Francisco Poyato

pianist

When I was a child playing compositions from different eras, I remember a pleasure, like a nostalgia, that fueled the desire not to abandon that space. Thus, without deciding it, the piano accompanied me since childhood. Playing, dreaming, and channeling emotions, it became a part of me.

Curiosity to explore other aspects of music while growing up with my instrument led me to studies in composition and orchestral conducting, as well as the practice of dance music. Playing and singing at festivities brought me closer to the popular way of understanding rhythms and playing with music.

I began working with other instrumentalists and singers. That was magical! The music conveyed how the words felt, and the words conveyed what the music said. Hartmut Höll and Mitsuko Shirai, my lied teachers at the Mozarteum in Salzburg, showed me what that magic consisted of. With them, I learned that a lied was the expression of an experience. Imagination, senses, emotions, energy. The body, the instrument. A song, a lived moment.

That new way of conceiving interpretation sparked concerns and desires that have since shaped my path as a performer.

The desire to delve into the relationship between music, poetry, and experience initially led me to attend masterclasses with Edith Mathis, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Thomas Hampson, Paul Shillawsky, Robert Holl, Barbara Bonney, Dimitri Bashkirov, and Paul Badura-Skoda, among others. I also approached historical performance on the fortepiano to understand how this relationship was conceived in that era, with Anthony Spiri.

From the desire to bring this experience to the stage, concerts were born with Mitsuko Shirai, Ruth Ziesak, Assumpta Mateu, Xavier Sabata, Núria Rial, Olatz Saitua, Elena Copons, Judith van Wanroij, Lluis Vilamajó, Claron McFadden, Marta Mathéu, Roger Padullés.

retrato Francisco Poyato

In addition to the projects that continue to be born incessantly, thanks to the programs of the Festival Life Victoria de Barcelona, Schubertíada de Vilabertran, Festival Musika-Música de Bilbao, Palau de la Música de Barcelona, L’Auditori de Barcelona, Fundación Gulbenkian de Lisboa, to name a few within the peninsula.

The desire to share this passion with students led me to teach at the Mozarteum University in Salzburg between 1994 and 2001. From Salzburg I returned to Barcelona in 2001, coinciding with the creation of the Escola Superior de Música de Catalunya (Esmuc), from where I can share this passion with young people, as a teacher of lied and chamber music. In this center I have had the opportunity to promote the creation of the Victoria de los Ángeles master of lied for singers and pianists, unique in Spain. I also have the pleasure of teaching masterclasses in different European centres, such as the Hans Eisler University in Berlin or the Musikhochschule in Karlsruhe.

The impulse to show the public a personal closeness to certain composers and performers led me to record the complete songs of Eduard Toldrà, with Assumpta Mateu and Lluis Vilamajó, for Columna Música; ‘die Winterreiseby Franz Schubert with Xavier Sabata, for Berlin Classics, as well as the revision of this same work in a scenic key, based on the staging by Rafa Villalobos; the complete songs by Juli Garreta, with Roger Padullés, for Ficta; and Robert Gerhard’s popular songs, with Maria Hinojosa, for Seed Music.

At the moment I am attracted by unusual repertoires and formations. I am also interested in promoting artistic proposals focused beyond aesthetic enjoyment, which question our condition as human beings.