05 Jan 2024
Munich Philharmonic Orchestra New Year’s Eve concerts
Unknown Destination Ahead: Beethoven’s Ninth with Pablo Heras-Casado
Merkur
With Beethoven’s Ninth, Pablo Heras-Casado makes a powerful impact with the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra. However, what he exactly wants to achieve with the work is not entirely clear at the turn of the year.
Stylistically, the man knows no taboo. Pablo Heras-Casado conducts just about everything from the Baroque to the 21st century. This is impressive and also clever, as the Spaniard utilizes the experiences of the ensembles he engages with. From the Freiburg Baroque Orchestra, from the Concentus Musicus Wien, from the Ensemble Intercontemporain for modern works, and last summer, for Wagner’s “Parsifal”, with the Bayreuth Festival Orchestra.
14 Nov 2023
Premiere Le Grand Macabre, Ligeti – Wiener Staatsoper
Apocalypse can be so colorful!
BR Klassik
It is the only opera by György Ligeti, but there is a whole world in it: “Le Grand Macabre” is a cornucopia of musical ideas. And they come into their own fantastically in the new production at the Vienna State Opera.
[…] In Vienna, Pablo Heras-Casado holds all the strings, ropes and occasionally choppy cables of the score together perfectly, the music is brilliant, and the Slovak Philharmonic Choir delivers precise vocal hullabaloo (rehearsed by Jozef Chabroň).
05 Sep 2023
Premiere La Clemenza di Tito, Mozart – Wiener Staatsoper
Pablo Heras-Casado returns to the pit of the Wiener Staatsoper to conduct the first title of the season of this outstanding theatre. This is Mozart’s La clemenza di Tito, in a production signed by Jürgen Flimm. Heras-Casado thus returned to the Vienna State Opera after successfully completing his direction of...
26 Jul 2023
Triumphant debut by Pablo Heras-Casado
TRIUMPHANT DEBUT BY PABLO HERAS-CASADO
Conductor Pablo Heras-Casado masters the difficult acoustics of the Festspielhaus right from his debut. What more famous conductors have failed at time and again, he succeeds at once: that orchestra, singers and even the fantastic choir really breathe together. It seems almost paradoxical: although Heras-Casado chooses fast tempi, the music never seems driven. For long stretches, this is fascinatingly slow, solemn music, which, however, flows as if through a natural inner gradient. Wagner’s refined sound mixtures are finely sounded out, the phrases speak – even in the orchestra, the climaxes lead to the goal. Who needs glasses?
25 Jul 2023
Bayreuth Festival ‘Parsifal’ Premiere
PABLO HERAS-CASADO INAUGURATES THE 2023 BAYREUTH FESTIVAL, ON JULY 25, WITH A NEW PRODUCTION OF ‘PARSIFAL’
Heras-Casado is the first Spanish musical conductor to occupy the podium of the Wagnerian temple, apart from the three functions of Die Walküre that Plácido Domingo conducted in 2018.
Pablo Heras-Casado will open the Bayreuth Festival, 2023, next Tuesday, July 25 at 16.00h, with a new production of Parsifal, by Richard Wagner, an unprecedented event for the international Spanish prestige in the musical field.
12 Jul 2023
SWR Tour Press Reviews
Stuttgarter Zeitung/ Backnanger Kreiszeitung.
On 25 July, the Spaniard will make his Bayreuth debut on the podium at the start of the Wagner Festival with “Parsifal”. Now he will fire up Mendelssohn’s sounds: This music has freshness, power and emotion. And emotion. […] Igor Stravinsky’s Symphony of Psalms (1930) is also very rhythmic, with a strong emphasis on the winds. The high strings are free here, and the great emotions pause with them. At the end, however, Pablo Heras-Casado lets them in through the back door: In the first two psalms, which are more about proclamation than internalisation, the SWR vocal ensemble declaims and intones flawlessly. The orchestra sets precise accents in the motoric forward stride.
08 Jul 2023
Schubert: Symphonies Nº. 5 & 7 “Unfinished” Reviews
NDR Kultur Album of the Week: Pablo Heras-Casado conducts Schubert by Chantal Nastasi
The Spanish conductor Pablo Heras-Casado and the Freiburg Baroque Orchestra have already won several awards together. With their new Schubert recording, they succeed in creating a lively interpretation.
10 Jun 2023
New album release: Schubert: Symphonies Nº. 5 & 7 “Unfinished”
The new album, Symphonies N. 5 & 7 ‘unfinished’ with the Freiburger Barockorchester for Harmonia Mundi "Die neue Romantik" cycle, is now out and at the Top10 of the Spotify & Apple Music classical new releases and playlists. Also selected as "Album of the week" on BBC 3 radio. If...
06 Jun 2023
Festspielhaus Baden-Baden Press Reviews
‘Raising expectations’ – Review by the Badische Neueste Nachrichten.
by Isabel Steppeler.
Bewitching “Parsifal” Finale with Pablo Heras-Casado at the end of the Pfingstfestspiele.
An exclamation mark at the end: The Pfingstfestspiele with the SWR Symphony Orchestra in Baden-Baden came to an end on Sunday with moving sounds. As at the opening, Richard Wagner’s work was the focus of the last concert: the prelude and the third act of his consecrated stage play “Parsifal” developed a beguiling effect in Pablo Heras-Casado’s sensual and analytical interpretation.
29 May 2023
Pablo Heras-Casado conducts the Filarmonica della Scala to commemorate the centenary of Ligeti
Pablo Heras-Casado returns at the head of the Filarmonica della Scala, to commemorate the centenary of the Hungarian composer György Ligeti, performing the Concert Românesc. The programme is completed with Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 3, with Jan Lisiecki as soloist, and Antonin Dvořák’s Symphony No. 8. More information here.
22 May 2023
Freiburger Barockorchester Tour Press Reviews
Kölner Stadtanzeiger
Soundtrack for a summer night.
“[…] The threads of the performance, which was magnificent in every respect, came together under the Spanish conductor Pablo Heras-Casado, who had already given Franz Schubert’s “little” C major symphony a striking profile: a perfectly balanced interplay of different movement patterns, a graceful dance of lace, which was interrupted every now and then by cheerfully booming canon salvos.”
03 May 2023
Tour with the Freiburger Barockorchester
Pablo Heras-Casado and the Freiburger Barockorchester will bring Schubert to a Viennese and German stage in May with guest performances in Hamburg, Wiesbaden, Cologne, and Freiburg presenting a program with Mendelssohn's A Midsummer Night's Dream (with singers and narrator) and Schubert's Sixth Symphony. They will continue their Schubert recordings with a...