“A luminous and urgent performance, deftly balancing the shifts from moody ruminations to bouts of exuberance…. Heras-Casado is the thinking person’s idea of a hotshot young conductor.”
The New York Times
Heras-Casado and the ideal ‘Parsifal’ (Spanish Review)
13 Aug 2024
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
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.”
Premiere Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg – Teatro Real
24 Apr 2024
The Meistersingers of Laurent Pelly and Pablo Heras-Casado come to the Teatro Real
Scherzo
From April 24th to May 25th, the Teatro Real offers 9 performances of Wagner’s The Master Singers of Nuremberg in a new co-production with stage direction by Laurent Pelly and musical direction by Pablo Heras-Casado.
Increasingly linked to the Wagnerian repertoire, Heras-Casado conducts his sixth Wagner opera at the Teatro Real after The Flying Dutchman (2017) and Tetralogy (2019-2022). The vocal cast will be led by Gerald Finley (Hans Sachs), Leigh Melrose (Sixtus Beckmesser), Tomislav Mužek (Walther von Stolzing), Jongmin Park (Veit Pogner), Nicole Chevalier (Eva), Sebastian Kohlhepp (David) and Anna Lapkovskaja (Magdalene). The Coro Titular del Teatro Real will have 112 singers prepared by José Luis Basso.
Heras-Casado at the helm of the Orquesta Sinfónica de Madrid
04 Apr 2024
MADRID / Pablo Heras-Casado and Bruckner’s Fourth: Etching painting
Scherzo
A new confrontation of the ubiquitous, kaleidoscopic, versatile, highly skilled and prepared Pablo Heras-Casado with the music of Anton Bruckner, this time, after the Ninth a couple of years ago with the same orchestra, the most popular Fourth, the so-called ‘Romantic’. […] A symphonic design very well understood by the conductor from Granada, who knew how to provide the means for all this material to be worked with order and fantasy.
Pablo Heras-Casado on the Spring Festival – Lucerne Festival
29 Mar 2024
Lucerne Festival: And then a volcano erupts
NZZ
(Neue Zürcher Zeitung)
On Palm Sunday, Pablo Heras-Casado appeared in front of the same musicians and brought the 7th Symphony to eruption; the Spaniard has been the talk of the town since his Bayreuth debut in 2023 with Wagner’s “Parsifal”. In his repertoire, he pursues a rather unusual two-pronged approach: as an expert in both historical performance practice and contemporary music. You can even hear this dual perspective: the crystal-clear articulation, the precise use of vibrato, the flowing but never hasty tempi – all of this stems from the original sound movement. (…) For the LFO, this is a new sound in such an exaggerated form – all the more so as Heras-Casado not only looks back in a historicizing way, but also works out the modernity of this most radical of all Beethoven symphonies.
Munich Philharmonic Orchestra New Year’s Eve concerts
05 Jan 2024
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.
Premiere Le Grand Macabre, Ligeti – Wiener Staatsoper
14 Nov 2023
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).
Triumphant debut by Pablo Heras-Casado
26 Jul 2023
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?
Bayreuth Festival ‘Parsifal’ Premiere
25 Jul 2023
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.
SWR Tour Press Reviews
12 Jul 2023
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.
Schubert: Symphonies Nº. 5 & 7 “Unfinished” Reviews
08 Jul 2023
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.
Festspielhaus Baden-Baden Press Reviews
06 Jun 2023
‘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.