10 Nov 2024
Gewandhausorchester
Leipziger Volkszeitung, Peter Korfmacher
“Better than Heras-Casado and the Gewandhaus Orchestra carrying Faust and Tamestit through the ethereal beauties of this graceful work is simply not possible. (…) Because this perfection is not exhausted in cold routine, but tells a story of life. Because amidst the ubiquitous smiles, islands of deep sorrow touch the heart more profoundly. Because conductor, soloists, and orchestra merge into an organism that unfolds, experiences, and enlivens wit, charm, elegance, bliss, sorrow, and virtuosity together. With a sound, from a gesture, from a breath – and yet each time subtly distinct.”
30 Oct 2024
Pablo Heras Casado and Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin Reviews
Tagesspiegel (online), Frederik Hanssen
“Guest conductor Pablo Heras-Casado lifts the often oppressive weight from this 80-minute colossus [Bruckner’s Fifth Symphony]. By stripping away the text of all that’s darkly Catholic—the Almighty’s dramaturgy of fear, the devout Christian’s emotional prison of repressed impulses, confession, and penance—he brings the piece out of the church, into the light, into nature, where the sun burns, shadows fall sharply, storms may break, and raw forces come into play.”
29 Oct 2024
BR Klassik Selects Pablo Heras-Casado’s New Bruckner Album as “Album of the Week”
BR Klassik, Fridemann Leipold "Album of the Week" "The idiosyncrasies of the historical instruments collide harshly, coarsely and rawly in Bruckner's massive agglomerations. On the other hand, their characteristic timbres are much more pronounced than on modern instruments. Imperfections are part of the sound aesthetic, because the old wind instruments...
27 Sep 2024
Pablo Heras-Casado Awarded ‘Conductor Of The Year’ By Opernwelt Magazine
Pablo Heras-Casado has been awarded ‘Conductor of the Year’ by the prestigious opera magazine Opernwelt. This recognition especially highlights his interpretation of Parsifal at the Bayreuth Festival, described by the publication as ‘rhetorically and poetically impressive’. The award, considered one of the most important in the operatic world, is the...
23 Sep 2024
SWR Tour Press Reviews
Stuttgarter Nachrichten, Susanne Benda
A lot of C major, a lot of jubilation.
Pablo Heras-Casado does not celebrate a Bruckner of rush and ecstasy on the podium. Rather, without a baton, and thus feeling very close to the sound, he searches for connections between the blocks, for special sound colors amidst the minimalist but never mechanical repetitions. The conductor carefully builds up the climaxes in the first movement, where the brass in particular shines, and in between he repeatedly focuses on individual bars – right up to a passage in the solo trumpet, which almost seems to swing here.
11 Sep 2024
Bruckner in the autumn of 2024: both instead of either-or
Conductor Pablo Heras-Casado has just stepped out of the pit of the Bayreuth Festspielhaus and is now looking up again to Bruckner’s cathedrals of sound. For Heras-Casado, the autumn of 2024 is all about the Austrian composer.
04 Sep 2024
GRAFENEGG: Bayreuth Festival Orchestra and Pablo Heras-Casado in Austria.
Onlinemerker, Manfred A. Schmid
30 Aug 2024
Symphony No.4 in E flat major ‘Romantic’
For their first collaboration on harmonia mundi, Pablo Heras-Casado and Anima Eterna explore the world of Bruckner. The first instalment in this series is his tremendous Symphony no.4. An apotheosis of architectural rigour and poetry, this cathedral in sound, thanks to the unique sonorities of the period instruments played by...
13 Aug 2024
Heras-Casado and the ideal ‘Parsifal’ (Spanish Review)
Scherzo, Justo Romero
Heras-Casado and the ideal Parsifal
Pablo Heras-Casado triumphed once again in Bayreuth, the Wagnerian sanctuary, where he has established himself as one of the most appreciated and blessed figures by the thousands of fervent music lovers who, year after year, make a pilgrimage to this Bavarian town of barely 75,000 inhabitants, where Wagner himself built a theater of unique acoustics and characteristics in 1876. The thunderous ovation heard by the Granada-born conductor when he burst in to salute at the end of the performance was truly exceptional, even in a place as mythomaniacal as Bayreuth.
01 Aug 2024
Pablo Heras-Casado drives the Bayreuth festival orchestra to peak performances
BR Klassik, Tobias Hell
“But the star of the evening is in the pit, where conductor Pablo Heras-Casado drives the festival orchestra to peak performances.“
“It is a captivating piece of conducting that points the way forward while leaving the audience room to find their own answers.“
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Jan Brachmann
“And the other conductorial stroke of luck on the Green Hill is Pablo Heras-Casado: fluid, yet never rushed tempi in “Parsifal”, an organically flowing orchestral sound; a flexibility of timing oriented towards word meanings and musical climaxes. Wagner works with the musical techniques of trance rituals: the definition of temporal and tonal reference systems, the centers of gravity of which are then gradually shifted: time stretches, fundamental time stretches, fundamental tones shift. Heras-Casado does not demonstrate these techniques, he applies them subtly, with an effect aimed at the subconscious. You immerse yourself in listening and completely forget yourself.”
31 Jul 2024
Bruckner 4: Pablo Heras-Casado and Anima Eterna launch album project and embark on a European tour in the fall
In the 200th anniversary year of Anton Bruckner's birth, the first album by conductor Pablo Heras-Casado and the original sound ensemble Anima Eterna Brugge will be released on the harmonia mundi label on September 13th. It is part of the “New Romanticism” series. Their recording of the Fourth demonstrates their...
24 Jul 2024
Heras-Casado will once again take the podium of the Bayreuther Festspielhaus to conduct the latest Wagnerian drama
The Spanish conductor returns to Bayreuth, where he will conduct six performances of Parsifal between 27 July and 24 August, following the success of his debut last year with this same opera, at the opening of the Wagnerian festival, in the presence of the President of the European Commission, Ursula...