The absolute premiere of Albares, Pacho Flores’ concert for flugelhorn, will take place next Friday, April 29 at 7:30 p.m. at the Adán Martín Auditorium in Tenerife, performed by Pacho himself with the Tenerife Symphony Orchestra (OST) under the baton of Christian Vásquez. A second trumpet concert, Danzas Latinas by Efraín Oscher, commissioned and premiered by the Real Filharmonía de Galicia in November 2021 under Manuel Hernández-Silva, and Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 5 in E minor, Op. 64 will complete the program. This flugelhorn concert is the second work composed by Pacho Flores for solo instrument and orchestra after Cantos y Revueltas, fantasia concertante for trumpet, Venezuelan cuatro and strings, which was also premiered by the Real Filharmonía de Galicia and Manuel Hernández-Silva in January 2018, featuring Leo Rondón on the Venezuelan cuatro, and which is part of the homonymous album for Deutsche Grammophon, Pacho’s fourth recording for the yellow label.
The instrument construction technique has always been vital for the development of music; not in vain instruments are the tools whose evolution and improvement have allowed composers to go a step further, demanding from the performers increasingly greater skills in order to exploit the potential of their new works, a classic virtuous circle. The appearance of pistons expanded the possibilities of brass instruments and therefore their importance within the orchestra, as well as their role as solo instruments, as was the case with Haydn’s Trumpet Concert, commissioned by Weidinger for a new instrument with valves that allowed him to play the chromatic scale, soon improved by the incorporation of the three pistons. Nowadays, Pacho Flores is promoting both an expansion of the solo trumpet repertoire as well as an unprecedented technological evolution of the instrument. Both lines do not run in parallel but intermingle and feed each other back continually, allowing their mutual development.
The expansion of the repertoire comes about through an ambitious project of shared commissions to leading composers, who write trumpet concerts for the new four-piston prototypes in new keys developed by STOMVI. Pacho works closely with the engineers in the development of these instruments, whose timbre and register possibilities are made known in advance to the composers, so that they know what they can expect from them. The fact that Pacho uses different trumpets in the same concert means that the expressive possibilities of timbre, color and range of these pieces are multiplied. In Albares, Pacho has given this process a new twist by requiring STOMVI to manufacture three new instruments to meet the demands of the work. For the first movement, Bambuco, a C flugelhorn has been constructed, for the second, Milonga, a low A flugelhorn, and for the third, Periquera, a high D flugelhorn.
Pacho Flores conducts the absolute premiere of Leo Rondón’s Concierto del mar for Venezuelan cuatro and orchestra, with the Orquesta Sinfónica de la Región de Murcia, on Sunday, April 24. This is probably the first or one of the first concerts for Venezuelan cuatro and orchestra ever written. The cuatro, a descendent of the guitar, smaller in size and with four strings (hence its name, cuatro), is an instrument of Venezuelan and Colombian popular music, although there are some differences between one and the other. In recent years and thanks to a brilliant generation of performers, among whom Leo Rondón stands out, this instrument has been gaining presence in the orchestral music scene. Pacho Flores himself gave it an important presence in his work Cantos y Revueltas, fantasia concertante for trumpet, Venezuelan cuatro and strings, in which Rondón was in charge of the cuatro solo part, and which both recorded together for Deutsche Grammophon with the Real Filharmonía de Galicia under Manuel Hernández-Silva.
Leo Rondón has a long history of collaborations and has worked with ensembles such as Quatuor Debussy, Christina Pluhar’s L’Arpeggiata or the Mexican tenor Rolando Villazón, as well as with orchestras such as the Real Filharmonía de Galicia, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, Orchestre National de l’Ile de France, Orquesta Sinfónica de la Región de Murcia, Valencia Orchestra, Sinfónica de Castilla y León, Extremadura Symphony Orchestra, Navarre Symphony Orchestra, Tunisia Symphony Orchestra or the Malaga Philharmonic, and he will soon make his debut with the Gran Canaria Philharmonic, with future commitments in Sweden and Norway. Naturally, he also keeps one foot in traditional music, collaborating with the Alexis Cárdenas quartet and other ensembles. Concierto del mar is his first symphonic work.
