Festival – Festival de Pollença

Presentation

The Festival substance remains strong and determined in every edition, as a ground significant part of this 62nd edition, staged over August 2023.

The 62nd edition programme aims to reveal and emphasize one of the Festival’s evolution trademarks, which is none other than the range or balance between the symphonic and chamber concerts.

This year 2023, the programme renders a whole balance, with three symphonic and three chamber formats, among the six core concerts. All variants of symphonies: the opening concert’s pure symphonism; the mighty Chamber Orchestra of Europe held by Daniel Harding’s international baton’s “no intermediary” symphonism; the CUIB-OSIB and closing concert’s choral symphonic concerts and the DKB’s traditional opening-concert-symphony structure. We seized the opportunity to remember selected commemorative events, such as the 50th anniversary of Master Pau Casals’ passing. Thus, in the August 25 concert, the prestigious cellist Nicolas Aldstaedt will perform two cello concertos—Haydn’s Concerto in C major and Boccherini’s Concerto in G major with the baroque ensemble Arcangelo under Jonathan Cohen’s direction.

We lack enough room to break down all the programme’s milestones, but we’d like to highlight a few. Firstly, it promotes new creations by female composers with the German composer Aziza Sadikova’s work tour premiere: Concerto for violin and accordion, Labyrinthe du temps, by one of the most globally renowned soloists, Hillary Hahn. Secondly, it highlights the first audition in Mallorca of Beethoven’s choral symphonic work, Meeresstille und Glückliche Fahrt (Calm Sea and Happy Voyage). And, finally, with great pride, it positions the Pollença Festival as a centre for the creation of new initiatives, production, and promotion with the Arpeggiata – Christina Pluhar & Maria del Mar Bonet’s project, a Pollença Festival with the Torroella de Montgrí Festival’s joint initiative, and a co-production tour with the Sagunto Festival featuring a confluence of Mediterranean tradition melodies, rhythms, ditties and songs repertoire.

We didn’t overlook bringing up the best voices, string quartets and the most awarded family-educational formats.

Once again, the Pollença Festival’s character and quirk set it as a screen that lets in the dazzling spark of great artists while constituting a cultural beacon that projects a light reflected throughout Europe over musical works performed by the most prestigious ensembles and soloists. A light that, following the wake of the music, invites you to enjoy the beauty of Pollença and Mallorca scenery from a different perspective.

Definitely, we all work so that the Pollença Festival continues to be, as the wise man said, a “beaming fire of a culture capable of reaffirming our identity”.

Pere Bonet i Bonet
Programming and artistic design officer

The Festival team

The Festival is managed by the local technical service team, as appointed by the town’s mayor. From year 2020, the Festival is proud to announce its collaboration with Pere Bonet i Bonet, as our leading advisor. His labour, as an expert technician, is assisting with the general management and programming of the Festival and in artistic, organisational and logistical aspects.

The cloister

The Dominicans built this stunning convent between the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the cloister of which each year hosts one of the world’s largest classical music festivals.

This convent was built by Dominican Friars (1) between 1558 and 1616 in order to bolster their presence in Pollença, having initially settled in the Old Oratory of the Rosary. The Dominicans occupied the church and the convent until 1833, when the site was taken by the government at the time (2), and a few years later the Spanish government ceded it to the Pollença Town Council. Since then it has had many uses, including as a hospice, Civil Guard barracks, a school, a library and a museum.

The church of the convent has a basilica floor plan (3) and ten side chapels, each adorned with an altarpiece from the period of its construction. The most striking example is the one at the head of the church, which was made between 1651 and 1662 by Majorcan sculptor Joan Antoni Oms and is dedicated to the Virgin of the Rosary, patron saint of the Dominicans. The painting dates back to the fifteenth century and comes from the Old Oratory of the Rosary.

Next to the church is the pièce de résistance of this building: a Baroque-style (4) cloister which was completed in 1616. Well known for the beauty of its four arched corridors, it has also been the venue for the Pollença Classical Music Festival since 1962. The best orchestras, choirs and opera singers of the world participate in this annual event, which takes place during the summer, enjoying not only the beautiful scenery but also the excellent acoustics provided by this cloister.

(1) Dominican Friars: The Order of Preachers, also known as the Dominican Order, is a Catholic religious order founded by Spanish priest Domingo de Guzmán in 1216. Its members, the Dominican Friars, advocate a life of preaching peace to the people, having taken vows of poverty, austerity, chastity and obedience. Famed Dominicans from throughout history include Sir Thomas Aquinas, Vicente Ferrer and Bartolomé de las Casas.

(2) State Expropriation: Throughout the nineteenth century, Spanish liberal governments carried out a process of expropriating, nationalising and privatising many of the properties that the Catholic Church had amassed across the country. The aim of this was to boost public coffers, which were suffering heavily due to wars and the loss of colonies.

(3) Basilica floor plan: A type of architectural floor plan that dates back to Roman public buildings. It consists of a main nave separated from other lower naves by rows of columns, allowing churchgoers to focus on the chevet of the church, which is usually an apse where the high altar is found.

(4) Baroque-style: A term identified with a cultural movement and artistic style dating approximately from the seventeenth to mid-eighteenth century, characterised by excessive ornamentation. In fact, the concept was coined by its critics using the French word ‘baroque’, one translation of which is ‘extravagant’, referring to what they considered was an excess on the part of certain artists.

Organitza i patrocina