Maestro Christian Vásquez will be conducting in Italy and Poland for the next two weeks: in Italy, he will lead the Sicilian Symphony Orchestra on November 26 and 27 at the Politeama Garibaldi Theater, in a program that includes concerts for saxophone and orchestra by Glazunov and Pierre-Philippe Bauzin, with saxophonist Alex Sebastianutto, and Symphony No. 8 by Dvořák. In Poland, he will conduct the National Music Forum Wrocław Philharmonic Orchestra (NFM Filharmonia Wrocławska) on December 3. The program includes Vaughan Williams’s Suite for Viola and Orchestra, with Artur Tokarek as soloist, and Bizet’s Symphony in C. Immediately afterwards, Christian will travel to Paris to assist Gustavo Dudamel in the production of Le nozze di Figaro at the National Opera of Paris, whose performances will take place throughout the months of January and February, just before returning to Spain to lead the Navarra Symphony Orchestra, in a program that includes the Concerto-Capriccio for harp and orchestra by Xavier Montsalvatge with the harpist Cristina Montes, and Brahms’ 3rd Symphony.
Christian Vásquez was Music Director of the Teresa Carreño Symphony Orchestra of Venezuela, leading them on an important tour around Europe which took them to perform in London, Lisbon, Toulouse, Munich, Stockholm and Istanbul. Vásquez has also been Principal Conductor of the Stavanger Symphony Orchestra between 2013 and 2019, and Principal Guest Conductor of the Het Gelders Orkest from 2015 till 2020, a tenure he started with a tour around The Netherlands featuring an all-Latin programme.
Following his debut with the Gävle Symfoniorkester in October 2009, one of his first appearances in Europe, Christian was appointed Principal Guest Conductor between 2010 and 2013. He has worked with the Philharmonia Orchestra, Residentie Orkest, Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, Vienna Radio Symphony, Camerata Salzburg, State Symphony of Russia, Tokyo Philharmonic and Singapore Symphony. In North America, he has conducted the National Arts Centre Orchestra (Ottawa) and Los Angeles Philharmonic, the latter during his participation in their Young Artist Fellowship Program.
Since then he has conducted orchestras in the United Kingdom, France, Italy, Poland, Spain, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Switzerland, Estonia, Ireland, USA, Mexico, Brazil, Korea, etc. Christian’s first opera engagement in Europe was at the Norwegian Opera with Carmen. Christian Vásquez started playing the violin at the age of 8, in the city of San Sebastián de los Reyes (Aragua State). In 2006 he began his studies of orchestral conducting under maestro José Antonio Abreu, and that same year he was appointed musical director of the José Félix Ribas Youth Symphony Orchestra, in the Aragua State.
The Venezuelan cuatrista Leo Rondón accompanies Pacho Flores in two new important UK premieres with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic under Domingo Hindoyan, current Principal Conductor of the orchestra. On November 11, they will premiere Concerto Venezolano, by Paquito D’Rivera, and on November 14 it will be the turn for Cantos y Revueltas, by Pacho Flores himself. The Concierto Venezolano was commissioned by the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic together with the Orquesta Sinfónica de Minería, which premiered and recorded it in the summer of 2019 under the direction of Carlos Miguel Prieto, the Valencia Orchestra, which will premiere it in Spain next February under Manuel Hernández-Silva, and the San Diego Symphony Orchestra, which will offer the American premiere at the end February under its Principal Conductor Rafael Payare.
Concierto Venezolano is already scheduled in other places this season, such as the Gran Canaria Philharmonic Orchestra with Hernández-Silva or the Orchestre National de Bordeaux-Aquitaine, which will premiere it in France under Hernández-Silva together with Roberto Sierra’s Salseando, another result of this ambitious project of shared commissions for new trumpet concerts dedicated to Pacho Flores.
Album cover of Cantos y Revueltas, with Flores, Rondón, the RFG and Hernández-Silva
Cantos y Revueltas, on the other hand, was premiered in 2018 by the Real Filharmonía de Galicia under Hernández-Silva and recorded for the homonymous album in Deutsche Grammophon. Since then, it has been performed by the Sinfónica de la Región de Murcia, Malaga Philharmonic, Navarre Symphony Orchestra, Bolívar Philharmonic of Miami, TCU Latin American Festival of Fort Worth in Texas, Jalisco Philharmonic or the Orquesta de Extremadura, and is already programmed in Valencia and Gran Canaria, together with D’Rivera’s Concierto Venezolano, and soon in Norway and Sweden. With a few exceptions, all performances of Cantos y Revueltas have had Leo Rondón and Hernández-Silva together with Pacho Flores.
