The OCV, with Zubin Mehta on the podium, receives applause from audiences and critics in Castellón and the Canary Islands.
15.02.2012
•The specialized press describes the Orquestra de la Comunitat Valenciana as “the most important thing that has been done in the orchestral history of Spain”
Valencia (15-2-2012).- The Orquestra de la Comunitat Valenciana concluded yesterday at the Adán Martín Auditorium in Tenerife a new tour with Zubin Mehta as musical director, which began on February 10 in Castellón.
The Auditori in Castellón hosted the resident orchestra of the Palau de les Arts Reina Sofía for a concert commemorating the 85th anniversary of the Castellón Philharmonic Society. Zubin Mehta premiered César Cano's Concerto for Orchestra, Op. 73, commissioned by the Society to mark the occasion, followed by Anton Bruckner's monumental Eighth Symphony.
The performance, which made the front page of all the Castellón press with headlines such as "Great Zubin Mehta" or "Zubin Mehta conquers Castellón", achieved a full house with a "resounding triumph", as the concert reviews state.
The OCV repeated this same program in the concert that, a day later, was offered by the Palau de les Arts within its subscription season, the first for Maestro Mehta in the Valencian cultural enclave outside of the Festival del Mediterrani since 2006 with the first Bruckner for the Orquestra de la Comunitat Valenciana since its constitution.
Canary Islands Music Festival
Last Sunday, February 12th, the orchestra, led by Zubin Mehta, set sail for the Canary Islands to perform at the 28th Canary Islands Music Festival. Upon arriving in Gran Canaria, Mehta himself remarked that he was coming to “a great festival with one of the best orchestras in Europe.”
The Canary Islands Festival is the only event on the music circuit held in winter. Since its inception, it has hosted the world's finest orchestras and leading conductors such as Claudio Abbado, Riccardo Muti, Daniel Barenboim, Colin Davis, John Eliot Gardiner, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Simon Rattle, Christian Thielemann, André Previn, Wolfgang Sawallisch, Riccardo Chailly, Bernard Haitink, Mariss Jansons, and the late Carlo Maria Giulini, Václav Neumann, Sergiu Celibidache, and Georg Solti.
With Bruckner's Eighth Symphony on the program, described by Hugo Wolf himself as "the creation of a Titan, in spiritual immensity, fertility of ideas and grandeur", the Palau de les Arts orchestra played to full houses at the Alfredo Kraus Auditorium in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria and the Adán Martín Auditorium in Tenerife, with more than 3,000 spectators between the two Canary Island co-capitals.
The audiences of Gran Canaria and Tenerife gave long ovations to the resident orchestra of the Palau de les Arts and to Maestro Mehta, who, after the concert in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, had to come out to greet the 1,800 attendees who filled the Alfredo Kraus seven times.
The Canary Islands music critics have spared no praise for the OCV's performance under Mehta's baton of the Austrian composer's colossal score, dedicating entire pages to it and even calling it the "zenith" of this year's Canary Islands Festival.
Among others, the Las Palmas de Gran Canaria newspaper La Provincia has highlighted that the OCV “is the most important thing that has been done in the entire orchestral history of Spain (…) That is why the Palau de les Arts in Valencia achieved in a few years the leadership of all the opera houses in the country.”
