Jonathan Nott begins his ‘new Spanish life’ with a tense and poetic Shostakovich | Culture

In 2026, the English conductor (Solihull, 63 years old) embarks on what he himself describes as his “new Spanish life.” This refers to the new position that . The British maestro, who achieved fame in the early 2000s as a specialist in contemporary music at the head of the Ensemble Intercontemporain, and who later consolidated the international profile of the Bamberg Symphony – which he directed until 2016, significantly expanding its discography -, closed a key stage in Switzerland and Japan in December.

In the middle of the month he put an end to nine years as chief director of the Requiem of Mozart and, weeks later, he closed more than two decades at the head of the Tokyo Symphony conducting the ninth symphony the Beethoven.

He began the new year by making his debut at the head of the , on a tour that began in Zaragoza on Saturday the 10th and will culminate next week with three concerts at the National Auditorium in Madrid (January 16, 17 and 18), after passing through the Palau de la Música in Valencia on the 13th. In April he will return to Madrid and Barcelona to conduct the Orquestra Simfònica de Barcelona i Nacional de Catalunya (OBC) in the monumental Turangalîla Symphony by Messiaen.

His first commitment at the Liceu, however, will not come until January 2027, when he will take charge of Rhine goldprologue to the monumental tetralogy The Ring of the Nibelung by Richard Wagner, which he will address in the following seasons in .

Last Christmas, Jonathan Nott also found time for a brief visit to Barcelona, ​​where he was able to greet his future orchestra, the Simfònica del , which he has not yet directed, and meet first-hand those responsible for the theater. “I had a wonderful feeling: it is a beautiful theater, with a great tradition and an excellent atmosphere; I think it is going to be a new home for me. Now I have to get a good Spanish and Catalan dictionary,” confessed the British director – who speaks fluent French and German – to EL PAÍS during rehearsals with the National Youth Orchestra of Spain.

Although today he enjoys greater prestige as a symphonic conductor than as an operatic conductor, Nott has never stopped going down into the pit since his beginnings. His musical career began as a tenor; He later trained as a repertoireist at the National Opera Studio in London and studied conducting with David Parry. His first professional position was as assistant to Gary Bertini at the Frankfurt Opera in 1989, before becoming principal conductor at the Wiesbaden Opera, where he faced his first Ring Wagnerian. During his time at the helm he directed some operas in concert versions, and in recent years he has led several productions per season in both Geneva and Basel.

It is no coincidence that the proposal to assume musical ownership of the Liceu came after directing The Ring of the Nibelung at Theater Basel, last June. “I met the artistic director Víctor García de Gomar in London, who suggested that I direct the Wagnerian tetralogy in Barcelona, ​​but he also told me about the need for a new owner. I thought it was excellent. Then I traveled to Barcelona to meet Josep Pons and see a performance of Undinebefore starting a tour by Asia with the Orchestra of Switzerland Romande”, reports Nott.

For the British director, returning to the musical direction of an opera house is equivalent to returning home. “I became a director because of opera. I wanted to be a singer and ended up as a pianist at the Frankfurt Opera to continue working with singers,” he admits. This origin explains both his ability to make orchestras “sing” in the great symphonic repertoire and the naturalness with which he approaches contemporary music, a field in which he cut his teeth alongside and . All this has been confirmed in recent days during the rehearsals with the JONDE in the Zaragoza Auditorium.

The first thing Nott did, on the morning of the 7th, was explain the reason why he had asked to seat the string players in a different way. This was the traditional German arrangement, which places the first and second violins on either side of the podium, the violas on the right, the cellos on the left, and the double basses behind. “I think this arrangement produces a much more enveloping and poetic orchestral sound than with the violins all together on the left and the cellos on the right. It goes against the false notion of stereo that many recordings impose, with the melody in the left channel and the bass in the right. In addition, it is ideal for modern, very bright rooms, because it allows you to gain depth,” explained the director.

The Briton demonstrated this by conducting from memory and with extraordinary vitality in the second part of last Saturday’s concert in Zaragoza. The initial stasis of the rope in the moderate It acquired remarkable depth and tension. And the construction of the climax, with those constant frictions between the major and minor modes, was admirable. Nott acknowledges that his vision of this famous 1937 symphony, full of enigmas and which the composer subtitled Response of a Soviet artist to fair criticism in the midst of Stalinist purges, has changed after directing the Quarterperhaps his most radical and brilliant symphonic work: “In the Quinta he appears much more cautious, but also extraordinarily intelligent; each note tells you yes and no at the same time.”

In it scherzoNott rightly underlined Shostakovich’s Mahlerian inspiration and found the necessary veins of grotesque humor, with good solos by the violinist María Asensi Yagüe as concertmaster. But it was in largo where his sound proposal was best captured: an exquisitely dense and spacious string, with the three parts of the violins perfectly balanced on both sides of the podium, along with the divisions in two of violas and cellos. The result was more tense and poetic than overtly dramatic in the construction of the climax. There was no shortage of excellent wood solos—from the oboist Fidel Fernández Moraleja, the clarinetist Mª Amparo Molina and the flutist Jan Schmitz Marcó—nor that suspended finale where the harp and celesta float.

The best of the night came, however, in the cheerful not too much end. Nott directed it with extreme precision, without abusing the accelerating nor of dynamic contrasts. The drama and intensity were overwhelming, with brass and percussion of extraordinary solidity. The final coda was built in perfect harmony with the beginning of the movement and with that essential ambiguity of the work, where victory also sounds like tragedy. After the applause came the tips: an attractive waltz of Cinderellafrom the first suite of Prokofiev’s ballet, and a perhaps too Stravinskian version of the miller’s fandango from The three-cornered hat of Failure.

The concert had begun with a first part marked by brilliance and virtuosity, although somewhat lacking in frenzy and imagination, in the Mephisto Waltz no. 1 by Liszt, one of his two episodes inspired by the Fausto by Nikolaus Lenau. Much more impressive was the interpretation of the very difficult Metalepsis by Josep Planells (Valencia, 37 years old), a work with which he won the XLII Reina Sofía Prize for Musical Composition a few months ago. The young composer, who has had mentors such as and , is inspired by the theories of Gérard Genette to translate the transgression between narrative levels into sound, using a powerful orchestral palette that includes abundant percussion. The work dissolves complex harmonic, rhythmic and timbral links in a large arc of five movements that flows without interruption for about twenty minutes.

The JONDE has benefited from having the composer himself as assistant conductor, but Nott was able to provide clarity and continuity to that complex narrative arc, especially in the last two movements: the accelerating constant tarantella of the fourth and the rhythmic density, almost agonizing, of the fifth, full of amalgam bars and very precise sound gestures. A composer to follow, who already has in his catalog an unreleased opera based on , a work that fits perfectly with the mix of fantasy and technical rigor that defines his music.