The largest celebration of Pau Casals Day at Turó Park

The city has been celebrating Pau Casals Day since 2016, around the date when Barcelona named the musician an Adoptive Son, conferred the City Medal on him and put his name on the avenue located at the base of Turó Park on 16 June 1934. Year after year, the events have got larger and the number of participating musicians and audience size have grown, all with the sole objective of commemorating the beauty of the ideals that the living legacy of Pau Casals and the city of Barcelona share: peace, democracy and freedom. This year’s edition will open with the Nens del Vendrell, from El Vendrell, the city where the composer was born. After them, the “Puigsoliu”, poema simfònic by Joaquim Serra and Tchaikovsky’s Serenade for Strings will be performed by the Orquestra Montsalvatge from the Institut Escola Artístic Oriol Martorell. The Orquestra Simfònica VOZES will also perform Offenbach’s Orpheus in the Underworld (Overture) and Strauss’s Tritsch-Tratsch-Polka. To conclude the celebration, a group of 40 cellists, made up of the faculty and students at the leading conservatories and music schools in Barcelona, conducted by Antoni Ros-Marbà, will perform Pau Casals’s Sardana de Sant Martí del Canigó. The final farewell will be the piece that is most closely identified with the cellist, El cant dels ocells.

This year, Pau Casals Day is being held on 20 June starting at 8 pm on the esplanade in Turó Park.

The event is totally free of charge with open access. You can find all the information on the website of the Pau Casals Foundation.