June 2022

Juanjo Mena will lead the Orchestra of the Teatro Real (Royal Opera), Madrid, in their Carnegie Hall debut on 15 September 2022, after they were named Best Opera Company in 2021 by the International Opera Awards. The concert highlights well-known works orchestral works, as well as works for piano and orchestra, and songs from zarzuela composed by Falla and Albéniz, amongst others. Soloists will include pianist Javier Perianes and soprano Sabina Puértolas.
Juanjo Mena recently debuted at the Teatro Real, leading critically acclaimed performances of Arthur Honegger’s Jeanne d’Arc au Bûcher alongside Debussy’s La damoiselle élue, a new co-production with the Frankfurt Opera by Alex Ollé of La Fura dels Baus, which featured Oscar-winning actress Marion Cotillard in the title role.

Click here to find more information and to book tickets

June 2022

Juanjo Mena will make his debut at the Teatro Real in Madrid from 7th June, conducting eight performances of Arthur Honegger’s dramatic oratorio Jeanne d’Arc au Bûcher (Joan of Arc at the Stake). The new co-production with the Frankfurt Opera, by Alex Ollé of La Fura dels Baus features the Oscar-winning actress Marion Cotillard in the title role, as well as a stellar cast of soloists, and the orchestra and chorus of the Teatro Real. Claude Debussy’s cantata La damoiselle élue (The Blessed Damozel), with libretto by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, opens the programme.

Full information can be found here.

March 2022

Juanjo Mena has enjoyed glowing reviews following his concerts with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra on 11th and 13th March. The repertoire featured Prokofiev’s Classical Symphony, Rodrigo’s Concierto de Aranjuez with Pablo Sáinz Villegas, Debussy’s Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune and Lutoslawski’s Concerto for Orchestra.

“Guest maestro Juanjo Mena also demonstrated an uncanny ability to nudge the audience as well as the orchestra. He kicked off the evening in earnest with a spectacular take on Prokofiev’s “Classical Symphony.” […] Mena and the orchestra were marvelous. Unhurried, precise, explosively exciting — the orchestra brought its “A” game on Friday.”

– Jeremy Reynolds, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Image © Edward DeArmitt/Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra

November 2021
“The National Symphony Orchestra was led by the Spanish conductor Juanjo Mena, who struck precisely the right balance of body and soul in a program bookended by Schumann and Brahms […] the former chief conductor of the BBC Philharmonic made a memorable mark. He’s got a way with conjuring and releasing pressure, and can just as easily construct towering columns of sound as scatter them into clouds. […] Mena’s nimbleness was a large part of what gave the overture to Schumann’s 1848 “Manfred” the humanity required to hear the composer’s heart in the chest of the Byronic hero. It was one of the best openers I’ve heard all season. [In Brahms’ Third Symphony] Mena and the orchestra managed its triumphant tuttis as carefully as its many intimacies — the way the first movement quite literally peaces out; the design of the woodwinds that so beautifully illuminates the andante and accentuates the aching grace of the third movement.”
– Michael Andor Brodeur, Washington Post

November 2021
This double CD, dedicated to orchestral works with soloists by Joaquín Rodrigo (1901-1999), has been released to celebrate the 120th anniversary of the composer’s birth. It encompasses over four decades of Rodrigo’s compositional activity, from the early Tríptic de Mossèn Cinto, a song cycle composed in 1935, to the late Concierto como un divertimento for cello and orchestra, written in 1981. The disc features the cellist Asier Polo (Concierto como un divertimento and Concierto in modo galante), Laura Salcedo, Principal Second Violin of the Spanish National Orchestra (Concierto de estío), the French harpist Marie-Pierre Langlamet (Concierto serenata, Sones en La Giralda) and the soprano Raquel Lojendio (Tríptic de Mossèn Cinto).
The CD is available for purchase or download here.

