Pablo Rus Broseta returns this week to lead the Orquesta y Coro Nacionales de España, as part of the Focus Festival 2025. The concert will take place on Friday, June 6th, at 7:30 p.m. in Madrid’s Auditorio Nacional de Música, featuring works by Andrés Isasi, Alfredo Casella, and Óscar Esplá.
A. Isasi · Die Sünde (The Sin), op. 19 \[11’]
A. Casella · Italia, op. 11 \[21’]
O. Esplá · Aitana Symphony, op. 56 \[32’]
The vibrant network of musical societies that flourished in Spain reached its peak during the first third of the 20th century, with over 150 societies — many with their own internal circuits. One example is the Bilbao Philharmonic Society, founded in 1908, where composer Andrés Isasi premiered several works before studying with Humperdinck in Berlin. Despite his discreet profile, his music was later performed in Stockholm, Budapest, and Berlin.
In 1917, Italian composer Alfredo Casella, after engaging with various international societies, founded the Società Nazionale di Musica with the same aims as its Spanish counterparts: promoting Italian music (especially by young composers), preserving artistic heritage, and fostering international exchange — including with Spain. Casella was well-regarded in Spanish intellectual circles, with his music performed in Granada and Madrid through the Sociedad Nacional de Música. His orchestral rhapsody *Italia* reflects the shared aesthetic sensibilities of these movements.
Óscar Esplá may be the most unjustly forgotten composer of his generation. His distinctive voice — ranging from neoclassical revisionism to openness to European styles — encapsulates many of his contemporaries’ creative paths. His *Aitana Symphony* becomes a compendium of his aesthetic ideals, keeping avant-garde trends at arm’s length. Tellingly, its subtitle, written as late as 1964, ironically reads: “To tonal music, in memoriam,” thus closing a century of symphonic evolution in Spain.
Source: OCNE / Focus Festival
