The Auditori de Girona’s Classical Nights festival commissioned a Mass for six voices from the composer Joan Magrané, which the author has been putting on in parts since 2019. Although it has been possible to hear parts in Girona, it is now being premiered in its entirety at the Palau de la Música’s Petit Palau. The composer, who lives between the Catalan capital and Paris, uses a wide variety of artistic, aesthetic and poetic references in his creation, ranging from the writings of Ausiàs March to works of art by Miquel Barceló. During the concert, we will hear the compositions Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus, Benedictus and Agnus Dei, all from the Mass for Six Voices. The work is performed by Reservata de Barcelona, a vocal chamber ensemble founded in 1991 with no regular conductor, specialising in a polyphonic Renaissance and Baroque repertoire, which is why the concert is complemented with compositions by Renaissance composers such as Orlande de Lassus, Giovanni Pierluigi, Francisco Guerrero de Burgos and Jacques Clemens. The group is led on this occasion by the Portuguese musician Pedro Teixeira, who specialises in conducting choirs.
The composer Joan Magrané is a young artist who was born in Reus in1988. He trained with the composer Ramon Humet at the Catalonia College of Music (ESMUC), at Kunst Universität in Graz (Austria) and in Paris, among other music centres and cities, during a musical education that enabled him to work with great contemporary artists such as Pierre Boulez, Hèctor Parra, Pedro Alcaide and Alberto Posadas, to mention only the teachers he has had. His creations have been performed by prestigious instrumental ensembles all over Europe and he has written everything from chamber operas, such as Dido Reloaded (with Xavier Bonfill, Raquel García-Tomás and Octavi Rumbau, premiered at the Teatre Lliure in 2014), to the opera disPLACE, composed with Raquel García-Tomás for a libretto by Helena Tornero (premiered in Vienna in 2015) and Diàlegs de Tirant e Carmesina, a work inspired by Tirant Lo Blanc, with a libretto by Marc Rosich, which premiered in 2019 at the Festival de Peralada.
A Palau de la Música Catalana production.
Music composed by: Jacques Clemens, Francisco Guerrero de Burgos, Orlande de Lassus, Joan Magrané, Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina Music director: Pedro Teixeira Music performed by: Jordi Abelló, Jordi Blanco, Isabel Juaneda, Tomàs Maxé Albert Riera, Marta Rodrigo, Antonio Trigueros, Mercè Trujillo
