The season will also feature exceptional conductors such as Kent Nagano, Sylvain Cambreling, Hartmut Haenchen, Xian Zhang and Pinchas Steinberg directing the Orchestra

The OBC is launching a new image in association with prestigious visual artist
Frederic Amat, thus reaffirming its commitment to artistic excellence


The Barcelona Symphony Orchestra presents its artistic project for the 2018-2019 season at L’Auditori, with 24 exciting programmes that will allow audiences to enjoy the great symphonic repertoire, listen to 12 works performed for the first time and witness five world premières from Catalan composers. Next year, a total of 66 works will be performed by the Orchestra in the Pau Casals Hall 1 at L’Auditori.
This will be the fourth season with maestro Kazushi Ono as principal conductor. He will conduct eight programmes featuring six works never before performed by the Orchestra. For the opening concert, scheduled for 28 September, the maestro has chosen Mahler’s Symphony No. 5 and Schumann’s Concert Piece for Four Horns; on this occasion we will have Stefan Dohr from the Berlin Philharmonic as guest soloist alongside our soloist Juan Manuel Gómez, together with José Vicente Castelló and José Miguel Asensi. Over the course of the year, Kazushi Ono will also bring us Tchaikovsky’s Pathétique; Enric Granados’ Dante; the première of the Concierto mediterráneo a la memoria de Joaquín Rodrigo (Mediterranean Concert in Memory of Joaquín Rodrigo) by Juan Manuel Cañizares; Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 10; Brahms’ Symphony No. 3, with which he will have completed his symphonies; Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet; Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 and the concert version of Puccini’s Turandot, with a stellar cast, to close the season. The OBC will play this again at the Tokyo 2020 Cultural Olympiad, together with Symphony No. 9.
Gustav Mahler will be a key figure and the season’s underlying inspiration, focusing on the Romantic and post-Romantic repertoires, not forgetting classic composers and new works: audiences will get to enjoy the great composers of the Romantic era, such as Beethoven, Brahms, Schumann, Dvořák and Tchaikovsky, as well as their contemporaries and successors Shostakovich, Sibelius, Bartók and Prokofiev. In addition, the OBC will, for the first time, perform works by Clara Schumann, Sofia Gubaidulina, Olivier Messiaen, Enric Granados, Robert Gerhard, Peter Eötvös, Tan Dun, Jimmy López and William Walton. On a different note, we will be closing Bernstein’s centennial with his Missa Brevis, a concert of musicals, the revival of West Side Story and the première of a commissioned work by Marcos Fernández as a tribute to the American composer. We will also première works by Manuel Rodríguez Valenzuela, the season’s guest composer, and by Fabià Santcovsky and Mariona Vila.

Exceptional guest conductors will also be making appearances this season, including Kent Nagano, Sylvain Cambreling, Hartmut Haenchen, Xian Zhang and Pinchas Steinberg. With maestro Jan Willem de Vriend as principal guest conductor, the Orchestra will continue exploring a repertoire that goes from Mozart and Haydn to Schubert and Mendelssohn, taking its talent to Amsterdam, where it will be performing a concert at the Concertgebouw on 29 July.
During the 2018-2019 season, the OBC will be accompanied by some of the best international soloists such as Piotr Anderszewski, Jean-Yves Thibaudet, Joshua Bell, Ray Chen, Gautier Capuçon, Juan Manuel Cañizares and Veronika Eberle, amongst many others, with whom they will bring audiences some of the most important orchestral pieces in the history of music.

The power of music and art: unique projects
The orchestra is launching a new image created by prestigious visual artist and music enthusiast Frederic Amat, reaffirming its commitment to artistic excellence and strengthening the dialogue between music and other arts under the slogan ‘Ets art. Ets música. Ets OBC’ (‘You’re art. You’re music. You’re OBC’). In fact, this season there will be several unique projects focused on going beyond the limits of the symphonic concert as we know it and generating synergies between different artistic disciplines to offer audiences new listening experiences. This is true of the concerts featuring Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 and the new showpiece for family audiences, The OBC dances Ravel, based on Ma mère l’Oye, which will include significant performance elements.
For Symphony No. 9, the innovative theatre company Agrupación Señor Serrano, under the musical direction of Kazushi Ono, will perform a critical reading on the meaning of the Europe of the past, the present and the future. In the new offering for school and family audiences, The OBC dances Ravel, based on Ma mère l’Oye, features six dancers directed by choreographer Antonio Ruz and takes us on a journey of music and movement. Whilst on the subject of dance, the OBC will for the first time perform the entire Don Quixote suite, the deepest and most mature of all the ballets composed by Valls native Roberto Gerhard. In the programme dedicated to Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet we will be premièring the work the OBC commissioned from Fabià Santcovsky. The composer has dedicated this concert to the quintessential Japanese traditional instrument, the shamisen, with two exceptional players of this exotic instrument as guests: the Yoshida Brothers. The work is a commission from the OBC and will be one of the features of the Orchestra’s tour of Japan. In addition, in March the Orchestra will again collaborate with the TNC to pay tribute to Carlos Santos.