Pacho, for his part, has already some experience as a conductor and he is increasingly delving deeper into this facet. He has conducted the International Trumpet Guild Festival Orchestra in San Antonio, Texas; the Kammerensemble Konsonanz of Bremen in the recording of trumpeter Fabio Brum’s album EGREGORE for Naxos, in which he also acts as musical producer; or the Brass Ensemble of the Bogotá Philharmonic. Pacho is also an active composer. In addition to the aforementioned Cantos y Revueltas, other compositions include Musas y Resuello, for brass ensemble and percussion and premiered in Bogotá; Heterónimos, for trumpet and small orchestra, included in the album by Fabio Brum and which, together with Preludio y Fuga for strings, will have its absolute premiere at this concert in Murcia; or Albares, the new concerto for flugelhorn that will be premiered next April with the Tenerife Symphony Orchestra under Christian Vásquez, in addition to other works recorded on his album ENTROPÍA such as Morocota,Labios vermelhos, etc.
Pacho Flores and Leo Rondón appear in the concert season of the Castilla y León Symphony Orchestra (OSCyL) together with maestro Carlos Miguel Prieto, with whom they will perform at the Miguel Delibes Cultural Center in Valladolid (April 8 and 9), as well as at the Festival de Música Sacra de Segovia (April 7) and the Semana de Música Religiosa de Cuenca (April 11). Flores and Rondón participate as soloists in two works on the program. The first of them is the Concerto Venezolano, by Paquito D’Rivera, in which will be the first performance of this piece after the series of premieres by the four orchestras that participated in its commission (Orquesta Sinfónica de Minería with C. M. Prieto; Royal Liverpool Philharmonic and Domingo Hindoyan; Valencia Orchestra under Manuel Hernández-Silva; and San Diego Symphony with Rafael Payare) has been completed.
The second piece is Cantos y Revueltas. Fantasía concertante para trompeta, cuatro venezolano y cuerdas, by Pacho Flores himself, in which he shares the leading role with Leo Rondón and his Venezuelan cuatro. It was premiered by the Real Filharmonía de Galicia under Manuel Hernández-Silva and recorded live for a double CD/DVD by Deutsche Grammophon.
D’Rivera’s Concerto Venezolano is part of an ambitious project to expand the repertoire for solo trumpet and orchestra that involves, in addition to D’Rivera, other outstanding composers such as Arturo Márquez, Roberto Sierra, Christian Lindberg, Efraín OScher, Daniel Freiberg or Gabriela Ortiz. Orchestras from all over the world have become involved in this project of shared commissions, and these new concerts are being premiered from the USA, Mexico and Brazil in America to Turkey and Japan in Asia, across Spain, France, the United Kingdom, Sweden and Norway in Europe. The performance of these concerts requires a wide variety of new four-piston instruments in various keys —trumpets, cornets and flugelhorns, some of them authentic prototypes—, which are provided by the Spanish company STOMVI and in whose development Pacho actively participates together with its engineers.
Pacho Flores and Paquito D’Rivera recording D’Rivera’s Concerto Venezolano
Pacho Flores and Leo Rondón will soon collaborate again at the premiere of the Concierto del Mar, for Venezuelan cuatro and orchestra, with Pacho Flores conducting the Orquesta Sinfónica de la Región de Murcia and Rondón as soloist. This absolute premiere will take place at the Víctor Villegas Auditorium in Murcia on Sunday, April 24, but it will not be the only absolute premiere of the program, as other works by Pacho Flores, such as Preludio y fuga para cuerdas, composed expressly for the occasion, and Heterónimos, for trumpet and orchestral ensemble, will also be premiered. Heterónimos, though already recorded, has never been performed in public. Inspired by writings of Fernando Pessoa, it is dedicated to the trumpeter Fabio Brum, who recorded it for Naxos in the album EGREGORE, in which Pacho acted as producer and conductor of the orchestra.
Pacho Flores performs the Brazilian premiere of Salseando, by Roberto Sierra, with the Orquestra Sinfônica do Estado de São Paulo under Carlos Miguel Prieto, next March 31 and April 1 and 2 at the Sala São Paulo. The program also includes the Concerto for corno da caccia by Johann Baptist Georg Neruda. This will be the third premiere of Salseando after those in the United Kingdom by the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic under Domingo Hindoyan (January 2020) and in Spain with the Murcia Region Symphony Orchestra conducted by Manuel Hernandez-Silva (December 2020). This series of premieres is resumed this season after the cancellations due to the COVID19 pandemic, and will conclude with the premiere in France by the Orchestra National de Bordeaux-Aquitaine, again under the direction of Hernández-Silva (June 2022).
Salseando is part of the project of shared commissions for new trumpet concerts that Pacho Flores himself is promoting with outstanding composers such as Arturo Márquez, Paquito D’Rivera, Efraín Oscher, Roberto Sierra, Christian Lindberg, Daniel Freiberg and Gabriela Ortiz. These premieres, with the delays caused by the pandemic, have been taking place uninterruptedly since September 2018, when the first premiere by Arturo Márquez took place, and will for now last until December 2023, when the last premiere by Gabriela Ortiz will take place.
