The legacy of Pau Casals in the hands of Jonathan Nott
Music, this universal language, is the voice of peace.
Pau Casals
“Music, this universal language, is the voice of peace.” With these words, Pau Casals defined a conviction that ran through his entire artistic and human life. The Gran Teatre del Liceu dedicates this memorial concert to him, under the direction of Jonathan Nott, as a tribute to a figure who elevated music to moral conscience and artistic gesture to a commitment to the world.
Casals was not only one of the great cellists of the 20th century, but also an ethical voice of universal reach. Exiled for his fidelity to his principles, he understood music as an act of responsibility, capable of preserving human dignity even in the darkest times. His legacy goes beyond performance: it is a way of listening, of resisting, and of hoping.
Jonathan Nott’s conducting, renowned for its intellectual clarity and expressive intensity, brings to this concert a perspective that resonates with Casals’ spirit: rigor, depth, and an extreme attention to the meaning of each work. Music is offered here not as a monument, but as a living experience, charged with memory and contemporary questioning.
Within a season structured around the tension between the sacred and the sacrilegious, this memorial concert gains a particularly eloquent resonance. Pau Casals conceived music as an almost sacred act, yet never detached from reality, capable of confronting violence, injustice, and imposed silence. Between reverence and moral disobedience, his legacy reminds us that what is truly sacred is not what is untouchable, but what demands responsibility. In this fertile friction—between faith and dissent, between ritual and commitment—music becomes a space of truth, where art honors memory and interrogates the present.
With the support of:
Within the framework of the 150th anniversary of the birth of Pau Casals:
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Dates and tickets
| Symphonic | Buy tickets for Welcome Jonathan Nott |
General public sale on Monday 15 June 2026 at 10h.
Artistic profile
- Cello
- Truls Mørk
- Symphony Orchestra of the Gran Teatre del Liceu
- Conductor Jonathan Nott
Program
Claude Debussy
Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune
Robert Schumann
Concert per a violoncel i orquestra en La menor, op. 129
Ígor Stravinski
La consagració de la primavera