From 29 to 31 May 2026, Josep Pons returned to conduct the Spanish National Orchestra in its 22nd Symphonic Concert of the season at Madrid’s Auditorio Nacional de Música. The programme traced a journey from the theatrical music of the French court through Viennese Classicism to Richard Strauss’s witty and refined reinterpretation of the world of Molière.
The concert opened with Jean-Baptiste Lully’s Marche pour la cérémonie des Turcs, written for the comédie-ballet Le Bourgeois gentilhomme. Created in collaboration with Molière and first performed in 1670, the piece combines ceremonial grandeur, rhythmic vitality and deliberate parody in its depiction of an imagined Turkish ceremony at the court of Louis XIV.
Violinist Valerie Steenken then appeared as soloist in Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Violin Concerto No. 3 in G major, K. 216. Written in 1775, when Mozart was nineteen, the concerto is distinguished by its melodic elegance, the natural dialogue between violin and orchestra and its combination of brilliance, lyricism and rhythmic energy.
The second half was devoted to Richard Strauss’s Le Bourgeois gentilhomme Suite, Op. 60. Originating in the composer’s collaboration with the writer Hugo von Hofmannsthal, the score revisits Molière’s comedy through music that combines references to the Baroque with Strauss’s characteristic virtuosity, humour and orchestral sophistication.
Placing Lully and Strauss within the same programme created a dialogue between two musical responses to the same theatrical source, separated by more than two centuries. The original music of the French court was heard alongside Strauss’s neoclassical reinvention, with Mozart’s concerto providing a contrasting space of luminosity and balance.
Conducting the Spanish National Orchestra, Josep Pons highlighted the stylistic breadth of the programme, shaping the ensemble’s sound to reflect Lully’s rhythmic precision, Mozart’s transparency and Strauss’s orchestral richness. The concerts marked another return to an institution he led as Music Director from 2003 to 2011 and with which he continues to maintain a close artistic relationship.
The performance on 31 May was recorded and later broadcast by Radio Clásica’s Fila cero, allowing audiences to revisit a concert bringing together three periods and three distinct approaches to music inspired by the theatre.