We spoke with Fabio Banegas, a pianist from Rosario dedicated to promoting Argentine composers internationally, who was recently awarded at the Global Music Awards. Banegas shares details about his latest release with the Grand Piano label, a volume in his series dedicated to the work of his mentor, José Antonio Bottiroli, and hints at the project’s conclusion in 2025.
By Virginia Chacon Dorr
What can I listen to while reading this interview? MusicaClasicaBA recommends:
Fabio Banegas, an Argentine pianist based in the United States, has become an ambassador of Argentine music through his artistic work, which includes recordings and musical editions of national composers. In 2024, he was honored by the Global Music Awards for his performance on the album *Concertos for Soloist and String Orchestra* by Eduardo Grau, recorded with the Brno Philharmonic Orchestra under the Naxos label, conducted by Francisco Varela, and featuring the piano duo Anton (Dolgov) and Maïté (León). Simultaneously, Banegas continues his series of recordings dedicated to the legacy of José Antonio Bottiroli, released through the Grand Piano label—a project that will culminate in 2025 and promises to be a valuable contribution to Argentina’s musical heritage.
Congratulations on being awarded the 2024 Global Music Award for Outstanding Achievement as an Instrumentalist, recognizing your performance on the album *Concertos for Soloist and String Orchestra* by Eduardo Grau. What does receiving this award mean to you, especially in a project where you share music with other outstanding soloists from various backgrounds?
It is an incentive to continue with the mission I have set for myself: to highlight the work of unknown Argentine composers. I am very proud to discover, with each step I take, that Argentina is a country whose composers place it among the most important nations in terms of its legacy to academic music worldwide.
In the case of this award, it concerns my participation on the album dedicated to composer Eduardo Grau (Barcelona 1919 – Buenos Aires 2006): *Eduardo Grau – Concertos for Soloists and String Orchestra*, which was a world premiere released in 2023 by Naxos Records, where I performed as the solo pianist in three of the four concertos in the program.
Under the artistic direction of Argentine Maestro Francisco Varela and with Hungary’s Anima Musicae Chamber Orchestra, renowned performers from different countries joined us. The concertos in the program are for multiple soloists, including a triple concerto and two double concertos. With the aim of maximizing the impact of this world premiere of Eduardo Grau’s work, Maestro Varela and I invited notable musicians from other countries: Austrian clarinetist Simon Reitmaier, Spanish violinist Ana María Valderrama and violist David Fons, Czech flutist Janá Jarkovská, and Hungarian percussionist Miklós Szitha. Additionally, Eduardo Grau’s work, which is so beautiful and original, served as the foundation for me being awarded the 2024 Global Music Award for Outstanding Achievement as an Instrumentalist.
It is sincere and fair to say that I accept this recognition on behalf of all the musicians who contributed their professional excellence and artistic talent to this recording.
More importantly to me is the recognition received, posthumously, by Eduardo Grau. The Global Music Awards awarded him the 2024 Outstanding Achievement Composer Award. This recognition for the composer made our work truly special; imagine that almost twenty years after his passing, one of our composers is granted such an honor by none other than an organization like the Global Music Awards, considered the gold standard of approval for excellence in musical activity worldwide.
This international collaboration had other high-impact repercussions for Eduardo Grau and all of us. For instance, the participation of the exceptional Czech flutist Janá Jarkovská during Argentine President Javier Milei’s visit to the Czech Republic, where both he, Czech President General Petr Pavel, and Czech Prime Minister Petr Fiala received our album. It is deeply satisfying to see that through Eduardo Grau’s music, we were able to showcase the importance of cultural diplomacy for fostering better understanding between nations.
“For each album, I choose a theme that captures a facet of the composer’s work. The first album is dedicated to his waltzes and all works related to the waltz, and the second to his nocturnes and all his pieces inspired by the night.” – Fabio Banegas
You have dedicated much of your work to rediscovering and promoting the music of your mentor, José Antonio Bottiroli. What would you say are the defining characteristics of his compositional style, and what would you tell someone approaching his music for the first time about what they will find in his work?
It’s a fusionist style. If Bottiroli had been a visual artist, his work would be described as mixed media and collage, where he combines on the canvas a mix of oil—sometimes with thick, textured strokes (impasto) in vibrant colors—and another section with delicate, fine-pointillism in subtle hues, then attaching an object, like a screw. In other words, he represents, to me, a unique case that translates into music the mixed media techniques of 20th-century visual art. His work also falls into what’s known as compositional ambiguity, where the composer leaves the final interpretation of the work to the performer’s instinct. All of this makes Bottiroli’s piano music an intriguing interpretative challenge, transforming it into an extraordinarily creative medium for the performer. For listeners, approaching his work will bring surprises through these style shifts that he uses within a single piece, where each phrase or musical idea may differ in approach.