Freiberg, Márquez, D’Rivera, Flores and Prieto during a recording for Deutsche Grammophon
Project of shared commissions for new trumpet concerts
The project of shared commissions has resulted in new trumpet concerts by composers such as Arturo Márquez, the aforementioned Paquito D’Rivera and Roberto Sierra, Christian Lindberg, Efraín Oscher or Daniel Freiberg, and has attracted the attention of orchestras from all the world. Some of these orchestras have been involved in more than one commission, such as the Oviedo Filarmonía, Real Filharmonía de Galicia, Orquesta de Minería in Mexico and the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, which have shared commissions with the National Symphony of Mexico, Tucson Symphony, Hyogo PAC Orchestra of Japan, Orquesta de Valencia, San Diego Symphony Orchestra, Orchestre National de Bordeaux-Aquitaine, Orquestra do Estado de São Paulo, Arctic Philharmonic of Norway, Swedish Chamber Orchestra, Orquesta Sinfónica de la Región de Murcia, Bilkent Symphony from Turkey or Walla Walla Symphony in the USA.
Pacho Flores with Vicente Honorato, CEO of STOMVI
All these concerts have been written for a wide variety of instruments —trumpets, cornets and flugelhorn— with four pistons and in different keys, some of them authentic prototypes that the Spanish brand STOMVI has manufactured for Pacho Flores in a personalized way, offering him a wide range of timbres and colors, a register and an expressive capacity never known before in a brass instrument.
Pacho Flores keeps adding premieres to this vibrant start of the season, this time together with the Oviedo Filarmonía and Lucas Macías for the absolute premiere of Historias de Flores y Tangos by Daniel Freiberg, a new shared commission with the participation of the Oviedo Filarmonía, the Arctic Philharmonic led by Manuel Hernández-Silva, the Orquesta de Minería with Carlos Miguel Prieto, and the Walla Walla Symphony under its principal conductor Yaacob Bergman. The Oviedo Filarmonía already participated in the commission of Concierto de otoño by Arturo Márquez, together with the Orquesta Nacional de México (Prieto), the Tucson Symphony conducted by José Luis Gómez, and the Hyogo PAC Orchestra led by Michiyoshi Inoue.
The Asturian orchestra has thus been involved in the first and last commissions within the first of the six phases the project consists of. The project also includes Paquito D’Rivera’s Concierto Venezolano, which will close its round of premieres in Spain with the Orquesta de Valencia under Hernández-Silva after being premiered by the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic (Domingo Hindoyan) and the San Diego Symphony Orchestra (Rafael Payare); the concert Salseando by Roberto Sierra, which was already premiered in Liverpool (Hindoyan) and Murcia (Hernández-Silva) and will close its round of premieres this season with the Orquestra Sinfônica do Estado de São Paulo (Prieto) and the Orchestra National de Bordeaux -Aquitaine (Hernández-Silva); Danzas Latinas by Efraín Oscher, commissioned and premiered by the Real Filharmonía de Galicia with Hernández-Silva; and Christian Lindberg’s Caballos Mágicos, premiered by the Real Filharmonía de Galicia (Paul Daniel) and very recently by the Swedish Chamber Orchestra with Lindberg himself at the podium, with premieres in Turkey and the US in dates to be confirmed. Pacho Flores had previously premiered another concert by Daniel Freiberg, Crónicas Latinoamericanas, a transcription for trumpet of the original written for clarinet, with the Het Gelders Orkest under Christian Vásquez.