Juanjo Mena and the BBC Philharmonic’s acclaimed reading of Bruckner’s Symphony No. 6 has been released on Chandos Records. It was recorded in their studio at MediaCityUK back in 2012, just before Mena and the Orchestra performed the piece at the BBC Proms.
The recording has been selected by BBC Radio 3’s Record of the Week and Gramophone’s Essential New Classical Release.
The Classical Review notes that Juanjo Mena “proves himself a master of this difficult score.“…Program notes are erudite and engaging … sound is spectacular, and the playing of the BBC Philharmonic is impassioned – clearly Mena inspires them” […] “If pressed to recommend a single recording, Haitink’s last recording with the Bavarian RSO has a natural authority … Yet Mena, for the most part, is equally impressive, and I admire his imaginative ideas and willingness to take interpretive risks. This is an intensely musical performance and would welcome more Bruckner from this team.”
For more information, to purchase and to listen, please visit the Chandos Records website.

March 2020

Last week the Minnesota Orchestra took the difficult decision to cancel forthcoming performances with immediate effect, as a preventative measure against the spread of coronavirus (COVID-19). We had enjoyed a wonderful week of rehearsals of Shostakovich’s Seventh Symphony and Rachmaninoff’s Second Piano Concerto with the superb Kirill Gerstein. The concert on Friday 13 March went ahead without public, for the live radio broadcast on Classical MPR. We wore concert dress, an excellent decision taken by the orchestra, as it helped us focus under unprecedented circumstances, and the concert was an incredibly moving experience for us all.

I would like to sincerely thank each and every member of the Minnesota Orchestra and Kirill Gerstein, not only for their willingness to go ahead with the broadcast, but also for the exceptional level of the concert, an experience I will never forget. We were all touched by the many messages on social media from the public who were listening live, and I think the words of Warren Park who kindly wrote to the Star Tribune express it much better than I do:

“What a wonderful experience for us out in radio-land, social distancing ourselves physically but not emotionally. Many, many thousands of listeners tuned in throughout the 46 broadcast stations in the MPR network. Thank you so, so much Minnesota Orchestra, for letting us hear you play, even though the concert had been canceled. Wow! We deeply appreciate it. You are wonderful musicians and the finest humans.”

Thank you, Mr Park, we will play for you in person before too long.

“…A characteristic of Mena’s musical approach is a strongly lyrical, poetic style. He has a gift for bringing out the gentler aspects of any piece he conducts. That is very much the case here, in a profoundly beautiful, even devout, performance of this classic of Spanish music. This beauty of sound is matched in a characteristically warm Chandos recording, admirably suited to a performance such as this. Throughout one is conscious of the love thrown over the whole work, as well as the meticulous preparation of all involved. A great deal of thought has gone into the recording, with all-Spanish forces, apart from the ever-admirable BBC Philharmonic. The RTVE Symphony Chorus obviously flew to Manchester for the occasion. This opera, despite its brevity, depends very much on the quality of the chorus, and the authenticity pays dividends…” (Michael Wilkinson, musicweb-international.com)

“… Mena prises open textures and sonorities with great subtlety and attention to detail, so that we’re fully able to appreciate the shifting colours of Falla’s writing for strings and woodwind, much indebited to Dukas and Debussy, and his refined yet telling use of brass and percussion. The playing immaculately blends clarity with sensuousness, while the Coro de la Radio y Televisión Española sing with admirable warmth of tone…” (Tim Ashley, Gramophone Magazine)

“I admired Mena’s previous release of Falla’s masterworks so his refined ear and idiomatic flair pays dividends here, aided and abetted by superb recorded sound – the haunting opening with offstage men’s chorus ideally balanced and the anvils for once sound convincing.” (Warwick Arnold, Limelightmagazine.com.au)

“…This Chandos recording really gains in having been captured in an extraordinarily clear, spacious but not over-resonant acoustic. This allows much of the brilliance of the orchestration to register as never before. Juanjo Mena and the BBC Philharmonic have worked hard to get these aspects dynamically balanced…” (Alexander Campbell, classicalsource.com)

“… Mena’s enthusiasm for the work must have rubbed off on [the orchestra], because they are instrumental in creating the work’s all-important atmosphere. Those dark, sinuous strings of the opening are hair-raisingly good, as are the sparkling Act 2 dances and the bright winds of the Intermezzo…. This disc is worthwhile, particularly as proof that a British orchestra can play Spanish music like the best of them.” (Simon Thompson, musicweb-international.com)

You can purchase the disc, download the audio and see full track listings here.