On 17, 18 and 19 November 2023, Josep Pons returned to conduct the Spanish National Orchestra, where he had previously served as Music Director, in a programme exploring introspection, death and ecstasy. The concerts took place at Madrid’s Auditorio Nacional de Música and featured works by Richard Wagner, Juan José Colomer, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Alexander Scriabin.
The programme opened with the Prelude and Isolde’s Liebestod from Tristan und Isolde, one of Wagner’s most intense creations, in which love and death converge through a prolonged process of tension and release. Josep Pons approached the score with depth and restraint, allowing the music to unfold naturally while preserving a balance between emotional intensity and orchestral clarity.
This was followed by El silencio después by Juan José Colomer, a work commissioned by the Spanish National Orchestra and based on poems by Javier Bonet Silvestre. The score reflects on suicide and psychological suffering through direct, expressive writing, with mezzo-soprano Maite Beaumont and baritone Joan Martín-Royo as soloists.
In Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 23 in A major, K. 488, pianist Nelson Goerner joined the orchestra as soloist. Josep Pons paid particular attention to the dialogue between the piano and the woodwinds, one of the concerto’s defining features, supporting an interpretation shaped by transparency, introspection and the intimate character of the central movement.
The programme culminated in Scriabin’s Poem of Ecstasy, a score of exceptional harmonic and orchestral richness. Critics particularly praised the structural planning of the performance, Josep Pons’s ability to shape its successive climaxes and the response of the Spanish National Orchestra, which delivered one of its strongest performances of the season.
The return confirmed the continuity of a long-standing artistic relationship between Josep Pons and the Spanish National Orchestra. Beyond the institutional reunion, the concert revealed the enduring musical understanding between conductor and ensemble.