Josep Pons, the leading Catalan conductor of his generation, returns to the Palau de la Música Catalana to present in Barcelona a new artistic chapter at the helm of the Deutsche Radio Philharmonie, where he serves as Chief Conductor. After years of close association with the Gran Teatre del Liceu, where Wagner and Richard Strauss have played a prominent role in his career, Pons now arrives with his new orchestra and a programme that unmistakably bears his artistic stamp.

The “Prelude and Isolde’s Liebestod” from Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde distils the tension, desire and emotional intensity of an opera that transformed the musical language of its time. In Richard Strauss’s Four Last Songs, that intensity gives way to contemplation and farewell, in one of the most beautiful works in the repertoire for soprano and orchestra. They will be performed by Elisabeth Teige, a singer with a particularly strong affinity for the music of Wagner and Strauss. The Orchestral Suite from Elektra completes the programme, revealing another side of Strauss: more visceral, dramatic and overwhelming.