The XXI Rafael Orozco Piano Festival of Córdoba, which took place between November 2 and 18 with ten concerts and the participation of 15 pianists from eight countriesoffers as a balance an average occupancy of more than 90% of the concert capacity and an outstanding artistic result, in accordance with the expectations generated by the program.
“For the City Council of Córdoba it is a source of deep satisfaction to witness the recognition by critics and the public of what is one of the most important and prestigious events on the cultural agenda of our city,” says the Deputy Mayor, Delegate for Culture and Historical Heritage, Isabel Albaswhich adds that “the success obtained each year by the Rafael Orozco Festival and its public impact encourage us to continue betting decisively on its growth and consolidate it among the most recognized events in the field of piano, in Spain and outside of it, given its accused international character.”
For his part, the artistic director of the festival, Juan Miguel Moreno Calderon, believes that this event “has once again revealed three main things: the great musical quality of the invited pianists, the loyalty of an audience that year after year waits with expectation for the arrival of the month of November to meet great artists and their “notorious international vocation”. “After 21 years,” he emphasizes, “everyone recognizes the Rafael Orozco Festival as one of the obligatory piano references in Spain.”
In addition to luxury presences such as Katia and Marielle Labèque, Yulianna Avdeeva and, at the closing, Javier Perianes, the Spanish pianist with the greatest international projection, the twenty-first edition of the festival has included an unprecedented experience in Córdoba and very rarely taken to carried out in other cities around the world: a Rachmaninoff Marathon in which five internationally recognized pianists participated (Jorge Luis Prats, Anna Fedorova, Juan Carlos Fernández-Nieto, Sergei Yerokhin and Daniel Ciobanu), who offered the public the complete works of the composer (so important in the career of Rafael Orozco and born 150 years ago) for piano and orchestra.
Other great pianists such as Judith Jáuregui, Domenico Codispoti and Carles Marín have revalidated their success at the festival, which, as in every edition, has featured revelation concertssuch as those of the Canadian pianist Jaeden Izik-Dzurko (winner of the last edition of the Paloma O’Shea Santander International Piano Competition) and the duo made up of Maite León and Antón Dolgov, who will remain in the memory of the attendees.
Organized by the Delegation of Culture and Historical Heritage of the City Council of Córdoba, the XXI Rafael Orozco Piano Festival has received pianists from Spain, France, Italy, Romania, Ukraine, Russia, Cuba and Canada and has had its venues at the Gran Teatro, the Góngora Theater, the Rafael Orozco Superior Conservatory of Music and the Mosque-Cathedral, which was the scene of the closing concert offered by Javier Perianes in tribute to Alicia de Larrocha.
