Manuel Hernández-Silva returns to Teatro Colón to conduct the Philharmonic Orchestra of Buenos Aires in the absolute premiere of Ave Fénix by Argentinian composer Claudia Montero, winner of four Grammy awards. In addition, maestro Hernández-Silva will accompany Croatian pianist Martina Filjak by Saint-Säens Concert No. 2, op. 22 in G minor and conduct Dvořak’s Symphony No. 8 in G major. This concert will take place on next Thursday, June the 27th at 20:00 hrs.
This trip to Argentina is a prelude to the upcoming debut of Hernández-Silva with the Tucson Symphony Orchestra in the US at the 2019/20 season, as well as to future visits to Norway, France, Germany or Australia. The album Cantos y Revueltas by Pacho Flores with cuatro player Leo Rondón and the Real Filharmonía de Galicia under Hernández-Silva will be released next July by Deutsche Grammophon. This album contains the homonymous work by Pacho Flores, Cantos y revueltas, that was premiered in January 2018 and recorded live for this double CD / DVD, together with other highlights by Pacho, Neruda, Villalobos or Piazzolla. Hernández-Silva is also going to premiere on next November Efraín Oscher’s Danzas Latinas for trumpet and orchestra, a commission of the Real Filharmonía, withPacho Flores.
Hernández-Silva will complete this month his first and fifth season as Principal and Artistic Director of the Navarra Symphony Orchestra and the Malaga Philharmonic Orchestra respectively, but an intense summer awaits him. After returning from Buenos Aires, he will continue with one of the activities he’s most passionate about: working with young people; on the one hand with a series of concerts with the Young Baroque Orchestra of Andalusia; and on the other hand with the Masterclass in Orchestral Conducting organised by the Malaga Philharmonic Orchestra. Hernández-Silva will then make his debut at Pollença Festival in Mallorca, along with Pacho Flores and the Symphony Orchestra of the Balearic Islands, and conduct a Homage to Gayarre with the Navarra Symphony Orchestra.
The American premiere of Pacho Flores’ work Cantos y Revueltas. Fantasia Concertante for trumpets, Venezuelan cuatro and strings with the Bolívar Phil and cuatro player Héctor Molina under maestro Carlos Riazuelo will take place next June 30 at 11:00 am at the Herbert and Nicole Wertheim Performing Arts Center in Miami. Cantos y Revueltas was premiered on January 11, 2018 at the Auditorio de Galicia in Santiago de Compostela with the Royal Philharmonic of Galicia and two other Venezuelans —conductor Manuel Hernández-Silva and cuatro player Leo Rondón—, to great success from both audience and critics. This premiere was recorded in audio and video and will be the central piece of the next album by Pacho Flores, a double CD/DVD for Deutsche Grammophon that will be coming soon. However, this isn’t Pacho’s first composition, since other works such as Morocota or Labios Vermelhos were already part of his album ENTROPÍA.
Image of the premiere of Cantos y Revueltas, Flores, Rondón, Hernández-Silva and the RFG. Copyright: RFG
Pacho Flores is playing this week with the Philharmonic Orchestra of Gran Canaria, a program that includes Akban Bunka by Christian Lindberg —appearing in FRACTALES, his last album for DG so far— and Concierto Mestizo by Efraín Oscher. He will perform the same repertoire the following week at the 11º Conference of the Brazilian Association of Trumpeters in Campinas.
Flores will then return to Europe to perform Haydn’s Trumpet Concerto and Lindberg’s Akban Bunka with the Sinfonieorchester Basel led by Michal Nesterowicz. After this American premiere in Florida, Cantos y Revueltas will then head for the Southern Cone for another historical premiere in Argentina: the performance by the Buenos Aires Philharmonic Orchestra under Enrique Diemecke of Arturo Sandoval’s Trumpet Concerto No. 1 for the first time since its composition 25 years ago. It will take place on July 11 at Teatro Colón.
Pacho Flores faces the Asian premiere of Arturo Márquez’s Concierto de otoño with the Hyogo PAC Orchestra of Japan under Michiyoshi Inoue, that will take place on 24, 25 and 26 May. The concert was previously premiered by the National Orchestra of Mexico under Carlos Miguel Prieto (watch video) and the Tucson Symphony Orchestra under José Luis Gómez, with extraordinary success. The European premiere by the Oviedo Filarmonía and its new principal conductor Lucas Macías will close the round of premieres on 14 August. This concert has attracted the interest of many orchestras and has already been scheduled for the 19/20 and 20/21 seasons in the United States, Colombia, Spain, France, England, Canada and Australia, adding up to 30 performances only in its first three years. Some of them are the Opening Night Gala of the Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra, with C. M. Prieto; Filarmónica de Bogotá (Colombian premiere), Christian Vásquez; Colorado Springs Philharmonic, Josep Caballé Doménech; Real Filharmonía de Galicia, with Manuel Hernández-Silva, together with the absolute premiere of Efraín Oscher’s new Trumpet concerto; Orchestre National de Lille (French premiere), Josep Vicent; Winnipeg Symphony (Canadian premiere), José Luis Gómez; Liverpool Philharmonic (UK premiere), Domingo Hindoyan, together with the Concierto Salseando by Roberto Sierra, UK premiere as well; Orquesta de Córdoba, Carlos Domínguez-Nieto, together with the absolute premiere of Concierto Mambí by Igmar Alderete; and some other orchestras to be announced.
