LAURA FARRÉ ROZADA
PIANIST · MATHEMATICIAN · RESEARCHER · PRESENTER
Reviews
“Bravo! Beautiful! Very dramatic and a tremendous performance. Sounds orchestral, just as I imagined it, and the timing is wonderful all the way. Very poetic. You were born for this kind of piece [Makrokosmos], for your accuracy and the dynamics, especially for the way you handle them.” George Crumb - Composer.
​
“A most impressive recital! Some really dynamic and compelling playing. The Escaich was a tour-de-force: you kept up the excitement level in a truly spectacular way.” ​Tim Gill - Principal Cello at the London Sinfonietta.
​
“Rising Star.” BBC Music Magazine.
​
“Laura Farré Rozada's album The French Reverie, on the Albert Moraleda label, could serve as a model for young artists making their recording debuts.” Phillip Sommerich - Classical Music Magazine.
​
“Laura Farré Rozada achieved miracles of memory in Slater's Tautening Skies.”
Christopher Morley - International Piano Magazine.
​
“This time the concert [Robert Gerhard's Piano Concerto] had a brilliant soloist, the young pianist Laura Farré Rozada, with good experience in contemporary music.” Jorge de Persia - La Vanguardia.
​
“The musician is a total performer and brings together in one person the mathematical rationality and sensitivity to the instrument... It is really fair and necessary: ​​Laura Farré Rozada must be loved. You have to listen to her second album, Nimbus (Seed Music), you have to follow her, you have to listen to her radio program La cinta de Moebius (Catalunya Música) and you have to greet her as a global musician, as a total performer, as an artist who brings together in one person mathematical rationality and sensitivity to the instrument. She studied exact sciences and is noted for her structured way of presenting and organizing discourse. But her solid musical training (and in the midst of her doctoral dissertation) is also noticeable in the transmission of her sensitivity, committed to today's music... Rarely you do have the opportunity to listen in one evening so much repertoire of our time. And even less so served with the enthusiasm, desire and wisdom that Laura Farré exhibits. That is why we must thank her for her initiative and tenacity in defending the rabidly contemporary musical language. And to love her, precisely because of that.”
Jaume Radigales - Diari ARA.
​
“Farré is a performer who scrutinizes the smallest detail to extract from the piano a range of sounds in which the fearsome technical complexities that can appear in works such as Prelude No. 8 Un reflet dans le vent by Messiaen, the famous Gaspard de la nuit by Ravel or Rain tree sketch II, in Memoriam Olivier Messiaen by Takemitsu, do not imply any obstacle for her to enter a kind of magic sound in which the most delicate nuances coexist with a fierce, percussive pianism of enormous magnitude at the time of achieve large sound volumes.” Lluís Trullén - Scherzo.
​
“Laura Farré Rozada showed how an instrumentalist from our country could stand next to the best orchestras on the planet on her own right.” Bernat Dedéu - The New Barcelona Post.
​
“The possibilities of the piano are enormous... Sometimes it is another element of the orchestra; sometimes it dialogues... sometimes, alone, it offers us wonders as different as Brahms and Bach visited by Glenn Gould, the Köln concert recorded by an exhausted Keith Jarrett with a poor quality instrument, the Portraits and Solitudes by Jordi Sabatés... And now, Nimbus by Laura Farré Rozada... of a great trajectory in spite of her youth... It is formed by impeccable and very personal interpretations of pieces, often very recent... An intense and captivating work, which oscillates from a deliberate coldness to the contained expression of feelings.”
Miquel Pujadó - Serra d'Or.
​
“What Laura Farré Rozada does is brave. She fights a double endemic fear in society: the one that considers mathematics too difficult and contemporary music too distant, cerebral and too complex. She fights, therefore, two alleged inaccessibility and, thanks also to the speakers that her expertise has sought, she can persevere in her propaedeutic work, which she develops with grace and naturalness.” Aina Vega Rofes - Castafiore-Núvol.
