Alter Klang by Benet Casablancas in Holland, Belgium and Sweden

Posted by Leticia Martin on January 9, 2009  |  2 Comments

The Dutch youth orchestra, Nationaal Jeugd Orkest, conducted by Reinbert de Leeuw, has chosen the work Alter Klang by Benet Casablancas for its January concert tour, which takes it to the cities of Amsterdam, Rotterdam and Utrecht in Holland and Antwerp in Belgium. This work consolidates Benet Casablancas’ place among the most internationally acclaimed Spanish composers.

Alter Klang (Antique harmonies) refers back to a well-known painting with the same name by Paul Klee. The composer brings a broad spectrum of sustained rhetorical resources and synesthesiae into play, which emerged in the adaptation of the pictorial language to music.

Composed in a sole movement for large orchestra it has received chamber music treatment on various occasions. It is dedicated to Josep Pons, who conducted the premiere at the Auditorio Nacional de Madrid in 2007. This same conductor will perform it in Malmö (Sweden) with the Malmö Symphony Orchestra in April.

Alter Klang

Benet Casablancas’ Complete Piano Works on Naxos

Posted by Trito on June 26, 2008  |  No Comments

Naxos, one of the leading record labels today, has just published the complete works for piano by Benet Casablancas, performed by Jordi Masó and Miquel Villalba.
In recent years, Casablancas (born in 1956 in the town of Sabadell, near Barcelona) has confirmed his status as one of the most active and important composers in Spain today.

His solid background in music and the humanities has enabled him to develop a highly personal language that, despite being firmly based on knowledge of and love for the great classical tradition (with the Second Viennese School as one of his key points of reference), is open a wide range of influences, which he is able to assume without resorting to eclectic devices.