Irene Mas, soprano; Daniel Folqué, alto; Roger Padullés, tenor; Josep-Ramon Olivé, baritone; Cor de Cambra de Granollers; Vespres d’Arnadí; Xavier Puig, conductor
The principal purpose of my visit to Barcelona was to hear Lise Davidsen singing the role of Isolde for the first time, but I am also taking in this concert of Messiah extracts and doing some sightseeing (I have only ever spent one night in Barcelona before). My trip to Barcelona was smooth apart from the prospect of having to sit next to a very large and furry ginger cat in a basket for 6hrs and 50 mins on a train from Paris to Barcelona. Its owner dearly wanted to cuddle it on her lap but, in my fractured French, I suggested it was not a good idea to let the cat out of the bag (as it were) as my asthma is normally set off by cats after an hour or two. Another seat eventually became available – just in time; I was beginning to wheeze.
After a pleasant 15 minute walk through the Gothic Quarter to the Pallau de la Musica the next morning, I found myself amazed by the building. I hadn’t read up on it and assumed it was some 60’s/70;s concert hall with carefully thought-out acoustics and bland furnishings. In fact, it’s over 100 years old, and stunning. The concert hall was designed by the architect Lluís Domènech i Montaner – alongside Gaudí one of the most important representatives of modernism in Spain. Construction began in 1905 and the Palace of Music was inaugurated in 1908. The Palau de la Música Catalana has been on the UNESCO World Heritage List since 1997. It is in art nouveau style, I would have said, and remarkably riveting to look at – the photographs below show the concert hall, and the beautiful ceiling, as well as the chunky quite strange outside of the building.
The concert consisted of about 75 minutes of the ‘Messiah’ with an encore of the Hallelujah chorus. It included most of the big numbers – some of the recitatives I am sure were left out along with the pastoral music for the shepherds. The band was an expert period instrument one, with some very fine natural trumpeters, and all the energetically alert sound you would expect from Baroque strings. The chorus were about 40 in number and all looked like young professional musicians – they made a powerful impression and the different voice parts seemed well-blended. They sung with good attack and were very much together. I was wondering afterwards whether in fact I had ever heard a period instrument band play this live before – I suspect not, or not so you would notice. The only performances I can remember are amateur performances in Cairo and Accra, and in Autumn 2024 at Westminster Abbey, where the Abbey Choir was used, and, although a period band probably was playing, the soggy acoustics of the Abbey meant that it didn’t come across as such, apart from some highly percussive sounding timpani. I was sitting at the side almost on top of the band in the Palau de la musica and, although I do grumble in these pages about the lack of subtlety and finesse sometimes in period band performances, and the speed with which things are taken, as with the Irish Baroque orchestra, the sheer energy and vivacity of this concert was overwhelming. But more than that, it was carefully phrased and characterised, finding physical shape in Xavier Puig’s conducting , which was constantly attentive and demonstrated a thoughtful grading of the dynamics of the piece. The 4 soloists – a soprano, a counter-tenor, tenor and bass, were all very good – from where I was sitting the counter-tenor seemed to project less intensely than the others but that could just be my problem.
The whole 75 minutes – the work, with its extraordinary fertility of invention and melody, the performance, the setting – felt like a great wave of joy, with the bright winter sunlight shining through the extraordinary windows of the concert hall. This, already, must be on my longlist of top performances for 2026
John's musical journey 