D. Freiberg, A. Márquez, P. D’Rivera, P. Flores and C. M. Prieto during the recording of Mestizo for Deutsche Grammophon
There is a double satisfaction for Pacho Flores in this project of shared commissions. On the one hand, it promotes an unprecedented expansion of the solo trumpet and orchestra repertoire. On the other hand, these new concerts, with enormous technical and musical demands that have fostered the great diversity of new four-piston prototypes in various keys that are being personally manufactured for Pacho by the house STOVI, have come to stay and are now being programmed on a regular basis. Márquez’s concert, whose round of premieres took place throughout the season 2018/19, has already been programmed almost thirty times after the last scheduled premiere; Oscher’s concert has already been performed in Mexico, France and Sweden and is scheduled this season with the Tenerife Symphony Orchestra under Christian Vásquez; and Paquito D’Rivera’s concert is scheduled, also this season, with the Gran Canaria Philharmonic under Hernández-Silva. Several of these concerts have already been recorded for a new Deutsche Grammophon album that will be presented in 2022, and others will be recorded along the coming months. At the same time, Pacho Flores has already composed two concerts as well, Cantos y Revueltas, for trumpet, Venezuelan cuatro and strings, which has already been performed around the world, and what will possibly be the first concert for flugelhorn, soon to be released and for which STOMVI has designed three new instruments.
After a spectacular concert at the Úbeda Festival in which he conducted the ORTVE orchestra with Marina Heredia and Cañizares, Manuel Hernández-Silva begins an intense symphonic season by leading the ADDA Simfònica from Alicante, the Cordoba Symphony Orchestra and—yet again—the ORTVE. With the ADDA orchestra he will conduct violist Isabel Villanueva in a program that includes Cantos de Ordesa, a concert for viola and orchestra by the recently deceased Antón García Abril, along with Vasili Kalinnikov’s Symphony No. 1 in G Minor. He will then lead the ORTVE orchestra in Brahms’s Ein deutsches Requiem, and the Córdoba orchestra in Franz Schubert’s Symphony No. 3 in D Major, D. 200 and Kalinnikov’s symphony.
Other outstanding commitments of this season include the Valencia Orchestra, where Manuel Hernández-Silva will conduct Pacho Flores and Leo Rondón at the Spanish premiere of Concierto Venezolano by Paquito D’Rivera, Cantos y Revueltas, by Flores himself, and Sibelius’s Symphony No. 1 in E Minor, Op. 39; the Real Filharmonía de Galicia, where he will conduct a Russian program including the overture A Life for the Tsar, by Mijaíl Glinka, Henryk Wieniawski’s Violin Concerto No. 1 in F sharp minor with Robert Lakatoš as soloist, and once again Kalinnikov’s Symphony No.1; the Orquesta Sinfónica de la Región de Murcia in Spain, where he will premiere Manuel Moreno Buendía’s Stabat Mater with the mezzosoprano María José Montiel and the baritone Javier Franco; the Gran Canaria Philharmonic, again with Pacho Flores and Leo Rondón; the National Symphony of Chile; the Orquestra Sinfônica do Estado de São Paulo, in a Spanish program that includes Rafael Aguirre (guitar), Beatriz Díaz (soprano) and César Augusto Gutiérrez (tenor) as soloists; or the Orchestre National de Bordeaux-Aquitaine for two new French premieres with Pacho Flores: the concerts Salseando, by Roberto Sierra, and Concierto Venezolano by Paquito D’Rivera, together with Silvestre Revueltas’s Redes, and Estancia by Alberto Ginastera.
Manuel Hernández-Silva has been Principal Guest Conductor of the Simón Bolívar Orchestra and Musical and Artistic Director of the Orquesta Sinfónica de la Región de Murcia, Orquesta de Córdoba, Malaga Philharmonic and Navarre Symphony Orchestra.
Christian Vásquez will conduct the Slovak Philharmonic Orchestra at the LVI Bratislava Music Festival in a program consisting of El Salón México, by Aaron Copland; Symphonie Espagnole, by Edouard Lalo, with the violinist Ivan Zenaty; and La noche de los Mayas, by Silvestre Revueltas. Vásquez, who has just returned from a long stay in Colombia with the Medellin Philharmonic, which he conducted in four different programs throughout the month of September, will travel to Israel and Poland to lead the Haifa Symphony Orchestra and the NFM Wroclaw Philharmonic after the concerts at the Bratislava Festival with the Slovak Philharmonic, before joining the production of Le Nozze di Figaro at the Opéra National de Paris in which he will be assistant conductor to Gustavo Dudamel, the new musical director of the institution.
