Photo: ©May Zircus
After an apotheosis reception from the public and critics at its premiere on Friday 13 May 2022 at L’Auditori de Barcelona, “Suite of Myself” by Raquel García-Tomás can be enjoyed at Catalunya Música Radio for pleasure of the listeners, at this link (no more active). Pure emotion.
In February 2020, just before the pandemia, the catalan Auditori commissioned Raquel García-Tomás to compose a piece for orchestra and choir, with the requirement that it should be inspired by Johann Sebastian Bach music. During strict confinament time, García-Tomás conceived a piece from fragments of St John Passion, the Invention BWV797 and the Sarabande of the French Suite no. 2. For the Chorus, she constructed a rhymed Cantata with a selection of biblical, luminous, solemn and liberating verses from Walt Whitman‘s Song of Myself.
The work lasts 15′ minutes and in its premiere featured Lithuanian conductor Giedrė Šlekytė at the head of the Barcelona and National Symphony Orchestra of Catalonia (OBC), with Pavel Kolesnikov at the piano and El Cor Canta – a young participatory Choir where the composer’s voice was also added. In the concert, recorded by Catalunya Música Radio on 14 May, J. S. Bach’s work opens the program with Concerto for piano and orchestra No. 6 Fa, BWV 1057 (1738) 16′; then comes the premiere of Suite of Myself in the 26’41 minute and ends with Symphony No. 3 in re m, WAB 103 (1873, rev. 1891) by Anton Bruckner, 56′.
General Score of Suite of Myself for Orchestra and Choir. Editorial Mondigromax