A total number of 24 orchestras from all over the world will have participated in this project of shared commissions for new concerts, whose premieres will have taken place from the USA to Japan across Mexico, Brazil, United Kingdom, Spain, France, Norway, Sweden or Turkey. The concerts have been specifically composed for the incredible technical skills of Pacho Flores and for the variety of instruments, some of them real prototypes, that the Spanish manufacturer STOMVI puts at his disposal. These new instruments, with four pistons and in various keys, are the result of a constant research and development work in which Pacho is personally involved together with the STOMVI engineers, led by Vicente Honorato, president and alma mater of the company.
Marina Heredia will perform Manuel de Falla’s El Amor Brujo with the Casa da Música Orchestra in Porto under its principal conductor, Stefan Blunier, next 25 March at 21:30 p.m. at the sumptuous auditorium built by Rem Koolhaas, after the success of her Berlin debut with the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra conducted by Pablo Heras Casado.
Recently, Marina has participated in a concert tour around Galicia with the Orquesta Sinfónica de Galicia under José Trigueros, presenting a new orchestration by the conductor himself of the Canciones Españolas Antiguas, compiled and harmonized by Federico García Lorca.
Marina Heredia has become the most internationally requested cantaora to perform El Amor Brujo by Manuel de Falla, which she has sung in some of the most prestigious international venues with important ensembles such as the San Francisco and Chicago Symphony Orchestras. In Europe she has performed it with the Rouen Opera and the Orchestre National de Lille, and more recently in Spain at the Teatro Real in Madrid, Palacio de Festivales in Santander, Auditorio ADDA in Alicante, Cidade da Cultura in Santiago or the Auditorio Manuel de Falla in Granada, with orchestras such as the Sinfónica de Galicia, RTVE Orchestra, Orquesta Ciudad de Granada or ADDA Orchestra, and under conductors such as Manuel Hernández-Silva, Josep Vicent or Pablo Heras Casado, with whom she has also recorded it for Harmonia Mundi.
Manuel Hernández-Silva and Serbian violinist Robert Lakatoš meet again, this time with the Real Filharmonía de Galicia, to offer Wieniawski’s Concerto No. 1 along with the overture A Life for the Tsar, by Glinka, and Kalinnikov’s Symphony No. 1. The concerts will take place at the Centro Cultural Abanca in Vigo and the Auditorio de Galicia in Santiago de Compostela on March 16 and 17, respectively. Hernández-Silva and Lakatoš had already performed Shostakovich’s Concerto No. 1 together with the Navarre Symphony Orchestra and the Malaga Philharmonic. Other visits by Lakatoš to Spain involved James Judd and the RTVE Orchestra with Korngold’s violin concert, and Nicholas Milton and the Navarra Symphony with the Serenade for violin, strings and percussion by Leonard Bernstein.
Robert Lakatoš has won numerous international awards, including first prizes at the Pablo Sarasate Competition (Pamplona, Spain, 2015), Mary Smart Concerto Competition (New York, 2013), and Societe Generale Serbia (Belgrade, 2009), as well as second prizes at Jeunesses Musicales Romania (Bucharest, 2012) and Andrea Postacchini (Fermo, Italy, 2012). Robert Lakatoš develops his concert career as a soloist and chamber musician performing in Europe, Israel and the United States. As a soloist, he has appeared with numerous orchestras including the Spanish RTVE Orchestra, Navarra Symphony Orchestra, Malaga Philharmonic, Minas Gerais Philharmonic, Krakow Philharmonic, Orquesta Sinfónica de la UAN (Mexico), Istanbul State Symphony Orchestra, New York Summit Festival Orchestra, RTV Slovenia Symphony Orchestra, Belgrade Philharmonic Orchestra, Vojvodina Symphony Orchestra and the Janáček Camerata. So far, he has collaborated with conductors such as Philip Greenberg, Fabio Mechetti, Gabriel Feltz, Manuel Hernández-Silva, Nicholas Milton, James Judd, James Tuggle, Lior Shambadal and Antoni Wit. He has made recordings for radio and television in his country and abroad and holds the position of Violin Professor at the Academy of Arts in Novi Sad, where he studied and was awarded as Best Young Artist in 2016 by the Autonomous Province of Vojvodina and the Vojvodina Academy of Arts and Sciences. Robert plays on a 1709 Stradivari violin from the collection of bow maker Vladimir Radosavljevic, whose bow he also uses.
