Pablo Cruise achieved some measure of success during the latter part of the '70s with their mellow, easygoing California pop. The band was formed in 1973 by former members of Stoneground and It's a Beautiful Day: guitarist Dave Jenkins, keyboardist Cory Lerios, bassist Bud Cockrell, and drummer Steve Price…
This program is a mirror of four musical universes, which are as contrasted as interconnected with each other. Enlightening and transgressive, music full of passions, irony, madness, humor, heart- breaking pain, the controversy of letting go, and the purity of love in different states and forms. Bernstein and Poulenc, invited by Benny Goodman’s artistry to create two delighful chamber works – for one was his penultimate,, for the other his first. Weinberg and Prokofiev achieving at the same time the powerful grandeur of their expression and virtuosity, through two of their most intimate and fragile masterpieces. It has been a super exciting adventure to travel all the way this music has taken us through, and we feel this program has an authentic message which connects us to our recent roots and encourages us to go forward full of love, passion and enthusiasm.
Pablo Casals was once the greatest living cellist. His technique was formidable, his tone was magisterial, and his interpretations were sovereign. In the '20s and '30s, Casals was a charismatic virtuoso on the same level as Kreisler and Horowitz. Those days were over by the time he recorded Beethoven's works for cello and piano with the superb Rudolf Serkin in 1954. His formidable technique had irrevocably decayed: in the fast passages and movements, Casals could barely keep up and he dropped notes like a tree drops leaves in a late autumn rain. His magisterial tone has deteriorated: in the slow passages and movements, Casals groaned and growled like boughs and branches in a hard autumn wind.
After the first two instalments, highly praised by the press – ‘one of the finest, most . . . thrilling performances of [the] Fourth Concerto’, wrote Gramophone – Kristian Bezuidenhout, Pablo Heras-Casado and the Freiburger Barockorchester close their Beethoven trilogy with the classical yet already eminently personal Concerto no.1, and that masterpiece of intensity and drama, Concerto no.3. Once again, period instruments and historically informed performance practice reveal the astonishing modernity that early listeners found in these works!
Praised as “the soul of the Spanish guitar,” he has become a worldwide sensation known as this generation’s great guitarist. Pablo Sáinz-Villegas has been acclaimed by the international press as the successor of Andrés Segovia and an ambassador of Spanish culture in the world. His “virtuosic playing characterized by irresistible exuberance” (The New York Times) make him one of the most acclaimed soloists by prestigious conductors, orchestras and festivals.