Blaumut’s symphonic birthday party at the Palau de la Música

BarcelonaVassil Lambrinov, the violinist of Blaumut, said it in the middle of the concert: one of the group’s great influences has been Franco Battiato. An hour later, the speakers of the Palau de la Música projected the song I want to see you dance while the quintet and the fifty musicians of the Barcelona Youth Symphony Orchestra said goodbye to an audience that had been applauding happily for several minutes. This is how the first performance, included in the Strenes Festival and sold out, of the tour with which Blaumut are celebrating a decade of existence ended on Thursday; the next appointment will be on May 13 at the Girona Auditorium, and the summer festivals will follow later.

The uniqueness of these concerts is the presence of a symphony orchestra directed by Carlos Checa. It’s a format that logically amplifies the group’s pop-folk impact, but it’s natural enough given that two of the group’s founding members, Lambrinov and cellist and arranger Oriol Aymat, came precisely from the classical world. “Blaumut we speak from poetry, and the stringed instruments help us enhance Xavi’s lyrics,” said the violinist yesterday, making clear the double soul of the quintet that completes singer and guitarist Xavi de la Iglesia, bassist Manuel Krapovickas and drummer Toni Pagès.

Indeed, in the symphonic display exhibited at the Palau de la Música, he commanded the strings above all things, including brass and woodwind instruments with little room for brilliance during much of the two-hour concert. At first even De la Iglesia’s voice sounded muffled (at least that’s how it felt from the side of the first floor), overwhelmed by the weight of the large string section in songs like bicycles. The sound system improved, and the symphonic character favored songs like The moment, Only you (and the teu xampú) i Innocentthis very well resolved by the combination of winds and percussion.

With Lambrinov and Aymat as mediators between the auteur pop and the orchestra, the concert maintained a good tone with a particularly successful central block. the interpretation ofbalance i 0001 he noticed that everyone on stage was having a great time. “When you sing our songs I think it’s wonderful,” admitted De la Iglesia. In response, the audience got excited. “This energy is what has kept us going for ten years,” replied the violinist.

Houstonprobably the song that made the best use of the orchestral outfit, and Twenty-one buttons they closed the performance before encores presided over by happiness and culminated with Bread with oil and saltthe whistle song that Blaumut included on the first album, The Turist (2012), and how many doors it opened for them. The effusiveness with which the musicians of the orchestra embraced each other at the end of the concert confirmed that the previous rehearsals had paid off, and that the young performers will be Blaumut’s unconditional accomplices.