Orchestra director Juanjo Mena says goodbye to concert events attributable to his Alzheimer’s: “We really enjoy making good music” | Culture | EUROtoday

The information falls like a blow on this planet of classical music. After a number of months dealing with Alzheimer’s, orchestra director Juanjo Mena (Vitoria, 60 years outdated) publicizes this Friday that he’s ending his skilled exercise. “I feel that the time has come to say goodbye,” writes the Basque musician in an emotional assertion. “This year’s concerts will be, if there are no setbacks, the last ones that I will conduct from the podium. This is the decision that I wanted to communicate to you today. A decision, as you can imagine, complicated to adopt but, at the same time, very thoughtful.”

On January 24 of final yr, Mena revealed a video of simply over two minutes on her social networks during which she revealed that she suffered from the illness in its preliminary part. “I have a lot of spirit and a lot of strength to move forward and, above all, an advantage in my favor: music: my passion and the engine that, now more than ever, activates my neurons,” he reported from the backyard of his home in Legutio. “With the help of my family, my friends and doctors I will be able to take all means to try to stop the advance of the disease… I will work even harder if possible so that we continue to see each other in concert halls.”

The maestro then resorted to the hopeful metaphor of a rating, “the most difficult of all,” to explain the tough scenario he was about to face. “The aforementioned score has an ending and its last bars have already been written,” now laments the musician, who in his final look in Spain, in December, provided an outstanding studying of the Novena of Beethoven with the Madrid Symphony. “Time has not passed in vain, the disease has advanced and I, too, have changed. The conditions of a year ago are not the conditions of now and the current situation forces us to make important decisions.”

On the maestro’s web site, solely two concert events are introduced with the Barcelona Symphony and the National Symphony of Catalonia, each on the Catalan Auditorium. In the primary, scheduled for March 21, Mena will face the Symphony no by Schubert, a rating that he is aware of completely: he programmed it steadily throughout his time as head of the BBC Philharmonic and with it he was topped conductor of the Boston Symphony throughout his common visits to the United States as visitor conductor of the Big Five. The subsequent day the Symphony no of Mozart and the Violin Concerto de Mendelssohn.

Although it’s not confirmed, Juanjo Mena’s identify seems within the Málaga Philharmonic season for 2 concert events (June 4 and 5) on the Cervantes theater. There they may provide, in case your well being permits it, a program that closes with the Quarter of Schumann, one other of his many specialties, as he already demonstrated in his acclaimed 2022 strategy with the musicians of the Galician Symphony. “There is something else,” the assertion continues. “I would like these farewell concerts to also become a special occasion for gratitude and, above all, a reason for celebration.”

Among the various deserves that Mena has garnered in his lengthy musical profession are the televised concert events from the Royal Albert Hall in the course of the BBC Proms and his debut on the head of the Berlin Philharmonic, which he carried out for the primary time in 2016 (the identical yr during which he obtained the National Music Prize) and once more in 2024. That historic return made him the one Spaniard who has had the distinction of repeating on the rostrum of the Berliner. With them he additionally recorded an album for the unique label of the German orchestra, devoted to tasks starring his personal soloists.

“Forty years of musical career provide many notes of gratitude,” he displays in his farewell textual content. “First of all, to my family, for their permanent support and infinite patience. And, secondly, to all the fans, to all the orchestras and to each of the musicians and people with whom I have had the honor and pleasure of working,” continues Mena, who started his profession as creative director of the Bilbao Symphony Orchestra in 1999. “I have the best memories of all of them: we made and really enjoyed making good music.”

The trainer reserves the final strains to launch a request into the air. “Music, I have always said, is an exchange of energy. A flow of mystery back and forth between musicians and listeners. Let us make the next concerts truly become a chain of celebrations in which music is the sole protagonist and the main argument of the solidarity and friendly encounter between people. See you always,” concludes the assertion, which in only a few hours has provoked a direct wave of assist from colleagues, artists and establishments of classical music.