On Saturday 13th of November, composer and sound artist Joan Bagés i Rubí premiered his latest project “Mozart Reload” at Teatre Auditori Felip Pedrell in Tortosa (Catalonia, Spain).
Joan Bagés created an interdisciplinary proposal (in addition to music, there was also dance and lights) on the Mozart Piano Concerto No. 27 in B-flat Major K. 595, performed in the middle of a spectacle that started and finished with original music by Bagés token from some excerpts of the concerto. A second piano (prepared), an accordion, a baritone saxophone, percussion, electronics and mezzo-soprano and tenor voices were added to the orchestra.
I have no intention here to describe it but would like to remark two aspects: first, this project is really accessible to a non-specialised audience in new (or contemporary) music; second, it raises the need of re-version (or revision) one of the greatest classics (as it is done successfully in theatre and dance for a long time) by using one of the recent musical languages.
I felt honored to take part of this premiere and really enjoyed this collaboration between Morphosis and Kammart ensembles, conducted by Àlex Sansó, with soloists Laia Armengol and Joan Bagés and the dance of Roberto Olivan. The fact that Tortosa was the capital of the Catalan Culture in 2021 helped a lot to this project was premiered far from the big urban areas: we should perhaps believe that new artistic creation can also occur in the “periphery”.
I hope that we can perform “Mozart Reload” many times in the future.