Marina Heredia will perform El Amor Brujo by Manuel de Falla with the Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin (Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra) under conductor Pablo Heras Casado in two legendary venues of the Geman capital, such as the Philharmonie and the Konzerthaus. These concerts will take place next 10 and 11 March, respectively. Marina has recently offered a series of five concerts with the Orquesta Sinfónica de Galicia in various cities of the Galician region such as Santiago, A Coruña, Ourense, Lugo and Pontevedra, with a program that included a selection of Canciones Españolas Antiguas, compiled and harmonized by Federico García Lorca.
After this debut with the Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin, Marina Heredia will travel to Portugal to perform El Amor Brujo with the Orquestra da Casa da Música de Porto under Stefan Blunier, next 25 March. Soon afterwards, she will sing at the Palacio de Carlos V within the Granada Festival. Next 2022/23 season will see Marina performing again El Amor Brujo at the opening season concert of a Spanish symphony orchestra, as well as in Switzerland and Germany, where she will offer several concerts along the season as a resident artist of an important German orchestra, closing her residency with the world premiere of a work composed especially for her.
Marina Heredia has become the most internationally requested cantaora to perform El Amor Brujo by Manuel de Falla, which she has sung in some of the most prestigious international venues with important ensembles such as the San Francisco and Chicago Symphony Orchestras. In Europe she has performed it with the Rouen Opera and the Orchestre National de Lille, and more recently in Spain at the Teatro Real in Madrid, Palacio de Festivales in Santander, Auditorio ADDA in Alicante, Cidade da Cultura in Santiago or the Auditorio Manuel de Falla in Granada, with orchestras such as the Sinfónica de Galicia, RTVE Orchestra, Orquesta Ciudad de Granada or ADDA Orchestra, and under conductors such as Manuel Hernández-Silva, Josep Vicent or Pablo Heras Casado, with whom she has also recorded it for Harmonia Mundi.
The US premiere of Concerto Venezolano, by Paquito D’Rivera, will take place next February 25 and 26 at the Segerstrom Center in Costa Mesa and the San Diego Civic Theatre, respectively, and on March 2 at the McCallum Theatre in Palm Springs, with trumpeter Pacho Flores and the San Diego Symphony conducted by Rafael Payare. After the premieres of Concerto Venezolano in Mexico (Orquesta de Minería under Carlos Miguel Prieto), the United Kingdom (Liverpool Philharmonic under Domingo Hindoyan) and Spain (Orquesta de Valencia under Hernández-Silva), this US premiere with the San Diego Symphony and Rafael Payare puts an end to the round of premieres by the orchestras that participated in the shared commission. During his stay in San Diego, Pacho Flores will also offer a chamber music recital with musicians from the orchestra.
The concerts of this project of shared commissions are specifically written for the extraordinary conditions of Pacho Flores and the varied instruments provided by the Valencian house STOMVI, which has developed new four-piston prototypes in new keys that greatly expand the tessitura and range of colors and timbres of this instrument, and, therefore, also the expressive possibilities it offers to the soloist. As an example, this is the list of instruments that would be needed to face the complete cycle of new concerts: Trumpets in B flat, C and D, cornets in F, B flat and E flat, soprano cornets in F, G and A, and, of course, a flugelhorn in B flat, which is, at the express request of Pacho, present in all of these new works.
Pacho Flores with Vicente Honorato, General Director of STOMVI
An important detail to highlight about this project is that these works remain permanently in Pacho’s repertoire. Márquez’s concert, for example, has had further premieres in Poland, Colombia, France, the United Kingdom and the Czech Republic after the first premieres by the orchestras that participated in the initial commission, and has been programmed especially in the US (Louisiana, Colorado, Maine, Buffalo, Ohio), Spain (Galicia, Navarra, Cordoba) or Chile, with a total of more than 30 performances in just four years, and this in the midst of a global pandemic. The Concerto Venezolano will be soon performed in Spain by the Orquesta Sinfónica de Castilla y León (Prieto) and the Gran Canaria Philharmonic (Hernández-Silva), and in France by the Orchestre National de Bordeaux-Aquitaine with Hernández-Silva, as well as in future seasons in the US, Sweden and again in Spain.
