Jo, what a poetic night!

The feeling of beauty overcomes us.

Oliver Thansan
Oliver Thansan
22 May 2023 Monday 12:10
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Jo, what a poetic night!

The feeling of beauty overcomes us. And the poet Manuel Forcano knows that well, the wise man who conspired to record this complete fact in the Foyer del Liceu. It's Wednesday The doctor in Semitic philology - former director of the Ramon Llull Institute and loyal collaborator of Jordi Savall for three years - is here the maître en scène, the ideologist and collector of verses and aphorisms with which to evoke another parallel universe, that of the sculptor Jaume Plensa , whom the La Pedrera Foundation has proposed to observe from right and wrong. That is why he has decided to expand the fabulous effects of the exhibition dedicated to him, Poesía del silenci, with a concert.

A concert is saying little... And as a poetic evening it has no equal, because, with the permission of Barcelona Poesia, who knows how to combine with such passion the sublime and overwhelming of cultured music with the unfathomable charm of the word... that will make president. Forcano, you're hired! Don't go back to Rabat, or at least not yet. The poet, Jewish scholar and translator from Barcelona, ​​who currently resides in Morocco, also used two outstanding ensembles, the most extraordinary that Catalonia has produced in recent decades: the Quartet Casals and the Jove Capella Reial, the division created by Jordi Savall and Lluís Vilamajó to forge the best of choirs.

Having the Casals Quartet in the privacy of the Foyer is already something sensational in itself. But if, in addition, the formation of strings is surrounded by the vital and aesthetic heritage of the wounded letterman Plensa -Shakespeare, Goethe, Baudelaire, Canetti...- as well as the one that connects Forcano with the past (the Song of Songs in Arabic, the Talmud de Babilonia...), alternating with the voices of the Jove Capella Reial in old or contemporary pieces, the effect is scorching.

The singular evening started with Bach from the balconies of the Foyer, where the voices were located. "O grosse lieb" (Great love), from the Passion according to Saint John, gave rise to a small portrait of the honoree. In the imagination, that self-portrait -a sculptural silhouette made of letters and music that can be seen in La Pedrera- that also exudes his thoughts... "We are what has touched us". In the voice of Forcano, who is ultimately a seasoned orator, phrases from Goethe's Elective Affinities about the ideal of beauty, that is, "simplicity and serenity".

The Casals -Vera Martínez Mehner, Jonathan Brown and the brothers Abel and Arnau Tomàs- introduce Bach's The Art of the Fugue. And each of his counterpoints shares the scene with a phrase chosen by the poet... "That which is beautiful is made for the eye that sees it" (Jalal ad-Din Rumi, 13th century). It's just an example. The Jove Capella sings the hymn Remember not, Lord, our offenses, by Purcell, or Jesus, dulcis memoria, by Tomás Luis de Victoria.

And Forcano goes out in search of "the love of my soul" reciting the incantation from the Song of Songs... "I conjure you, daughters of Jerusalem/do not wake up or keep love awake/until it wants to". To then end up in the Vicent Andrés Estellés de Llengua i silenci... "...Paraula viva tú seràs", and delve into the Babylonian Talmud: "All the members of the body are vertical -he recites in Catalan-, and only you you are reclining.... Oh tongue, who will trust you ". It is then that the poet, who is also the curator of the musical program, introduces The Seven Last Words of Christ on the Cross. First those of Haydn in quartet; later, the Heinrich Schultz for choir.

The poetic concert/recital has gone through beauty and love, until now reaching silence, the great theme of Plensa. "If the word is worth a coin, silence is worth two", says the Talmud. "He who knows the secrets that are hidden in silence is unhappy", from the ninth song of Paradise, from the Divine Comedy. And in a moving crescendo, it leads to the item of wisdom, with some Casals in a state of grace interpreting the painful Andante con moto from Schubert's Death and the Maiden. Sombre lyricism, variations and chaos with dramatic effect follow one another in this second movement of the last quartet written by the composer, already ill with syphilis. Meanwhile, William Blake's Proverbs from Hell are projected:

"A fool does not see the same tree as a wise man." "No bird flies too high if it flies on its own wings." "The path of excess leads to the palace of wisdom." "He who wishes but does not act, engenders plague." "He Immerses in the river to him who loves the water". "A thought fulls the inmensity".

And in the last meander of this river of life in 80 minutes, before the Jove Capella joins Arvo Pärt with Kuss-Kuss, Kallike, Forcano recalls a popular Hindu proverb... "Deep rivers run in silence, It's the streams that are noisy." And he closes the circle with a prose poem by Baudelaire: "Wisdom consists in knowing how to populate one's own solitude and in isolating oneself from the crowd." To return the Casals to another Counterpoint to the Art of the Fugue. It is the prelude to a closing in which some poems by Plensa himself will sound... "estimate the light i jo would give you the best shadow".

Applause, cheers and a very heartfelt greeting from the artist who has been following everything from the third row. Plensa congratulates and is congratulated in equal parts. The Fundació La Pedrera has managed to bring together four Barcelona active forces of art and letters in an a priori act without great secrets. But the spirit of the evening, which passes in silence, without applause between pieces that alter the emotional evolution, raises the bar for this type of aesthetic adventure.

Among the audience there are Plensa fans who come to remind him how much they liked his set design for Macbeth, the opera that a few weeks ago occupied the main room in that same theater. What favors extra flashes in the sculptor's gaze, ready to reconcile with his sometimes criticized debut in operatic stage direction. But today we have not come to talk about that book. But of that other that, this time, he has moved unreservedly.