The Gran Teatre del Liceu in Barcelona was the setting for Telefónica’s first major event in its Centenary year. On the first day of the Mobile World Congress 2024, technology and classical music came together to turn the concert into an unprecedented interactive experience in which the Chinese pianist Lang Lang, recognised by critics around the world as the best of his generation, surprised the more than 1,200 guests at the Liceu.
Personalities such as the Minister for Digital Transformation and the Civil Service, José Luis Escrivá, the Mayor of Barcelona, Jaume Collboni, and the Vice-President of the Generalitat de Catalunya, Laura Vilagrà, as well as representatives of the GSMA and of institutions and companies from all over the world – many of them present in the city for the MWC – accompanied Telefónica and its Chairman, José María Álvarez-Pallete, on this evening.
Álvarez-Pallete opened the event, the first of an unforgettable year for Telefónica, and he did so together with Angel Vilá, COO of Telefónica, and with a warm remembrance for the victims of the fire in Valencia last Thursday. The Chairman of Telefónica explained that Barcelona “has always been a framework of innovation for Telefónica, and we feel at home here every year when the MWC brings together the entire technology industry”. Angel Vilá recalled that Barcelona hosted what was the largest urban automatic network in Europe in 1928, and also stressed that “this company knows very well what technology can do for people. It is the key that unlocks a world full of possibilities, and, for us, connecting is more than a responsibility, it is a privilege that allows us to serve citizens, make companies grow and bring progress to societies”.
“This evening we are going to enjoy a unique concert full of technology. We are going to imagine the future together, a future in which Telefónica will continue to connect people”, concluded Álvarez-Pallete.
For more than an hour, Lang Lang performed popular classics by composers such as Bach, Beethoven, Manuel de Falla and Mozart, and surprised the audience combining creativity and humanism with an unprecedented concentration of technology thanks to Telefónica and Ericsson’s joint low-latency 5G technology developments.
The first section of the concert surprised with a show of drones flying over the piano, followed by a section in which the Chinese pianist shared his emotions with the audience through a jacket connected in real time with sensors.
In the final part, Lang Lang involved the audience in the artistic creation by interacting with their mobile phones. He led a technological experience enriching the real world with the virtual world through a visual game of two pianos and two pianists, one authentic and the other holographic, practically identical.
100 years of history
The Liceu concert marks the beginning of the different activities and events that Telefónica will celebrate in 2024. In the coming months, with particular intensity in April, when the company celebrates its Centenary, Telefónica will commemorate this unique milestone with its employees, but also with its customers, shareholders and society as a whole.
Music will also play a leading role in the Centenary Gala, the great institutional event that will take place on 19 April at the Teatro Real in Madrid, and in the solidarity concert that Telefónica will offer its employees at the Santiago Bernabéu stadium on 18 May.
Telefónica’s team around the world will celebrate simultaneously on 19 April to those first 100 years of history and to the next 100, in which the company remains committed to improving people’s lives through technology.
Fundación Telefónica is also actively participating in the Centenary with the opening of exhibitions such as ‘Windows to the Future’, already open at the Espacio Fundación Telefónica, and with the digitalisation of more than 60,000 pieces of the company’s photographic and documentary archive that will remain as a legacy.
A large part of this digitised and documented archive can be enjoyed on the Centenary website, www.telefonica100.com, a digital journey through time that allows you to visit one by one the hundred years of Telefónica’s history through milestones, anecdotes, photographs and unpublished documents.