With music one can say what cannot be expressed otherwise. Music makes intangible things tangible and touches in a special way. Pablo Barragán is fascinated by this kind of communication and from the first note masterfully creates a connection to his audience. His performance is differentiated, elegant and perfectly nuanced. He wants to tell stories, convey emotions and create his own color palette for every work. For him, art is a constant source of inspiration. He loves to visit galleries and museums, to have the experience of a good coffee or conversation with friends. In his childhood, drawing and painting was a great passion for him. He grew up with the feeling of creativity and freedom, which he also found in music. Although classical music played a minor role in his family life in southern Spain, his mother always encouraged him to try new things, so he began playing the piano at the age of four. Later, through the soprano saxophone he found his "instrument": the clarinet. He remembers vividly hearing for the first time a tone and a world of infinite possibilities, melodies and rhythms open up. In addition to playing his own music, he loves to listen to the old cassette recorder for hours on end.
His musical path led Barragán to study the clarinet through youth orchestras and chamber music ensembles. The joint creative process and the feeling of being a part of something bigger strengthened his desire to make music. He studied at the Conservatorio in Seville with Antonio Salguero and then moved to the Barenboim-Said Foundation in Berlin with Matthias Glander. He was also a member of the West-Eastern Divan Orchestras, conducted by Maestro Daniel Barenboim. In 2009, he went to the Basel Academy of Music as a scholarship student to the Fundación Caja, where he studied in the master class of François Benda. Martin Fröst, Charles Niedich and Dimitri Ashkenazy also gave him new impulses in master classes.
The development of Barragán from a young talent to an acknowledged musician is reflected among other things in his being awarded the Prix Credit Suisse Jeunes Solistes 2013 and the invitation of the Lucerne Festival in the same year. His solo debut at the Festival was broadcast live by the RTS and then produced by the Crédit Suisse Foundation as a CD. This development has been accompanied by various prizes at international competitions, such as the ARD Music Competition 2012, the Juventudes Musicales de España 2011 and the European Music Competition for Youth 2011 (EMCY).
As a soloist, Pablo Barragán enjoys the exchange with colleagues and audiences. His curiosity has made him discover new perspectives in music, appearing with orchestras such as the Sinfonieorchester Basel, the Orquesta de Radiotelevision Española, the Slovak Chamber Orchestra, the Malaga Philharmonic Orchestra and with conductors such as Clemens Schuldt, Adrian Pravaba and Gabriel Feltz.
The intimacy of chamber music in turn opens up entirely new views, emotions and colors that characterize the young musician. Making music together with the Goldmund Quartet, Maki Wiederkehr, Juan Pérez Floristán, Andrei Ioniţă and Viviane Hagner at festivals such as Lucerne Festival, Menuhin Festival Gstaad, Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival, Young Euroclassics Berlin and the Mecklenburg- Vorpommern Festival are thus as important as his solo concerts.
Pablo Barragán's diversity is evident in the CD releases planned for spring and autumn 2018. Together with Juan Pérez Floristán (piano) and Andrei Ioniţă (violoncello) he will present clarinet trios and sonatas by Brahms on the Spanish label IBS. Pablo Barragán fulfilled a dream with the recording of Mozart's Clarinet Concerto, and performed compositions by Marco Pérez Ramírez and Dominique Gessenay-Rapp, a program selection that reveals Barragán's openness and curiosity for new experiences.