Music. Cultural Information from Catalan-Speaking Lands 2000 (II)

Abstract

During September the preStlglOus conductor Zubin Mehta opened the Palau IOO cycle in Barcelona with the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra interpreting Anton Bruckner's Symphony No. 8. The Barcelona Symphony Orchestra and National of Catalonia put on a performance, during the same month as part of their season of concerts, in the form of a small festival of music dedicated to Mozart. During October Zoltan Kocsis conducted the Hungarian National Philharmonic Orchestra at the Palau de la Música in Valencia which included a performance by the piano soloist Dezso Ranki. In October one of the great violinists of today, Shlomo Mintz, headed the Brabante Philharmonic Orchestra at the Cultural Centre of Terrassa, with performances of Beethoven's Coriolanus Overture, the Polonaises by Chopin, the Fantasy on Popular Hungarian Melodies by Lizt (the last two with the Cuban pianist Rosario Andino), and Symphony No. 15 by Shostakovich. At the beginning of November, and under the baton of Simon Rattle, the Palau de la Música was the venue for interpretations of symphonic fragments from Romeo and Juliet and the Fantastic Symphony by Berlioz, performed by the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment set up by the conductor himself in Glyndebourne and using period instruments. Also in November the Barcelona Symphony Orchestra and National of Catalonia, under the artistÏc directÏon of the American maestro Lawrence Foster, offered a new approach with two symphonic sessions within the context of the entartere Musik, the music prohibited by the Nazis. After this, and unti! the beginning of December, the Brodsky Quartet performed six concerts in the Auditori in Barcelona whose music stands featured only music by the Russian composer Dmitri Shostokovich, in particular 15 string quartets which he wrote between 1938 and 1974 and which are considered to exemplify the ideology of this composer.