10 p.m. – Show: “The solstice fires in the Pyrenees”, by Ballet Contemporani de Catalunya.
Location: Bagà municipal pavilion
Free and open
About the show:
ARTISTIC FILE
Artistic Direction: Miquel G. Font Musical direction: Miquel Villalba Choreography: Miquel G. Font Co-production: FICTA EDITIONS Music: Robert Gerhard Piano: Miquel Villalba Duration: 75 minutes
The Catalan dance company performs a heritage recovery of the unpublished ballet “Els focs de Sant Joan” (The fires of Sant Joan) by the composer Robert Gerhard, renamed on the occasion of this symposium as “The solstice fires in the Pyrenees”. The music of the ballet was recovered by Ficta Edicions and the pianist Miquel Vilalba on the occasion of the Gerhard Year. Miquel G. Font is in charge of artistic direction and choreography, and the company will be accompanied by Miquel Villalba himself, who will perform the music of the greatest exponent of Catalan music of the 20th century live.
http://www.balletcontemporanicatalunya.cat/
Fires of Sant Joan
On 5 January 1970, Robert Gerhard i Ottenwaelder, the most universal Catalan composer of all time, born 74 years earlier in Valls, died in exile in Cambridge. As such, 2020 marks the fiftieth anniversary of his passing and 2021 the 125th anniversary of his birth.
That is why the years 2020 and 2021 have been declared the Gerhard Year by the Government of Catalonia. Two years that will serve to reclaim this great national and international figure of Catalan musical heritage, who has been inexplicably forgotten. From Robert Gerhard’s extensive catalogue, his works for ballet stand out: Ariel, Soireés de Barcelona, Pandora, Don Quixot and Alegrías.
The ballet Soireés de Barcelona (1936-1938), originally called Els focs de Sant Joan and commissioned by Colonel W. de Basil (Russian Ballets of Monte Carlo), is a work marked by the tragedy of the Civil War and Exile. A work that, until now, has never been performed as a ballet. Inspired by the fire festivals of the Pyrenees, the ballet is full of traditional Catalan melodies, treated with the radical modernity of the time, creating a work that has come to be considered as the Consecration of the Catalan Spring.