​
“The pianist executes the dizzying changes with sinuous perfection and makes Ravel look like the 21st century... Formal experimentation and the search for bridges between instrumental and natural sounds refer to Messiaen. At the same time, the album [Nimbus] is very current because of the brevity of the pieces, the presence of composers and the collaborations between East and West. Farré’s way of playing is so clear, fast and undulating that it unifies the pieces as if they were by a single author. And she manages to get metallic sounds from the piano like a xylophone. Nimbus is a unitary album that invites you to listen to the rhythmic metaphysics of water and that seeks unions between creators.” Núria Perpinyà - Sonograma.
​
“A pianist of impeccable technique, with a degree in mathematics, she demonstrates such a high degree of concentration on the interpretive task that the listener, no matter how little he knows the scores, is keenly encouraged to feel involved, as a result of the magnetism that emanates of them, even if they are disparate in preparation and time of publication.”
Jacobo Zabalo - The New Barcelona Post.
​
“An album [Nimbus] in which the homage to Olivier Messiaen completed in her previous recording [The French Reverie] is completed by means of the music of the Gaspard de la nuit, of which she offers an admirable version to us... Album with complex music of long silences, precious timbres and sonorities scrupulously obtained by means of an amalgam of piano techniques in the preferably high register, these are combined with complements of electronic music, percussion and imaginative sonorities obtained by their clearly avant-garde effeminacy... An album that requires full attention in the listening, carefully interpreted, in which the nuanced details and colors emerge with very delicate pianism... and that presents some textures and very elaborate sounds that Laura Farré Rozada transmits to perfection... Great work, which has brought us Laura Farré Rozada, a pianist whose contributions escape a traditional line.”
Lluís Trullén - Revista Musical Catalana.
​
“Laura's CV is spellbinding...the areas that Laura moves with are fascinating to me: piano and math...her record 'The French Reverie' has made me crazy. It is a review of pieces of classical music of the 20th century, only piano, but with an expressivity, really, overwhelming...” Miqui Puig - El matí, Catalunya Ràdio.
​
“One of the most valued performers of her generation, with dozens of awards and distinctions on five continents.”
Xènia Bussé - Serra d'Or.
​
“A strong performance from the start, adhering to all the details, and bringing out the virtuosity of the player and composer!”
Mei Yi Foo - Concert Pianist & Recording Artist.
​
“An extremely impressive feat of memory and a recital of enormous range. Elements of theatricality were well converged and the artistic command was as convincing in the virtuosic music as it was in the more intimate and spacious music.”
Ian Jones - Deputy Head of Keyboard, Piano Professor & Fellow at the Royal College of Music.
​
“A guest of the composition, theory, and piano department, Ms. Rozada's performance was part of a two-day residency, including a talk to the school's composers about mathematics and music the following morning. A formidable pianist, Rozada is also a university-trained mathematician, with a keen ear to discovering patterns in music, and bringing them out in her performance. As part of Rozada's ambitious tour of schools and venues in the US and Canada, she performed her recital A French Reverie, a program ranging in sweep and style from Messiaen's early Prelude No. 8 Un reflet dans le vent to a La vehemència del despertar by Joel Järventausta a fascinating work by promising young Finnish composer currently working in London, with whom Rozada has already collaborated on several projects, including Järventausta's Piano Concerto. In contrast to Rozada's delicate, almost vocal treatment of the inner voices of the Messiaen's Prelude, her approach to Philippe Manoury's Toccata (a US premiere, as several other works on the program), based on fractals, was powerful, incisive, and relentless. One could hear, and visually imagine fractals spinning out endlessly from the constantly repeated Eb (above middle C), which formed the point of origin. Rozada ought out the mournful nuances of Israeli composer Ofer Ben-Amots' Akëda a work commemorating Holocaust victims, and based on the Jewish prayer 'El Maleh Rakhamim'. Henri Dutilleux's scintillating Sonata formed the climax of the program. This Op. 1 was the first work Dutilleux was satisfied to contain in his catalog, though it was written when the composer was already 30 years old. Rich with chords redolent of Messiaen and Poulenc, Rozada's fierce technique brought out the motoric toccata of the last movement. Thierry Escaich's highly virtuosic Jeux de doubles, based on a Baroque dance, and Bulgarian composer Vladimir Djambazov's 33:8, an exploration of Bulgarian themes and rhythms, rounded out Rozada's thrilling program. I look forward to hearing her future projects of similarly premiering new works and rediscovering older ones.” Ketty Nez - Associate Professor of Music, Composition and Music Theory, Boston University.
