Poem of Ecstasy: An interview with Roberto Beltrán
Roberto Beltrán, music director of the Palermo Classica festival, sat down with leading Spanish music magazine Codolario to look back on his 11-year tenure as artistic director of the Guanajuato Symphony Orchestra, one of Latin America’s oldest orchestras - and an ensemble Beltrán has brought to levels of performance, stunning symphonic cycles, international recordings and awards that were unheard of for an orchestra in his home country of Mexico.
Beltrán, the winner of the 2024 Mahler Award, had managed to conduct his orchestra in Northern Mexico, in addition to his oper and symphonic appearances in Europe and the Americas, in cycles of all symphonic works by by Beethoven, Brahms, Schumann, Mahler, Shostakovich, and Rachmaninoff. His recordings of Symphony no. 10 by Shostakovich (on French label Evidence) won worldwide critical acclaim.
“That programme of Mahler 8 and Poem of Ecstasy was crazy.”
You have also included in the repertoire of the Guanajuato University Symphony Orchestra scores that have made history, not only in the state, but in Mexican music. There are not many conductors from his country who have conducted Mahler's Eighth Symphony, or Scriabin's Poem of Ecstasy.
The Poem of Ecstasy or Mahler's Eighth are not frequently performed works, not only in Mexico, but anywhere in the world. Much less together! - as we did in 2022. That programme in particular (Poem of Ecstasy/Mahler 8) was crazy, but it pushed all of us: conductor, orchestra and staff to the limits of our capabilities. But I am convinced that that was what we wanted and needed as a team, as a creative family. The concert was a resounding success and if it had happened just because I wanted it, it would most likely have been a failure.
Read on here (in Spanish).