Mar 13, 2026
3 min read
After announcing his illness a year ago, the 60-year-old Basque champion announced in a statement that he is finally retiring after the concerts he will lead this season in Barcelona and Malaga.
Orchestra director Juanjo Mena says goodbye to concerts due to Alzheimer's disease: "We really enjoy making good music."
After revealing his illness a year ago, the 60-year-old Basque champion announced his permanent departure in a statement after his appearances in Barcelona and Malaga this season.
This news shocked the world of classical music. After months of suffering from Alzheimer's disease, orchestra director Juanjo Mena (age 60, Vitoria) announced this Friday that he will end his professional career. "I feel it is time to say goodbye," the Basque musician wrote in an emotional statement.You can imagine, it's a complex decision to take, but at the same time a very thoughtful one."
On January 24 last year, Mena published a video of just over two minutes on his social networks in which he revealed that he was suffering from the initial stages of the disease.“I have a lot of enthusiasm and a lot of strength to move forward and, above all, an advantage in my favor: music: my passion and the engine that activates my neurons now more than ever,” he reported from the garden of his home in Legutio.“With the help of my family, my friends and the doctors, I will be able to take all means possible to try to stop the progression of the disease... I will work even harder if possible so that we can continue to see each other in the concert halls.”
The maestro used the optimistic metaphor of a score, "the most difficult", to describe the difficult situation he faced."The aforementioned parton has come to an end and its last bars have already been written," regrets the composer now, who gave a brilliant reading of Beethoven's Ninth with the Madrid Symphony in his last performance in Spain in December. "Time was not wasted, the disease progressed and I also changed.A year ago "the conditions are not the conditions now and the current situation forces us to make important decisions".
Only two concerts with the Barcelona Symphony Orchestra and the National Symphony Orchestra of Catalonia have been announced on the maestro's website, both at the Auditorium de Catalunya.In the first, scheduled for March 21, Mena will face Schubert's Symphony No.9, a score he knows intimately: he programmed it frequently when he led the BBC Philharmonic and was the Boston Symphony Orchestra's crowning conductor with it during his regular visits to the United States as guest conductor of the Big Five.35 and Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto.
Although it has not been confirmed, Juanjo Mena's name will appear in two concerts (June 4 and 5) at the Cervantes Theater during the Malaga Philharmonic season.There, if his health permits, he will present another of his many specialties, ending with Schumann's Fourth in 2022 as an acclaimed approach with musicians from the Galician Symphony.I want the concert to be a special occasion for gratitude and, above all, celebration."
Mena's many achievements throughout his long musical career include televised concerts at the Royal Albert Hall during the BBC Proms and his first appearances as head of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra in 2016 (the year he received the National Music Prize) and in 2024. This historic return made him the only Spaniard to have the honor of repeating on the Berliner podium.With them, he also recorded an album dedicated to projects featuring his soloists for the German orchestra's own label.
"Forty years of a musical career brings a lot of gratitude," he reflects in his farewell text."First of all, to my family, for their constant support and infinite patience. And secondly, to all the fans, all the orchestras and all the musicians and people with whom I had the honor and pleasure to work," continues Mena, who began his career as artistic director of the Bilbao Symphony Orchestra in 1999.
The professor reserves the last lines to send a request to the air. "Music, I have always said, is an exchange of energy. A flow of mystery back and forth between musicians and listeners. Let's make the following concerts really become a chain of celebrations in which music is the only protagonist and the main argument for solidarity and friendly meeting between people. We will always see each other", concluded in a statement colleagues and provok. institutions of classical music.
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