With music you can say what cannot be expressed in any other way. Music makes the intangible tangible and touches in a special way. Pablo Barragán is fascinated by this kind of communication and masterfully manages to connect with his audience already with the first note. His playing is sophisticated, elegant and perfectly nuanced. He wants to tell stories, convey emotions and create a unique color palette for each work.
Art is a diverse source of inspiration for him. He loves visiting galleries and museums, letting the impressions take effect over a good coffee or discussing with friends. Already in his childhood drawing and painting was a great passion for him. He grew up with a sense of creativity and freedom, which he also found in music. Although classical music hardly played a role in his southern Spanish family life, his mother encouraged him to keep trying new things. So he started playing the piano at the age of four and then found “his” instrument via the soprano saxophone: the clarinet. He still vividly remembers the first time he produced a sound and a world of infinite possibilities, melodies and rhythms opened up. Besides making his own music, he loves to listen to music on an old tape recorder for hours.
His musical path led Pablo Barragán through youth orchestras and chamber music ensembles to study the clarinet. The process of creating together and the feeling of being part of something bigger strengthened his desire to make music his life. And so he studied at the Conservatorio in Seville with Antonio Salguero and then moved to the Barenboim-Said Foundation in Berlin to Matthias Glander. He was also a member of the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra under the direction of Maestro Daniel Barenboim. In 2009, he then went to the Music Academy of Basel as a scholarship holder of the Fundación Caja Madrid, where he studied in the master class of François Benda. He also received new impulses from Martin Fröst, Charles Neidich and Dimitri Ashkenazy during master classes.
Pablo Barragán’s development from a young talent to a recognized musician is expressed, among other things, by his being awarded the “Prix Credit Suisse Jeunes Solistes 2013” and being invited to the Lucerne Festival in the same year. His solo debut at the Lucerne Festival was then also broadcast live by RTS and subsequently produced as a CD by the Credit Suisse Foundation.
This development was accompanied by various prizes at international competitions, including “ARD Music Competition 2012”, “Juventudes Musicales de España 2011” and “European Music Competition for Youth 2011” (EMCY).
As a soloist, Pablo Barragán enjoys interacting with colleagues and listeners. His curiosity allows him to constantly discover new perspectives on music, and he has already demonstrated his infinite facets with orchestras such as the Basel Symphony Orchestra, the Orquesta de Radio Televisión Española, the Slovak Chamber Orchestra or the Orquesta Filarmónica de Málaga under conductors such as Clemens Schuldt, Adrian Prabava or Gabriel Feltz.
The intimacy of chamber music, in turn, opens up entirely new views, emotions and colors that shape the young musician. Making music together with the Goldmund Quartet, Maki Wiederkehr, Juan Pérez Floristán, Andrei Ionita or Viviane Hagner at festivals such as the Lucerne Festival, the Gstaad Menuhin Festival, the Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival, at Young Euro Classic Berlin or the Festspiele Mecklenburg-Vorpommern are therefore just as important to him as his solo concerts.
This diversity of the artist is also reflected in the CD releases planned for spring and fall 2018: Together with Juan Pérez Floristán (piano) and Andrei Ionita (violoncello), clarinet trios and sonatas by Brahms will appear on the Spanish label IBS. Pablo Barragán fulfills a dream with his recording of Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto, KV 622. To this end, he recorded compositions by Marco Perez Ramirez and Dominique Gessenay-Rappo; a program choice that illustrates Pablo Barragán’s open-mindedness and curiosity for new experiences.
Pablo Barragán represents the companies D’Addario, Silverstein and Buffet Crampon as an artist.