The commission is part of an ambitious Project of Shared Commissions launched by Pacho Flores himself in order to enlarge the trumpet and orchestra repertoire. It is the first of six commissions to composers Roberto Sierra, Paquito D’Rivera, Efrain Oscher, Christian Lindberg and Daniel Freiberg, involving orchestras from all around the world to premiere these works over the coming seasons. All the concerts resulting from this project will increase Pacho Flores’ discography on his label Deutsche Grammophon.
After its premiere in Liverpool, Salseando will later be premiered in Brazil and other two countries. The Concierto Venezolano by Paquito D’Rivera will also be premiered on 2 September 2019 in Mexico (orchestra and conductor to be announced soon), and afterwards in the United States, Spain and the United Kingdom.
In parallel, Pacho Flores continues receiving new concert dedications and performing premieres. Only during the last year, Pacho has premiered his own work, Cantos y revueltas (January 2018, Real Filharmonía de Galicia, Manuel Hernández-Silva); the concert Stunning Trumpet by Giancarlo Castro (February 2018, Ulster Orchestra, Rafael Payare); Preach pour trompette et orchestre, by Alain Trudel (March 2018, Orchester Symphonique de Laval, Alain Trudel); Double concerto for clarinet and trumpet (August 2018, Norddeutsche Philharmonie Rostock, Markus Bosch); Latin American Chronicles by Daniel Freiberg (January 2019, Het Gelders Orkest, Christian Vásquez); and the new Double concert for trumpet and trombone by Christian Lindberg (March 2019, RTVE Orchestra, Ximo Vicedo and Christian Lindberg); and he plans to premiere the Trumpet Concerto No. 1 by Arturo Sandoval (July 2019, Buenos Aires Philharmonic Orchestra, Enrique Diemecke).
Pacho Flores, Ximo Vicedo and the Orquesta Sinfónica RTVE will premiere Un Sueño Morisco, double concerto for trumpet, trombone and orchestra by Christian Lindberg, next 21 and 22 March at Teatro Monumental in Madrid. Pacho Flores and Christian Lindberg, who will also conduct on this occasion, have a long history of collaborations, being the most recent the recording of FRACTALES, Pacho Flores’ latest album for Deutsche Grammophon with the Arctic Philharmonic, with a European tour that went through Bodø and Tromsø in Norway, the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam and ended at the ADDA in Alicante. FRACTALES includes Lindberg’s concert Akban Bunka, among other works.
In Lindberg’s words about Un Sueño Morisco: “I took this opportunity to really challenge the soloists. Both the trumpet part and the trombone part are extremely virtuosic. When I saw the trombone part, I thought: ‘My God, this is even going to be hard for me to play!’ It takes a lot of practice. And the trumpet part… Of course Pacho can do anything, so I challenged him really well. But it’s also a piece that has the Spanish soul. I’ve always loved going to Spain to give concerts there, and I also have many memories from the time I was on holiday in Seville, Cordoba, Granada, when I visited the Alhambra. There is an exotic flavour in all these landscapes… And I think I included part of that in this piece.”
Christian Lindberg is one of the six composers engaged in the project of shared commissions that Pacho Flores is carrying out by commissioning new concerts for trumpet and orchestra. The premiere will take place in Stockholm in September 2021. As part of this project, Concierto de otoño by Arturo Márquez has already been premiered in Mexico (Orquesta Nacional, Carlos Miguel Prieto) and the US (Tucson Symphony, José Luis Gómez), it will continue in Japan next May (Hyogo Pac Orchestra, Michiyoshi Inoue) and finish in August with the European premiere by Oviedo Filarmonía under Lucas Macías. Next premiere tours include composers Paquito D’Rivera, Roberto Sierra, Efraín Oscher and Daniel Freiberg.
Pacho Flores will make his debut with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra on 9 March under the direction of Holly Mathieson, performing some Latin American classics such as Piazzolla, Villalobos or Paquito D’Rivera. On the following day, he will have a meeting with members of the Liverpool Philharmonic Youth Orchestra and perform as soloist in a concert led by Simon Emery; on 11 March he will take part in a workshop and concert with the Children’s Orchestra. These activities are part of In Harmony’s 10th Birthday celebrations, the RLPO social programme inspired by Venezuela’s El Sistema, where Pacho himself started. This first contact will also have its reflection in the 19/20 Season, as the RLPO is one of the orchestras engaged in the Project of Shared Commissions Pacho Flores is carrying out by commissioning a new trumpet concert to composer Roberto Sierra, together with other orchestras.
Pacho will afterwards continue with his busy schedule with the absolute premiere of Un Sueño Morisco, double concert for trumpet, trombone and orchestra by Christian Lindberg, together with trombonist Ximo Vicedo, the RTVE Orchestra and Lindberg himself as conductor; his return to the Orquesta Filarmónica de Málaga; master classes and recitals in Tampere and Helsinki, including an absolute premiere of Tuomas Turriago; the Japan premiere of Concierto de Otoño by Arturo Márquez as part of the project of shared commissions, with the Hyogo PAC Orchestra and Michiyoshi Inoue; the season closing of the Stavanger Orchestra with Christian Vásquez; Orquesta Filarmónica de Gran Canaria with Dmitri Liss; Basel Symphonieorchester with Michał Nesterowicz; absolute premiere of Concierto n.º 1 by Arturo Sandoval with the orchestra of Teatro Colón and Enrique Diemecke; and the European premiere of Concierto de Otoño by Arturo Márquez with the Oviedo Filharmonía and Lucas Macías, which closes the series of commissioned premieres.
