Pablo Heras-Casado drives the Bayreuth festival orchestra to peak performances
01 Aug 2024
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.”
Vorarlberger Nachrichten, Andreas Marie
“Pablo Heras-Casado conducted with captivating style and led the orchestra with the utmost concentration and disciplineto an outstanding result. The leitmotifs blended
Klassik Magazin, Eleonore Büning
“It is almost unbelievable that a conductor who, like him, comes from a historically informed performance practice background, gets on so brilliantly with the Wagner orchestra. Heras-Casados does not celebrate, he narrates. Individual wind and string parts stand out with beguilingly beautiful phrasing and articulation. The flowing tempo changes dictated by the sound and interpretation of the words are organic and pathos-free.“
Die Presse, Walter Weidringer
“But the orchestra under Pablo Heras-Casado also showed that the solemn does not have to sound earthy and the mystical does not have to sound dark: Bayreuth’s acoustics and Wagner’s orchestration are only fully attuned to each other in “Parsifal”, and those who know how to use them can achieve unique effects.“
Kurier, Gert Korentschnig
“Conductor Pablo Heras-Casado and the wonderful orchestra conjure up a dreamlike sound in the Festspielhaus, which for Wagner was the only legitimate venue for a “Parsifal” performance. The musical design is solemn, sensitive, then powerful again, the Good Friday magic and the transformation music are fantastically beautiful. All of this overshadows some of the AR spectacle banalities in other performances.“
Nürnberger Nachrichten, Thomas Heinold
“However, the Spaniard Pablo Heras-Casado is all the better at conducting the music. He lets the sound shine in many colors, both internally and externally, and ensures constant micro-movements even in the devotional, solemn moments of the score. In this way, he creates a seductive mixture of magic and modernity and is well on the way to writing himself into the history of the festival as an important “Parsifal” conductor. You don’t need AR glasses or technical gadgets to experience the joy of this miracle of sound. Splendid.”
Badische Zeitung, Alexander Dick
“This production is of the highest musical caliber. And that is not least thanks to conductor Pablo Heras-Casado and the festival orchestra, which is sensitive to the sound. The interpretation has a certain pull; despite the brisk tempi, it does not feel rushed Above all, however, Heras-Casado understands the essence of the “Parsifal music”, the slowly merging transitions, the sound metamorphoses. And the special acoustics. No longer a matter of fact in Bayreuth, as we have learned.“
Donaukurier, Sabine Busch-Frank
“Interestingly, the conducting is also not all from the same mold, sometimes Pablo Heras-Casado dances briskly over the score, sometimes he bathes in the long passages, for example the choral passages in Act 1. A musical highlight, however, is Act 2, when the high-pitched and richly colored Idealkundry (Ekaterina Gubanova) and her extremely confident tenor partner in the title role (Andreas Schager) motivate each other to unimagined brilliance.”
Hannoversche Allgemeine Zeitung, Stefan Arndt
“Conductor Pablo Heras-Casado keeps everything flowing very elegantly and deprives the music of much of the meaningful heaviness that it has acquired here in a long tradition of performance. This is interesting, but also a bit of a shame.“
Augsburger Allgemeine, Stefan Dosch
“Pablo Heras-Casado shapes Wagner’s score into a lucid yet urgent sound event.“
Die Rheinpfalz, Frank Pommer
“Conductor Pablo Heras-Casado, together with the festival orchestra and choir, creates a “Parsifal” that is as transparent as it is emphatic.”
Die Deutsche Bühne, Andreas Berger
“Pablo Heras-Casado’s musical direction creates an expressive sound space.“
Klassik begeistert, Andreas Ströbl
“Musically, it was a great evening. The festival orchestra under Pablo Heras-Casado painted a devoted picture of sound and gave the soloists sufficient vocal space to develop throughout.”