In their recent release Bottiroli: Complete Piano Works. 3 – “Elegies”, what stands out about the works included in this volume?
The third volume of Bottiroli’s complete piano works showcases the composer’s deepest side, his pain at the loss. I called it Elegies precisely because of the emotional content and inspiration behind each piece, which he dedicates to the memory of his loved ones. At the same time, it offers an overview of his compositional evolution, which intensifies with the piano in the last 20 years of his production. The program begins with one of his early piano works, Tríptico from 1972 dedicated to Mrs. Filomena De Francesco de Alessio, the mother of his best friend, the composer Nicolás Alfredo Alessio, and one of his last works, Ausencia I and Ausencia II from 1987, which evoke the loss of his brother Dr. Ernesto Bottiroli. For each album, I choose a theme that concentrates on a facet of the composer’s work: the first album is dedicated to his waltzes and all works related to the waltz, the second to his nocturnes and all works inspired by the night. This third album has a deeper, elegiac vein.
The series dedicated to Bottiroli is soon to be completed in 2025 with a fourth album, recorded with the Brno Philharmonic Orchestra under the direction of Maestro Varela. From a musical and personal perspective, how was the recording process for these last pieces?
The fourth and final album is in process, and I hope to finish recording by March 2025. This album includes the rest of Bottiroli’s solo piano works, 13 compositions, with an approximate duration of 50 minutes, plus all his chamber music with piano and for piano and orchestra, with a duration of 22 minutes.
The Grand Piano label, which is the piano music specialized label of the Naxos Group for which I am recording Bottiroli, allowed me to include all the repertoire related to the piano. On my side, I am currently recording the remaining solo piano works, and this past October 29, the renowned Czech duo Du Rêve for flute and piano, including my already friend flutist Jána Jarkovská and pianist Bohumir Stehlík, recorded a Bottiroli piece for piano and flute. In July, I recorded with the Brno Philharmonic Orchestra the work for piano and orchestra, and the Spanish piano duo Antón y Maïte, consisting of Antón Dolgov and Maïte León, recorded the works for two pianos.
As a Czech-Argentine, my maternal grandparents were Czech immigrants, and it was a dream come true to record with the oldest orchestra in the Czech Republic, the Brno City Philharmonic in the Province of Moravia, where my family came from.
As a reference in the dissemination of Argentine composers on international stages, how do you perceive the reception of works like those of Eduardo Grau and José Antonio Bottiroli abroad, and what current projects do you consider outstanding in this endeavor?
The reception has been very good, as I mentioned we have been recognized by the Global Music Awards with the album dedicated to Eduardo Grau. But the first great reception, perhaps the most important one because it catapulted these composers to the world, was from the record label that took them and represents us, the Naxos Group, and its enormous demand under its Director of Artists and Repertoire when accepting the composer and the artists. They are the ones who then take care of the marketing and measurements on social networks and platforms, which are very good. I know from Naxos that each album they release of Bottiroli generates a lot of movement on social networks and expectations. We have also been receiving high ratings from music critics recommending Bottiroli’s music in music publications. Eduardo Grau, having been born in Barcelona, received the attention of specialized criticism in Spain. An excellent review was given by the most important Spanish critic Tomás Marco in the magazine Scherzo, and a fantastic scholastic analysis by musicologist David Marín Ariza from Valencia in the magazine Codalario.
There are several outstanding projects by other musicians that have captured my attention and collaboration. One is the work of the Argentine musicologist based in Belgium, Diego Orellana, and his publication of masterpieces of Argentine academic music for the publishers Golden River Music and EuPrint in Europe. The recent and renewed impetus that the City of Buenos Aires has given to the Institute of Ethnomusicology Research of CABA (IIEt), which has brought a breath of fresh air and good disposition that it had lost, whose direction has been entrusted to the outstanding Prof. Patricio Matteri, who in addition to being an excellent person, as a personal project, is rescuing the colossal work of Juan Carlos Zorzi. I was also pleasantly surprised by the creation of the Alfredo Schiuma String Quartet, led by the great violinist Omar Randazzo, which is dedicated to promoting this great Argentine composer. Maestro Francisco Varela is now in the programming of the National Choir and plans other recordings of unpublished works by Argentine authors. Everything is very good and promising.
With the Bottiroli complete works project in its final phase, what goals or projects do you have in mind for the near future?
Of the estimated nearly five hours of music that will comprise the recording of Bottiroli’s complete piano works, I will choose a selection from each album to present in recitals, which I imagine will be in the format of a lecture-recital and multimedia. While finishing Bottiroli, I am already thinking about other composers whose music I would like to rescue and perpetuate as I did with Bottiroli and Grau with recordings under high-output labels. A nearby project is the wonderful Piano Concerto in A minor by Nicolás Alfredo Alessio (1919-1985).
