San Francisco Classical Voice

Wagner attracted his first big Spanish following in Barcelona, and the Palau's riotous interior features life-size Valkyries and their steeds bursting from the walls in sculptured plaster. Ringing the back of the stage are colorful bas-relief images of theatrical stereotypes from commedia dell-arte and other theatrical traditions (William Morris knockoffs if you squint just right.) Windows in the upper galleries admit natural daylight from both sides of the overwrought decor. Busts of Palestrina, Bach, Beethoven and Wagner adorn the exterior façade.

But seats in the galleries were designed for small people with short legs (among whose number I unfortunately cannot be counted). And the science of acoustics had yet to be discovered, resulting in an unbreakable conspiracy against the performers and their listeners except in that rare sonic sweet spot in the orchestra section if you can find it. In McCreesh's intimate version of the St. Matthew, it soon became clear that the eight singers were struggling to ramp up their projection against considerable acoustic resistance. Nevertheless, they did their job, albeit accomplishing a more technical than expressive result.

McCreesh favors some of the affectations of baroque style that have come into question, like the self-conscious dynamic swelling among the instruments of quarter- and longer-duration notes, and a common rather than individual style of singing voices with a tendency toward fluttering vibrato. Among the vocalists, it was tenor Joseph Cornwell as the evangelist who made the greatest effort to infuse the performance with drama and emotion. Aside from this, his colleagues (Mhairi Lawson, Julia Gooding, Diana Moore, Daniel Taylor, James Oxley, Stephan Loges and Peter Harvey) all provided worthy and polished performances. Nevertheless, when the eight sang as a chorus, they fell short of developing a true choral texture or sonority. In the work's opening chorus, and thanks no doubt to the room's acoustics, the soprano chorale line all but disappeared.

Even though Holy Week had not yet arrived, programming was already leaning that way. Following the McCreesh performance, the Palau hosted a baroque orchestra from Kaliningrad in works of Vivaldi and Pergolesi, and that weekend two performances of Dvorak's Stabat mater by a regional orchestra and chorus.

L'Auditori, the city's new (1999) cultural complex, features a magnificent theater, a world-class Symphony Hall, and Catalunya's premiere music school. The 2000-seat concert hall is all blond wood (everything except the seat cushions) and though shoebox in external shape denies parallel reflecting surfaces almost obsessively. The resulting acoustics could hardly be improved. Individual instruments sound with precise clarity and spatial placement that seems almost to contradict the opulent blend that the room also gives them. The fade time is just under two seconds, ideal for recording. But the live experience of Messiaen's daunting From the Canyons to the Stars, on April 2, was both awesome and unforgettable. Under the forward-looking leadership of Ernest Martinez Izquierdo, the Orquestra Sinfonica de Barcelona i Nacional de Catalunya — OBC for short — plays one piece or another of new music on nearly every program. A glance at the busy season program book shows that guest conductors (Jesus Lopez Cobos, Claudio Scimone and Vasily Petrenko among them) are also encouraged to schedule new works. Izquierdo, a 42-year-old Barcelona native (who actually conducts from the right hand) is supported by principal guest conductors Franz-Paul Decker and Lawrence Foster, and Christian Zacharias who runs the OBC's annual Mozart Festival.

Though completed in 1974, the Messiaen culminated a series of 11 programs — all but this one by outside performers and ensembles — dedicated exclusively to new music. For the occasion, Izquierdo engaged the Messiaen specialist, pianist Paul Crossley, plus hornist David R. Thompson, who played the eight-minute "Interstellar Call" — the mother of all horn solos — with cool brilliance, an astounding color palette and a riveting dynamic range. The 110-minute performance attracted an enthusiastic two-thirds capacity audience who took in the 12-movement pageant with rapt attention. Izquierdo led the charge with obvious authority. The program note generously cited the four current CD recordings of the piece, but none I have heard comes close to giving it its proper space and impact like this live performance in this outstanding room. (A look ahead revealed a post-holy week production in Madrid of Messiaen's Turangalila-Symphonie. Seems like Messiaen has much appeal in Spain.)

While this excursion took our party to other towns and cities in Iberia, Barcelona stayed in our thoughts the longest, not only for its better cuisine than anywhere else we traveled but for the playful spirit that infects its people and infuses their lively and fine arts.