Juanjo Mena
Chief Conductor, BBC Philharmonic Manchester
Conductors
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Manager: R. Douglas Sheldon, Denise A. Pineau
Management Territory: North & South America and Asia
Mena loves to put a singing quality into phrases, to find little bends and breaths within a tempo, to make as big an effort for delicious pianissimos as for thunderous explosions. —Baltimore Sun
Mena’s warm-blooded sound, maneuvers, and sharp orchestra discipline lifted Schubert’s symphonic testament up to a level you expect to hear in the greatest European concert halls. —Haugesund's Avis (Norway)
The heart of the slow movement was perhaps the most revelatory instance, where cellos and basses march implacably onwards, regardless of the rest of the orchestra’s engagement with the agonies of temporal existence. Mena held the two worlds in perfect balance; it was as though everything beforehand had led to this moment, and everything afterwards would devolve from it. Similarly he drove the first movement fearlessly towards its climactic fierce exultation, while the finale was so eruptive from the word go that what sometimes comes across as mere quirkiness was utterly gripping. Rarely have I heard a Bruckner Sixth that displayed such masterful long-term vision, and never, I think, one that made the work seem so important —UK Telegraph
About
Chief Conductor, BBC Philharmonic Manchester
Principal Guest Conductor, Bergen Philharmonic
Maestro Juanjo Mena returns to the USA in the 2012-13 for re-engagements with the Boston Symphony, Chicago Symphony, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Baltimore Symphony and appearances with the orchestras of Pittsburgh and Cincinnati. He is a frequent visitor to American Orchestras having also conducted the orchestras of Philadelphia, Atlanta, Houston, and Indianapolis.
Chief Conductor of the BBC Philharmonic in Manchester and Principal Guest Conductor of the Bergen Philharmonic in Norway, Juanjo Mena is one . . . of Spain’s most distinguished international conductors.
Worldwide, Juanjo Mena has appeared with the Dresden Philharmonic, Munich Radio Orchestra, Orchestre National de France, Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, Orchestre National de Lyon, Oslo Philharmonic, Norwegian Radio Orchestra, Danish Radio Symphony, Orchestra Filarmonica della Scala, Orquesta Nacional de España, Orquesta Sinfónica del Estado de São Paulo, Netherlands Radio Philharmonic, and the BBC Scottish Symphony too name only a few.
A guest of international festivals, Maestro Mena has appeared at the BBC Proms, Stars of White Nights Festival in St. Petersburg, Hollywood Bowl, Grant Park (Chicago) and La Folle Journee (Nantes). His future engagements include the Rotterdam Philharmonic, Royal Stockholm Philharmonic, Luxembourg Philharmonic, Helsinki Philharmonic, and the Orquesta Sinfónica de Barcelona.
Also active in opera, Juanjo Mena has led productions of Billy Budd, Eugene Onegin, Le Nozze di Figaro, Erwartung, Bluebeard’s Castle, Ariadne auf Naxos, Elektra, Salome, Der Fliegende Holländer and Tristan und Isolde.
Juanjo Mena’s recent CD for Chandos of works by Gabriel Pierné with the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra was named Editor’s Choice in Gramophone Magazine (March 2011). Other recording projects include works by de Falla, Montsalvatge and Weber. Mo. Mena has also recorded Messiaen’s Turangalila Symphony for Hyperion with the Bergen Philharmonic and a collection of Basque symphonic music for Naxos with the Bilbao Symphony.
Born in Vitoria, Juanjo Mena began his musical training at the Vitoria-Gasteiz Conservatory (Basque Country). He studied composition and orchestration with Carmelo Bernaola and conducting with Enrique Garcia-Asensio at the Royal Higher Conservatory of Music in Madrid, where he received the Prize of Honor. Awarded a Guridi-Bernaolo Scholarship, he pursued further conducting studies in Munich with Sergiu Celibidache.
