Pablo Heras-Casado - A conductor on the rise

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At the age of 31, Pablo Heras-Casado already has a remarkably versatile international career. In the past few months the Spanish conductor has led concerts with the BBC Symphony Orchestra and BBC Singers in London in music exploring Mendelssohn's royal connections; two world premieres with Klangforum Vienna in Granada and Seville; film scores with Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France; concerts in Aldeburgh and London's Tate Modern gallery with the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain; and a recording of Nino Rota's Trombone Concerto with SWR Symphony Orchestra Freiburg. Later this month Heras-Casado travels to Tokyo for Stockhausen's Gruppen with the NHK Symphony Orchestra.

Orchestral, choral, new and early music and opera are intertwined in Heras-Casado's musical interests. "I look for the new," says the Granada native, "whether the ink is still wet on the page or a first performance of ancient music. It's about the discovery." Heras-Casado is music director of the only original-instrument chamber opera company in Spain; Compania Teatro del Principe in Aranjuez specializes in performances of neglected or newly discovered 17th- and 18th-century music. At the Aranjuez Festival in June "La Compania" performed and made the world premiere recording of L'Isola Disabitata by Giuseppe Bonno, an 18th-century Italian who worked in the Spanish court at the time of Ferdinand VI.

In September Heras-Casado returns to France to lead the Orchestre National de Bordeaux, and then heads for a double dip at the Tonhalle Zurich: a re-invitation to the Collegium Novum Zurich and his debut with the Tonhalle Orchestra in the very same week. American music lovers will have to wait until next summer to hear the fast-rising conductor on our continent. Watch for details of his 2009-2010 American engagements in coming posts on this blog.

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