D. Freiberg, A. Márquez, P. D’Rivera, P. Flores and C. M. Prieto during the recording of Mestizo for Deutsche Grammophon
The Concerto Venezolano was recorded the same week of its premiere in Mexico in 2019, together with that of Arturo Márquez and two other concerts by composers who also participate in this project —not the works belonging to the project but rather previous ones: Concierto Mestizo de Efraín Oscher, premiered a decade ago (Caracas, 2010) with Bolívar and Hindoyan, and Crónicas Latinoamericanas by Daniel Freiberg, which is really an adaptation for trumpets of a concert originally written for clarinet by Paquito D’Rivera and premiered by the WDR Funkhausorchester and Wayne Marshall. The trumpet version was premiered by the Het Gelders Orkest from the Netherlands, conducted by Christian Vásquez. The release of this album was delayed by the pandemic, but it will finally be presented in the summer of 2022 and will be the 6th in Pacho’s discography (the 5th for Deutsche Grammophon) after Cantar (2016), Entropía (2017), Fractales ( 2018) and Cantos y revueltas (2019). Pacho also appears as a guest soloist on several of Christian Lindberg’s recordings and acts as producer and conductor on the album Egregore, by trumpeter Fabio Brum for Naxos.
Marina Heredia returns to the Orquesta Sinfónica de Galicia, conducted by José Trigueros, to perform once again the program they offered last December in Santiago, A Coruña and Ourense, which will now be presented at the Círculo de las Artes in Lugo next Wednesday 23 February, and at the Teatro Afundación in Pontevedra on Thursday, 24 February. The program includes a selection of Canciones Españolas Antiguas, compiled and harmonized by Federico García Lorca and orchestrated by the conductor himself, and the brief intervention of El corregidor y la molinera, by Manuel de Falla.
Marina Heredia is one of the most internationally requested cantaoras to perform El Amor Brujo by Manuel de Falla. She has worked, among others, with the San Francisco and Chicago Symphony Orchestras, both under Spanish conductor Pablo Heras-Casado, with whom she has also recorded it for Harmonia Mundo with the Mahler Chamber Orchestra. In France he has sung it with the Rouen Opera and the Orchestre National de Lille, both times under Josep Vicent, and she has more recently performed it in Spain at the Úbeda International Music and Dance Festival with the RTVE Orchestra led by Manuel Hernández-Silva, with whom she had already participated in a superb production by La Fura dels Baus at the Granada Festival.
In two weeks she will sing it again with the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra under Pablo Heras-Casado in two iconic German halls such as the Philharmonie and the Konzerthaus, and shortly afterwards with the Orquestra Sinfónica do Porto Casa da Música conducted by Stefan Blunier. In the 2022/23 season, Marina will be a resident artist in the subscription series of a German orchestra to be announced in due course. During this artistic residency, Marina will perform El Amor Brujo as well as the world premiere of a work commissioned by the orchestra and composed specifically for her by a Spanish composer. She will also offer a flamenco concert with her company and an informal chamber music concert with musicians from the orchestra, which will include fragments of her last album, CAPRICHO.
Perry So returns to the San Francisco Symphony on February 11 and 12 to conduct an original program in which all the works will be performed by the orchestra for the first time. This program of San Francisco Symphony premieres opens with with Bounce!!, by Texuu Kim. Pipa virtuoso Wu Man will then join the orchestra for the Concerto for Pipa with String Orchestra by Lou Harrison, which will be followed by Nim,by Younghi Pagh-Paan, and The Age of Birds, by Takashi Yoshimatsu. The program closes with Zhou Long’s lively The Rhyme of Taigu, celebrating the energy and spirit of Japanese Taiko drumming. This concert is a recovery of the one scheduled for February 12 and 13, 2021, which was canceled due to the pandemic that has overcome us for the past two years.
Perry So’s debut with the San Francisco Symphony also took place in the month of February 2020 (February is definitely Perry’s month in San Francisco). On that occasion, the event celebrated the Year of the Mouse with a Chinese New Year Concert in commemoration of the 20th anniversary of the Symphony’s signature heritage event, which bridges East and West traditions with the universal language of music. The annual event is an elegant and colorful celebration of the Lunar New Year, drawing upon vibrant Asian traditions, past and present. Conductor Perry So made his San Francisco Symphony debut leading the orchestra in a program with traditional folk music and works by Asian composers, including the U.S. premiere of Huang Ruo’s Folk Songs for Orchestra and Bright Sheng’s Red Silk Dance.
Perry So will soon return to Spain to conduct the Symphony Orchestra of the Principality of Asturias with pianist Nikolai Luganski, in a program that includes Medtner’s Piano Concerto No. 3 in E minor “Ballade”, Op. 60, and Schumann’s Symphony No. 2 in C major, Op. 61.
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