1 week Ago By Jaume Radigales
In a week served by the excellence of the Kaufmann/Damrau duo and which has included the two passions of Bach, L'Auditori has reserved for Thursday night one of those great little concerts imbued with intimacy, truth and sincerity, at the service of pieces very well chosen by the main performers, conducted on the harpsichord by Francesco Corti. Under the motto , which should be read not in Catalan but in Latin, the string of pieces provided the soundtrack to Mary's pain before the body of Jesus Christ just taken down from the cross. Works by composers such as Barbara Strozzi and Francesca Caccini, mixed with vocal and instrumental fragments by Alessandro Scarlatti, Vivaldi, our Domènec Terradellas (with the splendid ).
Without forgetting anonymous pieces like the beautiful (sung in Hebrew), Javier Otero Neira's arrangement of the of the by Szymanowski or the absolute premiere of another , with text in Catalan and music by José María Sánchez-Verdú. To the immaculate performance of the instrumental ensemble (perfectly finished, with impeccable intonation and generous phrasing), we must add the enviable vocal state of Maria Hinojosa, with a surname that rhymes with and which serves to characterize not only the musical interpretation, but also the dedication to the ultimate meaning of the concert. Because, beyond singing, Hinojosa feels the musical works performed without vocal additions.
And when he sings, he appropriately displays the melismos of the most challenging passages, the ornamentations, with a way of placing his voice at the service of the most sincere stylistics. These were some of the gems of this small, great evening. The stage layout couldn't have been more appropriate, with the musicians' backs to the audience in the Pau Casals Hall, and the audience on the stage, surrounding the performers and enveloping us from the deepest silence (!).
This is a magnificent initiative for L'Auditori's Early Music series, the most successful in the facility's program, which in other areas seems to be experiencing a rather uninspiring inertia. With evenings like Thursday's, hope is reborn and we get a head start on the Easter spirit, despite the mournful pieces planned for this concert..
