We find particularly inspiring the artistic path that Joan Miró weaved with great tenacity during the 1930s, immersed in the tumultuous political, social and economic changes that characterised the decade. The proclamation of the Second Republic, the military coup of 1936, the horror of the Civil War and the advent of Franco’s regime, a four-year exile and the subsequent flight from the Nazi invasion of France culminate, paradoxically, in the formidable series of 23 constellations that he painted between January 1940 and September 1941. With these small-format gouaches, Miró offers the world an exemplary model of tenacity, artistic development, plastic harmony and human integrity at one of the darkest moments in history.

Based on an original request by Carmen Martínez-Pierret, between April 2020 and 2023 the composer Hèctor Parra and the poet Arnau Pons have been immersed in the composition of a poetic-musical cycle inspired by the Constel-lacions. In the company of the pianist Imma Santacreu, Hèctor Parra has explored on the piano – first in an improvised way and then by crystallising an adapted writing – a whole series of special techniques that use a multitude of objects to approach a melodramatic form arising directly from his own experience of the micro-universes suggested by each constellation, and which aims to challenge the audience to experience it in the first person. Thus, this cycle is a journey into the inner world of the composer himself as well as that of the poet, who externalise Miró’s painting in the form of a complex musical canvas: ethereal or dense, smooth or rough, delicate or coarse. In the hands of the pianists Imma Santacreu and Lluïsa Espigolé, the piano is transformed into an almost electro-acoustic instrument. In combination with the poems written by Arnau Pons and performed live by the actor Pere Arquillué, a complete and suggestive universe is born where the stars align with each sound intervention, when our own constellations of deep emotions resonate, in turn, in the poetic-musical universe of the work.

Hèctor Parra

Biography

https://www.lluisaespigole.com/page2

https://www.immasantacreu.fr/index_es.html#seccio_1