Trusted Shops badge

John Williams, forever

About the Event

In this highly‐anticipated concert, hear the mellifluous sounds of classical music by John Williams and Marc Timón at Barcelona's treasured and world‐renowned Palau de la Música Catalana.

John Williams


Ruggero Leoncavallo went down in music history as the creator of the opera masterpiece 'Pagliacci'. Additionally he was known for representing a new artistic style verism whose followers focused on everyday subject matters instead of heroic deeds and legendary characters. He was born in Naples in 1857. When Leoncavallo was 8 he got accepted to the San Pietro a Majella Conservatory, where he studied for eight years. Besides his passion for music, he showed great interest in literature and later studied at the philological department of the University of Bologna. This knowledge helped him later to write librettos for his musical works. In 1879 he tavelled to Egypt to live with his uncle and work as a pianist and teacher at the court of the Egyptian Khedive Tewfil Pasha. However, three years later he was forced to leave the country due to the outbreak of war. He move to France, where he worked as a pianist and songwriter in cafes and music halls.
In 1887 he returned to Milan and concentrated on writing operas in the new verismo style. Five years later he finally achieved long‐awaited success for his opera Pagliacci. Leoncavallo himself claimed, the plot was based on a real murder trial which his father, a magistrate, reviewed in court when he was a child. It is still considered to be the best operas of the verismo genre and is still frequently performed to this day.

M. Timón


The name Bach and the word musician had long been synonyms in Germany as the world saw 56 musicians from this kin. But it was Johann Sebastian Bach, a genius composer and virtuoso organ player, who shed lustre on his family name. He was born on th 31st of March 1685 in Eisenach, a small town in Thuringia. At the age of 10 he became an orphan and was brought up by his elder brother Johann Christoph, who was an organist in a neighbouring town. His brother was the one to teach music to the young Johann Sebastian. Later he moved to Luneburg where he attended a church school and mastered the techniques of playing violin, viola, piano and organ by the age of 17. Besides that, Bach was a choir singer and later after his voice broke he became a chanter’s assistant.
In 1703 Bach was hired as a court musician in the chapel of Duke Johann Ernst III. He earned such a good reputation there that he was later invited to Arnstadt to be an organist at the New Church, where he wrote his best organ works. In 1723 he moved to Leipzig to be a chantor at St. Thomas Church where he stayed until his death of a stroke in 1750. In the year of his death he had undergone unsuccessful eye surgery which lead him to lose his eyesight. During that strenuous time his second wife Anna Magdalena helped him to write his last musical pieces. Bach’s artistic legacy is vast. He created compositions in all genres of the time: oratorias, cantatas, masses, motets, music for organ, piano and violin.

Gift card