When the composers around him were heading towards classicism, accompanying the melody with touches of polyphony, Johann Sebastian Bach still felt the need to maintain the tradition of polyphonic writing. Even to almost unnatural limits, with up to 8 or 9 voices. Perhaps that is why it also awakens passions among the new youth.
Bachcelona, the festival that was born a decade ago to update its music and pair it with other aesthetics and disciplines, celebrates its tenth anniversary by weaving complicity with Spanish festivals and the occasional French one, so that its projects have a greater artistic journey. In March they brought their Easter Cantatas to the 40th FeMàs in Seville and have closed the Religious Music Week in Cuenca, which was turning 60.
"It's a way to grow in budget, with income from services, although the idea is to make co-productions," says Daniel Tarrida, director of the festival that in 2021 received the Premi Ciutat de Barcelona and since then has launched to ask for financial support. of the administrations so that not everything depends on its patrons from the Fundació Salvat. At the moment the Generalitat has reacted with practically 40,000 euros, out of a total budget of 170,000.
“The activities leading up to the July festival are growing and extending into the fall. On the 19th, the Liceu String Trio will play the Goldberg Variations at the Torre Glòries Viewpoint, a proposal that sold out as soon as the newsletter was launched”, points out Tarrida. In May they resume the literature and dance project with Cantata de los payeses, a co-production with Espurnes Barroques with Anna Romaní dancing the arias and Miquel Desclot as rhapsody.
The countertenor Carlos Mena will conduct the Akademie, a great attraction for the singers, who come from all over the country paying for the trip: the concert will travel to the (a)phònica de Banyoles and the Música Antigua de Gijón, and the singers will participate in the opening of the Bachcelona (12/VII, L'Auditori), with the Japanese star Masaaki Suzuki conducting brilliant cantatas that Bach wrote to welcome the summer.
Suzuki also gives an organ concert in the Basilica de la Mercè. And he is "very excited because he loves Gerhard Grenzing, the builder of his organ." The rest of the program, until July 27, includes, among other things, a Bach-Vivaldi dialogue, with the violinist Giuliano Carmignola, and another on Bach and Francesc Valls (his Catalan contemporary).
The festival has commissioned a work from the Italian Zamira Pasceri and her Teatro Líquido: aquatic dance to the sound of the Ciaccona, and the traditional Breaking Bach by Carles Marigó will be at the Jamboree. In addition, the French Le Concert de l'Hostel Dieu will turn from the baroque to the contemporary. And the organist Juan de la Rubia will accept requests to commemorate his inauguration of the Bachcelona ten years ago.
The Accademia del Piacere will give a concert in a circular format with Bach organ choirs in Sala Parès, "with excellent acoustics", and the soloists of the Salvat Beca Bach will close the festival with the Bachcelona Consort, traveling to FeMAP and Bach Saint Donat. Oh, and the Bach Flash at the Film Library will be a tribute to filmmaker Jean-Marie Straub and his 1968 mockumentary of Bach's life, with Leonhardt playing Bach and Harnoncourt playing Prince of Anhalt-Köthen... An alternative film that will present Albert Serra
