L'Auditori launched the idea and now everyone is asking for Hèctor Parra plus Miró

Hèctor Parra has opened a window to Joan Miró through his Constellations, and some of Europe's leading musical institutions are now looking into them. L'Auditori de Barcelona, ​​the hall for which he composed the original 23 short pieces for piano four hands and actor , was the first to ask him to orchestrate a couple of them. A pair that was performed yesterday at the Aix-en-Provence Easter Festival, at the end of the OBC's French tour, with all the weight of the Barcelona composer's Miró experience.

“It's interesting to play Parra,” commented the orchestra's violinist Eugènia Ostas, “you explore new sounds that generate unknown sensations and emotions.” Even the composer himself, who is an institution in France, is surprised when he hears his Deux constellations pour orchestre d'après Joan Miró. “They're incredibly tough!” he says after the sublime session of sharpened sound knives that the audience in Aix enjoyed.

Before moving forward with the renovation work, the Pompidou planned a curious installation with the 'Blue Triptych'

Now, the Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg wants three more of these Constellations for its orchestra, which define, in some way, Miró's flight from the advance of Nazism in France and the painter's reclusion upon his return to Franco's Spain. Parra finished them a month ago, and the world premiere will be in November, as part of the prestigious German venue's season, which, curiously, will coincide almost with the Catalan Week it has organized with artists such as Sílvia Pérez Cruz and the Barcelona Symphony Orchestra itself.

“On the Elb, they will perform the five Constellations I have orchestrated so far, the three commissioned by them and the two premiered by the OBC,” says the artist on his way to the warm Aix-en-Provence, whose Easter Festival is being pampered by artistic director Renaud Capuçon, the violinist who will, incidentally, be a soloist with the OBC at the Amsterdam Concertgebow in July, playing Ravel’s Sonata No. 2 .

Even in the Congo, Miró is known. His intrinsic animism, his way of perceiving the soul of things, life and power, is Bantu. Miró was a bit Bantu. Héctor Parra composer

The musical world is asking Parra, please, to continue Miró's project. "I've realized he's the most universal of the Catalans. Everyone loves him—in Germany, Poland... even in the Congo they know Miró! It wasn't African art that interested him most, but I think its intrinsic animism, its way of perceiving the soul of things, life and force, is Bantu. Miró was a bit Bantu," the composer believes. And he knows what he's talking about, having visited the Republic of the Congo himself to direct, with Milo Rau, the recent opera Justice for the Grand Théâtre de Gèneve.

Read also

It doesn't end there: this June, in addition to his constellation L'etoile matinale for trumpet, oboe, piano, and double bass quartet, a compositional/quantum work based on the Blue Triptych, a work Miró produced in the 1960s, will be published in Paris. "A different Miró, liberated, mature, who lives in the Mediterranean and has found inner peace and is approaching the East and Japan with calligraphy, gardens... For me, he represents life," Parra continues: "the first is intrauterine, with a powerful little heart; the other two, maturity and death."

The project began as an installation in the Pompidou's Blue Room: visitors would wear headphones playing Parra's music, the Concerto for Trumpet, Orchestra, and Electronics, which would be altered by the impact of the paintings on the viewer's gaze. But as the Pompidou's renovation work was rushed, it could only be premiered in concert at the Cité de la Musique, as part of the IRCAM festival. Not in vain did Pierre Boulez, its founder and whose centenary is celebrated this year, greatly admire Miró.

Miró was one of the visual artists most passionate about contemporary music; he corresponded with Boulez with mutual admiration.

“They corresponded with each other with mutual admiration, especially Boulez for the painter,” Parra continues. “He even made a poster for him before the Ensemble Intercontemporain was even called that. Miró was one of the visual artists most passionate about contemporary music. His Constellations arose from Bach and from the relationship between the resonances of Palma Cathedral and music and the stars, yes, but the artist even collaborated on performances with young composers of the time. He planned something with Stockhausen, for example.”

Reviving Miró makes perfect sense, concludes the composer, who doesn't rule out dedicating himself to painting if at any given moment he feels he has nothing more to say in music. "Miró is one of the most sensitive personalities; he inspired many musicians of the time. I am inspired by his shocking honesty in the treatment of his paintings. He spares you nothing of the human being. His inner suffering made him deeply lyrical and conscious. He was a tormented person whose vivid colors concealed inner monsters. He culminated the pictorial surrealism of the 1920s and 1930s and opened the door to Pollock's abstract expressionism in the 1950s. He is at the core of the 20th century."