OBCPOPS is coming—the programme that introduces every kind of audience to the symphony orchestra
This season features the new OBCPOPS series, which will include symphonic offerings for all audiences. We will continue with music from films and musicals and explore new fusions such as the collaboration with jazz pianist Brad Mehldau. We combine concerts in the streets, squares and beaches with popular offerings at L’Auditori so we can continue to be the Orchestra for everyone.
In the area of great film soundtracks, the big screen at L’Auditori will be featuring West Side Story, by Leonard Bernstein, returning after enjoying great success this season and sell-out audiences; Jurassic Park, from the master John Williams; and The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, winner of 11 Academy Awards, with Howard Shore as the composer of its grandiose, spectacular symphonic and choral score. Like every year, there will be a traditional musical concert around Christmastime to fill L’Auditori with the sounds of the festive period. This season, Bernstein and his centennial will be the stars, with a programme conducted by Alfonso Casado featuring singer Kristin Chenoweth, who will be covering his best compositions as well as selections from great Broadway musicals.
A highlight of the OBCPOPS programme will be the Orchestra’s collaboration with legendary jazz pianist Brad Mehldau, who will be presenting a Concerto for Piano and Orchestra, co-commissioned with institutions including the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Luxembourg Philharmonic Orchestra and the London Jazz Festival, as part of the celebrations marking the 50th anniversary of the Barcelona International Jazz Festival. To round off the show, there will be a solo from Mehldau in the main section, and an opening with the Suite from Paul Thomas Anderson’s Oscar-winning film There Will be Blood, with an original soundtrack from Radiohead guitarist Jonny Greenwood.


The OBC, ambassador of art and music at the Tokyo 2020 Cultural Olympiad
During the whole month of July 2019, the Orchestra will be offering various concerts and operatic performances in Japan with a range of works that will have been performed at L’Auditori throughout the 2018-2019 season. One of the concert programmes will include Juan Manuel Cañizares’ Concerto for Orchestra and Guitar No. 2, Fabià Santcovsky’s Concerto for Two Shamisens and Manuel de Falla’s The Three-Cornered Hat, as well as another concert featuring Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 performed by local choirs and soloists. In parallel with these concerts, the OBC will participate in operatic performances of Giacomo Puccini’s Turandot, in a staging with a Catalan flavour, led by Àlex Ollé/La Fura dels Baus, that will feature some of the soloists we will have heard in the end-of-season concerts at L’Auditori.
In addition to being the principal conductor of the Barcelona Symphony Orchestra since 2015, maestro Kazushi Ono is also music director of the Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra and advisor for the Tokyo 2020 Cultural Olympiad. Ono is one of the most international names in the field of orchestral conducting in Japan, and he wanted to bring the OBC to the Tokyo 2020 Cultural Olympiad to ensure high quality concerts during this event, as well as to present his work with the Orchestra to his home country.

A commitment to new musical talent and interactive educational and social projects
The OBC is committed to new generations of musicians through its involvement in the Emergents Barcelona Music Festival. It has also invited pianist Hannes Minnaar to perform and commissioned works from young composers such as Manuel Rodríguez Valenzuela, Fabià Santcovsky and Marco Fernández. This season, violinists Tobias Feldmann and Maria Florea, violist Sara Ferrández and pianist Alexander Ullman will all make their debuts.
The OBC’s social and educational commitment is a fundamental part of its artistic project. This year, it’s joining up with two European projects to bring classical music to young people. In addition to premièring the new concert for family audiences, The OBC dances Ravel, based on Ma mère l’Oye, it will again this year present the project Et Toca a Tu (Your Turn), an interactive concert where groups that work with music as a tool for education and social inclusion share the stage with the Barcelona Symphony Orchestra to première a work at L’Auditori. This season we will be premièring a work composed by Mariona Vila with the Entre Cordes project from the Pepa Colomer school in El Prat de Llobregat.
Canta amb l’OBC! (Sing with the OBC!) will be back again after the great success of the first edition. This is a project that makes it possible to be part of the Barcelona Symphony Orchestra choir for a day to perform great works from the operatic and symphonic-choral repertoire. Over 2,700 people registered to take part in the first edition, exceeding all expectations.
The OBC also offers interactive projects to social entities that work with vulnerable individuals. It will be putting on the social event Un Matí d’Orquestra (A Morning with the Orchestra), a musical experience aimed at people with learning difficulties and those suffering from Alzheimer’s. The activity features two versions specially adapted to each of these audiences, offering them a transformational space in the music. Each season, around 2,000 people enjoy the OBC through the Apropa Cultura programme, which facilitates access to and use of cultural facilities for social entities.

Download the press release
Download the season brochure
Download the OBC video (with and without subtitles)
Download the season photos