​
“An example of what can be done when there are talent and enthusiasm. We listen to the album [The French Reverie] and the expectations are fulfilled in full because it is sounding stimulating music, which conveys enthusiasm and surprise.”
Jordi Martí Fabra - 440 Clàssica Magazine.
​
“A precious record [The French Reverie] for the selection of contemporary works, excellently interpreted and at the same time very interesting, with an added bonus, that Laura Farré Rozada knows the composers and has been able to develop an interpretation guided by the creators themselves. This gives an extraordinary bonus.”
Joan Vives - 'Tots els matins del món', Catalunya Música Radio.
​
“Virtuosity, like the one achieved in the last movement of the Sonata, dominance of colour, such as the one presented in Un reflet dans le vent by Messiaen or the apparent chaotic universe of Manoury's Toccata, allow us to capture a part of the great interpretative aspects of Laura: impeccable technique, mastery of loudness, a detailed calculation of the balance of dynamics and intensity of volumes, all at the service of carefully selected compositions...Diametrically opposed works of character in which Laura Farré Rozada shows in both an unquestionable pianistic talent.”
Lluís Trullén - Revista Musical Catalana.
​
“A very mature work [The French Reverie], both in the interpretative and technical plane and in the facility to establish a coherent discourse in the selection of works... Farré summons these voices conceptually intertwining them with the French authors from a precise analysis of their influences, as well as of very specific aspects in the works, building a coherent and attractive cyclical story that invites attentive listening. Following the outline that we have taken as a guide, we could conclude that this debut album by Laura Farré «has neither beginning nor end, but rather a means through which it grows and overflows».”
Sergio Blardony - Melómano.
​
“[The French Reverie] is at the moment a very important contribution for dealing with music with tonal reminiscence but very free expressiveness. What our ear hears between a new sound discourse is to live a new experience that keeps our sensitivity to music alive. And I must say that the insistence on programming the great works of past eras is for me an evil that harms and calls into question the enormous amount of written work that should be programmed by authors some known and others never they knew about it... May the initiative of this young performer... have its effect and let music be an open window like literature... I strongly suggest listening to "The French Reverie" masterfully interpreted by Laura Farré Rozada.”
Jordi Cervelló - Composer and Violinist.
​
“The music runs the full gamut of expression from poignant tenderness to jaw-dropping virtuosity, and how refreshing to find this all evident in composers that are not household names.”
Abe Minzer - Classically Alive Series.
​
“Laura Farré Rozada exhibited Gerhard's concert with brilliance and maximum neatness. She was very inspirational, showing the deep knowledge and the great qualities to interpret contemporary music and his concern to publicize the music of the 20th century. The reading that she did at any moment was superficial, making with the piano sonority and timbric chords very suitable for each passage. Always counting on the enthusiastic collaboration of the conductor and orchestral instrumentalists on pages that were very difficult for everyone... A memorable concert: in fact, one of the best we've heard recently, and that the audience appreciated with strong applause.”
Roman Galimany - Nits de Clàssics.
​
“Laura proposes in her album [The French Reverie] a repertoire that is a declaration of intentions...She constantly relates music with mathematics, proposing a parallel between musical parameters and mathematical formulation, which allows her to access a very demanding repertoire with surprising conviction. And it recovers some rarely programmed works, a repertoire unknown to the general public, along with some first audition, to transmit them with great dedication, and that for the listener it is a visceral and stimulating experience... To conclude, after immersing ourselves in this such a stimulating and satisfactory proposal by Laura Farré, we can only wait for the next installment of this young pianist and mathematician, who will undoubtedly surprise us again, proposing new heights in her interpretive commitment to current music.”
Jordi Vilaprinyó - Pianist, Professor & Composer.
​