Fabián Panisello, an Argentine-Spanish composer and conductor, is internationally known on the contemporary music scene for the high quality of his work. In the words of Karlheinz Stockhausen: “full of ideas, intense and overflowing with energy (…) I am very happy to see that the spirit of Webern continues to live on in a transformed way.” Fabián is the director and founder of PluralEnsemble, recognized as one of the most important contemporary music ensembles in Europe, with regular concert series in Madrid with the BBVA Foundation, national and international tours, and an extensive discography.
He is a Professor of Composition at the Reina Sofía School of Music and a visiting professor at the China Conservatory of Beijing. Previously, he was a professor of analysis between 1996 and 2000 and academic director of the Reina Sofía School of Music and the International Institute of Chamber Music of Madrid from 1996 to 2013, and director of the same institutions between 2014 and 2019. He is composer-in-residence and professor of composition in masterclasses at festivals and academies in Graz, Munich, New York, Buenos Aires, Davis (CA), Shanghai, Nanning, Beijing, Bogotá, Mexico City, Leuk (Switzerland), Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, and Budapest, among others.
Trained by Francisco Kröpfl and Julio Viera in Buenos Aires and with Bogusław Schaeffer at the Mozarteum in Salzburg (Magister Artium with an award of excellence in 1993), he completed his studies with Elliott Carter, Franco Donatoni, Brian Ferneyhough, Luis de Pablo, and Peter Eötvös. He has received awards such as the “Mozarts Erben” from the city of Salzburg, the “Würdigungspreis” from the Austrian Ministry of Education, Science and Culture, and the “Rodolfo Halffter Ibero-American Composition Prize” from Mexico. He is a member of the National Academy of Fine Arts of Argentina.
In recent years, he has focused on composing dramatic pieces. His opera Le Malentendu premiered in 2016 to great success: “we are surely facing the best premiere of a new opera at the Teatro Real in a long time” (Tomás Marco); “Panisello possesses a very special talent for the stage, creating an exciting theater with magnificent music” (Peter Eötvos). Le Malentendu was co-produced by the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires, the Warsaw Autumn Festival, the Neue Oper Wien, the Teatros del Canal, and the Teatro Real in Madrid. His most recent dramatic work, the multimedia musical theater Les Rois Mages, in an international co-production and commissioned by the Ernst von Siemens Foundation through the Centro Superior de Investigación y Promoción de la Música and the Fundación Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, premiered in January 2019, receiving a great reception from the public and critics, and will be performed in the 2019-2020 season in cities such as Nice, Tel Aviv, Munich, Vienna, and Klagenfurt, among others.
He has also received commissions from the National Orchestra of Spain, the Donaueschingen Festival, Ensemble Modern, the Goethe Institut, the Orchestra of the Community of Madrid, the BBVA Foundation, the Italian Institute of Culture, the Alte Oper Frankfurt, the Secretariat of Culture of Buenos Aires, and the Takefu Festival of Japan, among others.
His work has been recognized and supported by personalities such as Pierre Boulez, Luciano Berio, and Karlheinz Stockhausen, having collaborated in two world premieres of the latter with the orchestras of the Westdeutscher Rundfunk of Cologne and the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester of Berlin. Performers of his work include Pierre Boulez, Peter Eötvos, Susanna Mälkki, Leigh Melrose, Allison Bell, Marco Blaauw, and Francesco D’Orazio, and the BBC Symphony Orchestra, the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester of Berlin, the Mozarteum Orchestra of Salzburg, the National Orchestra of Spain, and the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra, the Arditti Quartet, and Ensemble Modern.
He participates in the main international festivals dedicated to contemporary music, such as Wien Modern, Munich Biennale, Présences, Ars Musica, Ultraschall, Aspekte, Manca, and Klangspuren Schwaz; and in recent seasons he has been invited as conductor and composer-in-residence at the Sound Ways Festival in St. Petersburg, the New Music Week Festival in Shanghai, the Manca Festival in Nice, the National Center for the Arts (CENART) in Mexico, the Baremboim-Said Foundation Master, the Bridges Festival of the Konzerthaus in Vienna, the China-ASEAN Music Festival, and the International Summer Academy of the Mozarteum in Salzburg.
His discography includes recordings for NEOS, Col legno, Cypres, Verso, and Columna Música, among others. His work is published by Peters.