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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...

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.

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.

GRAFENEGG: Bayreuth Festival Orchestra and Pablo Heras-Casado in Austria.

Onlinemerker, Manfred A. Schmid

The Ride of the Valkyries from the third act of Richard Wagner’s opera Die Walküre after the interval, conducted by Pablo Heras-Casado, virtually electrified the audience. (…) The brass and woodwinds shine in the rhythmically accentuated runs, and the use of the tschinelle is also impressive, soaring upwards from below to great effect. An impression that is naturally denied in a conventional opera performance with instrumental music from the orchestra pit.”

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...

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.

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.”

 

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...

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...

Pablo Heras-Casado will conduct the new production of ‘Der Ring des Nibelungen’ in Bayreuth in 2028.

In an interview with Der Spiegel, Katharina Wagner, director of the prestigious Bayreuth Festival, announced that Pablo Heras-Casado (Granada, 1977) will conduct the new production of the four operas of The Ring of the Nibelung in 2028. Pablo Heras-Casado's relationship with Richard Wagner began with The Flying Dutchman in 2016 at...

WAGNER: Parsifal (Live, Bayreuther Festspiele 2023)

Acclaimed by the New York Times as “superbly sung, and conducted with muscular solidity", Deutsche Grammophon release the Bayreuth Festival’s 2023 production of Parsifal in both audio and audio-visual formats. The production features the conductor Pablo Heras-Casado and singers Andreas Schager, Elīna Garanča, Georg Zeppenfeld and Derek Welton. Wagner composed...

Pablo Heras-Casado: Celebrated Parsifal on CD, Blu-Ray and online

Deutsche Grammophon release on 28.6.2024, return to Bayreuth in July and August 2024

With his “triumphant debut” (BR-Klassik) in Bayreuth in 2023, Pablo Heras-Casado made big waves that are still seething today. Recordings of the acclaimed Parsifal production under the musical direction of the Spanish conductor will be released on June 28, 2024 in various audio and video formats by Deutsche Grammophon and confirm: Pablo Heras-Casado is one of the most influential Wagner conductors of his generation.

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