Swan Lake

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Elena Copons, image courtesy of L'Auditori.

The melodic ability of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, who professed deep admiration for Mozart, comes to its fore in the ballet to perform stories stemming from fables and tales. Swan Lake was commissioned in May 1875 by the director of the Imperial Theatres in Moscow. Unlike The Sleeping Beauty and The Nutcracker, the source of the original libretto is a real mystery. The story line, designed for remotely mimetic choreographies, tells of transformations and impossible loves, tragically linking beauty and death, and pitting the celestial flutter against the aggressiveness of man’s base passions.

Certain scenes in which the music and choreography—the moving images and the invisible affectivity of grandiloquent melodies—remain in the collective imagination and permeate the soul of the audience, such as the scene of the dying swan, without a doubt one of the most famous of this classical ballet. Speaking of celebrations, the admiration sparked by composer Juli Garreta—to whom Josep Valls i Royo dedicated a symphony in 1939—is certainly worth noting in this concert. Conducted by Josep Caballé, the concert will begin with a performance by soprano Elena Copons, who will sing Balada de la Nova Solveig by Pau Casals, a piece that he dedicated to the excellent soprano and pianist Conxita Badia.

Program

• Pau Casals: Balada de la nova Solveig. Orchestration by Enric Casals (1937) 7′
• Josep Valls i Royo: Symphony in memory of Juli Garreta (1939) 30′
• Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky: Suite from Swan Lake (1877) 43′

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