Season 17/18

Discover how it was the end of our last season and have a look to our next projects.

Greetings to all of you!

We are looking backwards in those free days that we can enjoy before our concerts next week, and we would like to tell you how our summer concerts and the recording of our first CD went. Also, we would love to share with you some details about the fantastic projects that we are going to realize in the next months.

In July we went on Tour, playing in some of the most well-known festivals of Germany and Switzerland. We were really looking forward to that moment, because it would be the culmination and consolidation of the new era of our Ensemble. Those last months have been full of discoveries, enthusiasm, and of persistent and enriching work. Because of that, we wanted to share with all of you our passion for keep on playing music. It has been an exigent Tour, but it was full of magic, shared illusion and complicity.

We started the Tour in the Würzburg MozartFest on June 29th, feeling a very warm atmosphere and a lot of proximity with the audience. The concert began with the Andante in F Major K616 by Mozart, followed by Barber's Summer Music. The rest of the pieces in the program were the Quintet by Giya Kancheli and Anton Reicha and the 5 Gipsy Dances by Joaquín Turina, arranged by José Luís Turina.

The same program -except the 5 Gipsy Dances by Turina- was performed on 1st July in the Festival Lavaux Classics in Cully. Candles were sorrounding the quintet, and that was all the illumination in the scene, providing the concert a wonderful and charming atmosphere.

Our journey through Germany continued in the festivals of Rheingau Musik Festival and Mettlach. We played three concerts on 8th and 9th July. Two pieces by Mozart, Turina's La Oración del Torero (The Prayer of the Bullfighter) -also arranged by José Luís Turina and Nielsen's Quintet were performed in front of a considerably large audience. In the concert in Mettlach, we added George Onslow's Quintet.

We finished this Tour in the prestigious Festpilhaus Baden Baden, where we played Reicha, Turina and Nielsen accompanied by actor Christoph Wieschke, who read texts by Freud, Mallarmé and Ian Fleming, among others.

After a week of recovery, we travelled to Mallorca, where we recorded our first CD . It was a marvellous experience, full of apprehension together with our friends from Calanda Music, to whom we would like to thank warmly for their generosity and constant help during those recording days.

We are really satisfied with the work we did during that recording and very motivated to share it with all of you. It is now time to look into the future and to focus in the compromises we have this next season.

We will start with concerts in Jussy and Traunstein on 3rd and 4th September, where we will perform works by Reicha, Mozart, Turina, Magrané, Nielsen, Hindemith and Medaglia.

On 17th October we will play one of the most special concerts of the Season. It will be in the Mozarteum Salzburg, a magical and historical concert hall. Works by Mozart, Reicha, Turina and Nielsen will be heard there. We are really excited to have our Debut in such a breathtaking hall.

During the first days of November, we will record our second CD in Berlin, this time in collaboration with Deutschland Radio Kultur. This is a project that has been our goal for a long time and we are thrilled to make it happen. The CD will be named 'Turina X Turina' and will contain Joaquín Turina´s works arranged by his grandson José Luís Turina, composer and artistical director of the JONDE (Youth National Orchestra of Spain), as well as Variations by Turina, composed by José Luís Turina himself, upon his grandfather's themes. From the beginning of Azahar Ensemble, José Luís Turina has been a very important person for us, having been his support vital for the career of our Quintet. This is why we are incredibly happy that he is also present in this CD.

After that, and also during the first half of November we will play in Switzerland and Germany. On 5th, 6th, 10th and 13th we will be in Boswil, Bühl, Wesel and Heidenheim. We will play again the 10 Pieces for Windquintet by Ligeti in Boswil.

In 2018 we will start our activity playing in the Palau de la Música de Valencia (Spain) on 20th February. We will play Mozart, Magrané and Onslow in the first half and a selection of the Turina pieces recorded in November in the second half.

Between 11th and 18th March we will have a concert Tour, being very special the one of 18th March in the Philharmonie Essen. We will play Nielsen, Ligeti, Turina and Mozart during this Tour.

We are very happy to have the chance to realize all this wonderful projects, so it's now time to recharge batteries and to start this amazing Season with illusion and passion for making music!

All the best,

Azahar Ensemble