ModComFest Enters Orchestral Phase at Barcelona’s Palau de la Música Catalana
Taking centre stage for the occasion was violinist and conductor María Florea (Spain), who was joined by the Franz Schubert Filharmonia. Having already appeared during the chamber portion of ModComFest, Florea returned as both soloist and conductor for an evening that placed Richter’s contemporary reimagining of one of classical music’s best-known compositions alongside music by Johann Sebastian Bach and Antonio Vivaldi.
At the heart of the programme was Richter’s Recomposed: Vivaldi – The Four Seasons, a work that takes Vivaldi’s familiar masterpiece as its starting point before reshaping its musical material through Richter’s own contemporary language. The evening also featured Bach’s Air and Vivaldi’s Concerto alla Rustica in G Major, RV 151, creating a programme in which Baroque repertoire and modern composition were brought into particularly close dialogue.
This relationship between past and present has been a recurring theme throughout ModComFest 2026, but the 21st September programme brought it into especially sharp focus. With Recomposed, Richter does not simply place his music alongside the classical canon, but engages directly with it, taking material familiar to generations of listeners and allowing it to be encountered through a new musical perspective. Heard alongside Bach and Vivaldi themselves, the work provided a particularly fitting centrepiece for a festival founded on the principle that contemporary music forms part of an ongoing classical tradition rather than existing separately from it.
Reflecting on the beginning of the orchestral series, Konstantin Ishkhanov, President of ModComFest, commented that, “moving into the Palau de la Música Catalana tonight felt like the beginning of a new chapter for this year’s festival. After three wonderful chamber concerts, we now have the opportunity to experience Max Richter’s music on a completely different scale, and Recomposed is an especially fitting work with which to begin. It embodies that conversation between musical history and contemporary creativity which lies at the heart of ModComFest, and hearing it brought to life by María Florea and the Franz Schubert Filharmonia in such an extraordinary venue was a very special experience for us all!”
With four concerts now complete, ModComFest 2026 will remain at the Palau de la Música Catalana for its final two performances on 22nd and 23rd September, as the festival continues its orchestral exploration of Max Richter before bringing this year’s edition to a close.
