Principal Guest Conductor, English Chamber Orchestra

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“A remarkable talent. (Roberto Forés Veses) does not direct a score, he is the score...as some play an instrument, he plays the orchestra...in total fusion with the performers.” La Montagne

 

A winner of the Evgeny Svetlanov Conducting Competition and Luigi Mancinelli International Opera Conductors Competition, Valencia-born conductor Roberto Forés Veses conducts at many of the world’s leading orchestras and opera houses. He recently conducted his inaugural concert as Principal Guest Conductor of the English Chamber Orchestra, to a long ovation at London’s Cadogan Hall.

 

Recent debuts have included the Opernhaus Zurich, Orchestre du Capitole de Toulouse, Orquesta de Castilla y Leon, Real Orquesta Sinfónica de Sevilla, Orchestre national de Pays de la Loire, Osaka Philharmonic, Nagoya Philharmonic, Orchestra Sinfonica di Milano, Israel Chamber Orchestra and Malaysian Philharmonic. The 2024/25 season will include returns to many of these, as well as debuts and returns to the English Chamber Orchestra, Filarmonica George Enescu, Hessisches Staatstheater Wiesbaden and ADDA Simfonica Alacante.

 

Roberto Forés Veses was appointed Principal Guest Conductor of the English Chamber Orchestra, from the 2024 / 25 season, for an initial period of three years. From 2011 until 2021, Forés Veses was Chief Conductor and Artistic Director of the Orchestre National d’Auvergne — where he presided over a chamber orchestra tradition famous across France and internationally, and oversaw the ensemble’s elevation to France’s ‘national’-level orchestras. Under his directorship, the ONA became much-in-demand as a recording orchestra — making many recordings, mainly for Warner Classics and boutique label Aparte Music, and in 2019 Forés Veses launched the orchestra's own label. He has led the orchestra on several international tours, including to Japan, South America and Brazil.

 

The many other orchestras he has conducted also include, among many others, the NHK Symphony, Saint-Petersburg Symphony, Orchestre National de Lyon, State Academic Symphony Orchestra of Russia "Evgeny Svetlanov", Orchestre de Chambre de Lausanne, Hong Kong Sinfonietta, Orchestre Philharmonique du Luxembourg, Prague Philharmonia, Het Residentie Orchestra (Netherlands), Orquesta Sinfónica da Porto Casa da Música, Orchestre National de Bordeaux-Aquitaine, RTVE Symphony Orchestra (Madrid), Basque National Orchestra, Orquestra de la Comunidad Valenciana, Orquestra de Valencia, Orchestre de Chambre de Paris, Orchestre Philharmonique de Nice, Israel Camerata Jerusalem and Orchestra Ensemble Kanazawa. Opera is also close to his heart — he has conducted at the Opernhaus Zurich, Bolshoi Opera, Teatro Regio di Torino, at the opera companies of Montpellier, Lausanne, Helsinki, Lyon, Rouen, Saint-Etienne and elsewhere.

 

Forés Veses regularly performs at many international festivals, including La Folle Journée de Nantes and Tokyo, La Chaise-Dieu, Murten Classics, Printemps des Arts (Monaco), Stresa Festival, Les Flâneries musicales de Reims, Festival de la Vézère, Festival de Polignac, Festival Bach en Combrailles and the Berlioz Festival. In 2018 he was invited to join select other Svetlanov Competition winners in a special festival marking the 90th anniversary of Svetlanov’s birth, at the Tchaikovsky Conservatory in Moscow.

 

Maestro Forés Veses has made more than a dozen recordings. Recently released are Beethoven's Violin Concerto with Alena Baeva (Warner Classics); Strauss’s Metamorphosen with Schoenberg’s Verklärte Nacht; Mahler’s arrangement of Schubert’s Death And the Maiden, and symphonies by Roussel, Honegger and Jean Rivier. For future release will be Chopin’s Piano Concerto No.1, one of the final recordings with Nicholas Angelich (Warner Classics), and a project with the Orquesta de Castilla y Leon (Signum).

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“A great leader in the pit, there he was, Roberto Forés Veses…an intelligent conductor who has a great career and is increasingly appreciated by connoisseurs…extremely attentive to the singers, guides them, reassures them, and allows them all the nuances, all the inflections of voice, while mastering his orchestra — an orchestra from which he draws a diversity, an intensity, which do perfect justice to Gounod's masterpiece…very beautiful musical direction…Thanks to an exceptional conductor.” Musicologie (‘Romeo et Juliette’, Opernhaus Zurich)

“Roberto Fores Veses coaxes admirably precise playing out of the strings…these are fine performances, bringing out the full flavour of the music.” BBC Music Magazine 

 

“The sense of time as static, as well as flowing and waving in motion, was wonderfully captured by Forés Veses and the Hong Kong Sinfonietta” Bachtrack