Christian Vásquez will also visit Spain a couple of times this season to conduct the Navarre and Tenerife symphony orchestras. In Pamplona, he will conduct a program that includes the Concierto-Capricho for harp and orchestra by Xavier Montsalvatge, with the Sevillian harpist Cristina Montes Mateo, and the Symphony No. 3 in F major, op. 90 by Johannes Brahms. In Tenerife he will lead his compatriot and friend, the great trumpeter Pacho Flores, in a program consisting of Danzas Latinas, by Efraín Oscher, Concierto para fliscorno, by Pacho Flores himself, and Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 5 e E minor, op. 64. Before the end of the season, he will also pay a visit to the Stavanger Symphony Orchestra, where he was principal conductor for six seasons between 2013 and 2019.
Christian Vásquez is currently Musical Director of the Teresa Carreño Symphony Orchestra of Venezuela. In addition to his tenure in Stavanger, he has been Principal Guest Conductor of the Het Gelders Orkest between 2015 and 2020, and of the Gävle Symphony Orchestra between 2010 and 2013. He has conducted orchestras such as the Royal Northern Sinfonia, Orchestre National du Capitole de Toulouse, Berlin Konzerthausorchester, Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra, Warsaw Beethoven Festival Orchestra, Turku Philharmonic, Luxembourg Philharmonic, Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra, Poznan Philharmonic, Rotterdam Philharmonic, New Jersey Symphony Orchestra, Helsinki Philharmonic, Orquesta Sinfónica Nacional de México, Basel Symphony Orchestra, Munich Philharmonic, Estonian National Orchestra, Danish Royal Orchestra, Norwegian Radio Orchestra, RTE National Orchestra from Ireland, Philharmonia Orchestra, Residentie Orkest, Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra, Salzburg Camerata, Russian State Symphony Orchestra, Tokyo Philharmonic, Singapore Symphony Orchestra, National Arts Center Orchestra (Ottawa) or Los Angeles Philharmonic. In Spain he has worked with the Galician Symphony Orchestra, Gran Canaria Philharmonic, Sinfónica de Castilla y León or Symphony Orchestra of the Principality of Asturias.
Pacho Flores travels to Sweden for the premiere of the trumpet concerto Caballos Mágicos, by Christian Lindberg, with the Swedish Chamber Orchestra, as well as for the recording of an album with works by Lindberg for European Grammophon. Along with this new piece, the recording includes Un Sueño Morisco, double concerto for trumpet and trombone that was commissioned and premiered by the ORTVE with Pacho Flores, Ximo Vicedo on the trombone and Lindberg as conductor. Lindberg will on this occasion perform again not only as conductor but also as trombonist.
This concert, which got its premiere in Spain with the Real Filharmonía de Galicia, is part of the project of shared commissions for new trumpet concerts to prominent composers launched by Pacho Flores and managed by his international agency ACM Concerts. The composers who have taken part in the first two rounds of commissions are Arturo Márquez, Paquito D’Rivera, Roberto Sierra, Efraín Oscher, Daniel Freiberg and Lindberg himself, and there is a third round in preparation now. The orchestras that have been involved in the different joint commissions and premieres are the National Symphony of Mexico, Tucson Symphony, Hyogo PAC Orchestra of Japan, Oviedo Filarmonía, Real Filharmonía de Galicia, Swedish Chamber Orchestra, Bilkent Symphony Orchestra, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, Orquesta de Minería, Valencia Orchestra, San Diego Symphony Orchestra, Sinfónica de la Región de Murcia, Sinfônica do Estado de São Paulo, Orchestre National de Bordeaux-Aquitaine or the Arctic Philharmonic; and the conductors who have or are going to participate in these premieres are Carlos Miguel Prieto, José Luis Gómez, Michiyoshi Inoue, Lucas Macías, Domingo Hindoyan, Manuel Hernández-Silva, Rafael Payare, Paul Daniel and Christian Lindberg. Several of these concerts have already been recorded for the Deutsche Grammophon label.
The contribution of this project to the expansion of the trumpet repertoire has had no equal in the history of the instrument. This, together with the technological evolution of new four-piston prototypes in new keys that Pacho Flores is carrying out with the help of the Spanish manufacturer STOMVI, his intense educational activity, the recording legacy he is producing —in which he alternates the great classical works for the trumpet with this new exclusive repertoire— and, naturally, his unbeatable musical and technical conditions, makes Pacho Flores the most influential classical trumpeter in history. To these premieres must also be added the concerts that many other composers dedicate to Pacho on their own initiative, as well as those he has himself composed, such as Cantos y Revueltas, or what is possibly the first flugelhorn concerto ever written.
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