2024-10-15 16:10:00
Tuesday 15 October 2024, 2.25pm | Updated at 6.10pm
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The Euskalduna Palace was inaugurated in 1999, the year in which Israel faced Hezbollah in the so-called South Lebanon Conflict (1985-2000); the former Yugoslavia continued to bleed due to problems linked to the internal war; There was war in Chechnya, Afghanistan was facing a civil conflict, as were Burundi, the Republic of Congo, Sierra Leone… 25 years have passed, but the panorama has changed very little, so the Euskalduna celebrate the their silver wedding with a concert dedicated to peace that culminates in this year of celebrations. ‘Bake Soinuak’ is the name of the gala which will take place in the auditorium on Thursday 5 December at 7.30pm. Access will be free following a ticket draw among those who have registered on the euskalduna.eus website and at the box office, from Thursday until November 3rd.
As the deputy of Euskera, Culture and Sport, Leixuri Arrizabalaga, explains: «The celebration will have a strong spirit of solidarity, defense of peace and human rights. This concert will serve to celebrate an important anniversary but with a great subjective and indicative charge which aims to denounce the situation of the world war, using art and culture as a driver of change to improve the world.
Participating in the gala will be the historic Bilbao company Hortzmuga Teatroa and the singers Izaro and Asier Etxeandia, who will perform a couple of songs by their band, Mastodonte, accompanied by the musicians of the Bilbao Orkestra Sinfonikoa. Together with the BOS, the Bilbao Choral Society participates in the event. The central concert will feature three main songs that symbolize peace and the end of wars. The funeral cantata ‘Gernika’ (1966) by Basque composer Pablo Sorozabal will recall the suffering caused by the bombing of the Basque city during the Spanish Civil War. This will be followed by the last movement of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony (1882-1884), where four vocal soloists and a choir will give voice to the famous ‘Ode to Joy’, whose sung text reads: «Your charm binds the ties / that fashion rigid it would break; / and all men will be brothers / under your beneficial wings. A song that was chosen as an anthem by the European Union. The soloists are the soprano Andrea Jiménez, the mezzo-soprano Maite Arruabarrena, the bass-baritone Fernando Latorre and the tenor Mikeldi Atxalandabaso.
Borja Pujol, Iker Sánchez, Iñigo Iturrate, Leixuri Arrizabalaga, Raúl Cancelo and Enrique Azurza.
THERE IS
But the concert will begin with a challenge for the BOS and the Choral Society: they will have to face the premiere of a contemporary work that has been performed on very few occasions due to the controversial theme and the interpretations and criticisms it has raised. This is the prologue of the work ‘The Death of Klinghoffer’, which the American John Adams (Massachusetts, 1947) wrote in 1991 about an event that occurred in 1985, the hijacking of the cruise ship ‘Achille Lauro’ by a Palestine Liberation Front commando and the subsequent murder of Jewish-American passenger Leon Klinghoffer, a citizen who was in a wheelchair. The prologue contains a sort of dialogue between the ‘choir of Jewish exiles’ and the ‘choir of Palestinian exiles’, “a reflection of the history of each of these peoples”, according to Euskalduna sources.
The controversy does not arise in principle, as it might seem, from the choice of a central theme that denounces the murder of a Jewish citizen at the hands of a group of Palestinians, but precisely from the opposite; The opera has been performed very rarely due to accusations of anti-Semitism in the United States, as, according to some rumors, it does not adequately denounce the fact or blame those responsible for the murder of the man who gives the opera its name. title. Both the composer and other critics and experts have always absolutely excluded any trace of anti-Semitism, but the work continues to be questioned in that country.
In any case, Euskalduna chose it as a flag of the desire for peace between the two sides amid the conflict in the Middle East. As Íñigo Iturrate, director of the institution, clarified: «We took the opportunity to premiere in the Spanish state a work by John Adams, who was also awarded the Frontiers of Knowledge prize received here in Bilbao, at the Euskalduna. And the prologue of his work has two choruses, the chorus of the Jewish exiles and that of the Palestinian exiles, which is a cry of survival, a cry of what each of these people feels, a cry which in this case is to convert in favor of peace and the end of the conflict. “I think it’s a very significant event that for the first time in the state this work can be done, which was controversial at the time, but we think it makes perfect sense in this approach.”
«The courage of Euskalduna»
Iker Sánchez, musical director of the gala, clarified that Adams is a current composer “who we could classify as minimalism. This means that his way of writing is based, let’s say, on repetitions, but this prologue involves work, especially on the chorus, very exhaustive and with an intense counterpoint, and somehow tells what will happen later in the story, which deals with the assassination of Klinghoffer, moving from words to music and the human condition. Sánchez praised Euskalduna’s “courage” in propose this work that the United States has so many problems representing, despite Adams being a totem of American music.
For his part, Enrique Azurza, artistic director of the Choral Society, underlined that it is a challenge for the voices: «Both choirs present themselves as a great crescendo. That of the Palestinians begins with the intensity of the sopranos, which grow by raising the tessitura. The complexity increases and finally the entire male choir enters and ends with a resounding scream. And the chorus of the Jews is the same, but starting with men. Technically they are complicated pieces, we had never prepared them and it is the music we love. Borja Pujol, technical director of the BOS, thanked the Euskalduna Palace for “the opportunity it gave the orchestra to grow artistically”, while the stage director of the gala, Raúl Cancelo, concluded the presentation of the event with a wish : “Ensuring that the spectator travels in the space of reflection proposed by this symphony gala. “That when we leave the theater something has moved inside us.”
Organ concert series
After the presentation of the ‘Bake Soinuak’ gala, Iturrate explained the cycle of organ concerts which are also part of the celebration of the silver wedding of Euskalduna and which will begin this Sunday 20th with the first episode, ‘Carnaval imaginaire’, thank you to organist Benjamin Alard and Karmele Jaio, responsible for reciting texts in Basque and Spanish. The second performance will take place on Thursday 24 November, with Alberto Sáez Puente and Matías Sagreras as principal musicians accompanied by several Biscayan choral groups.
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