The SIUM offered its festes concerts: from «Vasa» to «Extreme Beethoven»
The Societat Instructiva Unió Musical (SIUM) once again accompanied the Festes Majors of Montserrat with its two traditional concerts in the Plaça de l’Església (the church square), dedicated to the Mare de Déu d’Agost and Sant Roc. The programmes, distinctly symphonic in character, ranged from the pasodoble to the symphonic poem and paid central homage to Ludwig van Beethoven: «Sota un mar de llums i colors» (Under a sea of lights and colours), the concert for the Mare de Déu d’Agost, and «De Beethoven a Extreme Beethoven, el llegat d’un geni» (From Beethoven to Extreme Beethoven, the legacy of a genius), the one for Sant Roc.
Sota un mar de llums i colors
This was the title of the concert in honour of the Mare de Déu d’Agost, which opened with «Las Arenas», the symphonic pasodoble by Manuel Morales Martínez published by Piles Editorial de Música and a familiar piece in the band contests of the Comunitat Valenciana. It was followed by «Vasa», by José Suñer Oriola, inspired by one of the most celebrated stories in seafaring history: the Swedish warship Vasa sank on 10 August 1628, some 1,300 metres into her maiden voyage from the port of Stockholm, and was recovered in 1961 with her hull virtually intact; today she is the centrepiece of Sweden’s most visited museum. The first half closed with «Illumination» by composer David Maslanka, one of the most distinctive voices in twenty-first-century wind band literature.
The second half began with «Jenaro Melguizo», the pasodoble that Óscar Navarro dedicated to the memory of the young oboist who gives the work its name. «Composing a pasodoble for someone who is no longer among us requires an extra measure of affection and appreciation, and of course an extra measure of emotion, so that the music reaches beyond the firmament», the composer himself explains. The work was introduced in 2022 at the Teatro Monumental in Madrid by the Banda Sinfónica Municipal de Madrid under the composer’s direction. The programme was completed by «Del Color de las Mareas» by José Miguel Fayos Jordán, composed in 2012 for the 400th anniversary of the town charter of Xàbia, with movements devoted to the awakening of the bay, the paths of Poseidon and the light that Joaquín Sorolla painted in the seaside town.
De Beethoven a Extreme Beethoven, el llegat d’un geni
Under this title, the concert in honour of Sant Roc centred on Beethoven. The first part opened with the military band march by Beethoven, author of several marches for the Austrian militia between 1798 and 1816 that are now cornerstones of the original wind band repertoire. It continued with the «Egmont» overture, Op. 84, composed in 1809 for Goethe’s tragedy about the struggle of the Count of Egmont against oppression in the Netherlands, and closed with «Orient et Occident», Op. 25, by Camille Saint-Saëns, a concert march for winds written in 1869 in which the composer sets the music of East and West in dialogue.
The second half took Beethoven beyond his own time. First, «Finlandia», Op. 26, the symphonic poem that Jean Sibelius composed in 1899 as a veiled protest against the censorship of the Russian Empire and which became a symbol of Finnish identity. And to close, «Extreme Beethoven», by composer and conductor Johan de Meij, a fantasy on Beethovenian themes commissioned by the World Music Contest in Kerkrade (the Netherlands) as the set piece of its world band championship in 2013.
With these two concerts, the SIUM closed its participation in the Festes Majors 2026, a traditional appointment that once again brings symphonic music to the Plaça de l’Església in August.
Source: concert programmes provided by the Societat Instructiva Unió Musical (SIUM); musical data checked against the composers’ official editions and websites.