. Ten of the 19 scheduled concerts have sold out.
Víctor Medem, director of the Schubertíada, highlights in the balance the commitment to young European talent: “We are in a golden age of young talent. It is our duty and also our passion to reach out to a new generation of musicians who are shaping a new golden age of poetic song”.
Between August 16 and yesterday, the Schubertíada has offered 19 auditions with 48 artists –among them Andrè Schuen, Matthias Goerne, Marco Mezquida and Javier Perianes–, of which 21 have performed for the first time in Vilabertran, with the inauguration by the young soprano Erika Baikoff. The Lebanese Russian soprano Anna El-Khashem has also made her debut at the festival.
Medem expresses his satisfaction at the increase in audiences, after three years marked by the pandemic, but he is also pleased with "the quality of the concerts, with our audience telling us that we surpassed ourselves every day."
Continuing the commitment to young talent, the director advances that they already have the name of the artist who will open the 2024 edition, the young German Katja Maderer, 22, who has participated in the Lied the Future program and who, in his opinion, of the pianist Wolfram Rieger, one of his teachers, is "a talent that will make an era".
