Roberto González-Monjas

Conductor, Violin

Music Director – Iberacademy Orchestra
Chief Conductor Designate – Musikkollegium Winterthur (from 2021-22)
Chief Conductor and Artistic Advisor – Dalasinfoniettan

Biography

Highly sought-after as a conductor and violinist, Roberto González-Monjas is rapidly making a mark on the international scene. A natural musical leader with strong vision and clarity, Roberto possesses a unique mixture of remarkable personal charisma, an abundance of energy, enthusiasm and fierce intelligence. Roberto is Chief Conductor and Artistic Advisor of Dalasinfoniettan and Chief Conductor Designate of Musikkollegium Winterthur (from 2021/22). The recent appointment in Winterthur is a recognition of Roberto’s longstanding and fruitful collaboration with the orchestra as an eclectic musician, featuring as a conductor, play-director, chamber musician and soloist. Most recently, Roberto and the Musikkollegium Winterthur undertook a tour of Asia with the clarinettist Andreas Ottensamer. As a passionate champion of the music of living composers, Roberto’s close association with composer Richard Dubugnon has resulted in a new Violin Concerto, which Roberto premiered in May 2018 with the Musikkollegium Winterthur.

Recent guest conducting debuts which led to immediate re-invitations and significant future debuts include collaborations with Mozarteumorchester Salzburg and Camerata Salzburg; Orchestre National de Belgique, Bordeaux Aquitaine, d’Île de France; Orquesta Sinfónica de Galicia and Castilla y Leon; Luxembourg, Hong Kong and Malaysian Philharmonic among many others.

A regular guest violinist at festivals such as Verbier and Lockenhaus, Roberto frequently collaborates with singers and instrumentalists including Ian Bostridge, Yuja Wang, Janine Jansen, Alexander Lonquich, Lisa Batiashvili, Fazil Say, Reinhard Goebel, Thomas Quasthoff, András Schiff and Kit Armstrong. Across the 20/21 season, Roberto collaborates with the Berliner Barock Solisten with whom, under the baton of Reinhard Goebel, he features at the Lucerne and Grafenegg Festivals.

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Passionate and dedicated to education and nurturing new generations of talented musicians, Roberto co-founded Iberacademy (Ibero-American Orchestral Academy) together with conductor Alejandro Posada. This institution aims at creating an efficient and sustainable model of musical education in Latin America, focusing on vulnerable segments of the population and supporting highly talented young musicians. While based in Medellín (Colombia), it also operates in Bolivia, Perú, Chile and Cuba, providing its students with life-changing opportunities. Most recently Roberto embarked on a European tour with the Iberacademy Orchestra and star tenor Rolando Villazón, with concerts at the Lucerne Easter Festival and the Mozarteum Stiftung in Salzburg. Roberto also serves as a violin professor at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama and regularly mentors and conducts the Guildhall School Chamber and Symphony Orchestras at the Barbican Hall in London.

With an impressively eclectic and wide-ranging repertoire, Roberto’s variety of styles and interests is also displayed in his recent recording debut featuring Serenades by W. A. Mozart and Othmar Schoeck, released on Claves Records. Gramophone Magazine wrote: In all its 64 minutes’ worth of music, saved from outstaying its welcome by Mozart’s ever-questing ear for an effect, among the most piquant perhaps being the pizzicato passage towards the end of the Andante. It’s played admirably here, under the direction of the well-traveled Roberto González-Monjas. A frequent collaborator of Berlin Baroque Soloists, Roberto contributed as a soloist to their Sony Classical release of Bach’s Brandenburg Concerti conducted by Reinhard Goebel.

Roberto served as concertmaster of the Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia for six years, and is currently in his last season as the leader of the Musikkollegium Winterthur. He plays a 1710 Giuseppe Guarnieri ‘filius Andreae’ violin kindly loaned to him by five Winterthur families and the Rychenberg Stiftung.

Watch Roberto González-Monjas’s Lahti Symphony Orchestra Conducting Debut 18 March

Mar 16, 2021

Roberto González-Monjas will make his Lahti Symphony Orchestra conducting debut on 18 March. The concert, featuring tenor Topi Lehtipuu, will be streamed on the Orchestra’s YouTube channel from 19:00 EEST. The programme includes Kraus’ Symphonie funèbre; Bach’s...

Watch Roberto González-Monjas’ Debut with Orchestre national d’Île-de-France on 13 February

Feb 2, 2021

Roberto González-Monjas will make his debut with Orchestre national d'Île-de-France on Friday, 5th February. He will both conduct the orchestra and perform as the evening’s soloist on Hartmann’s Concerto Funèbre pour Violin. The programme also includes Kraus’...

Roberto González-Monjas Makes Belgian National Orchestra Debut on 25 – 27 September

Sep 23, 2020

Roberto González-Monjas will make his debut, and Belgian conducting debut, with the Belgian National Orchestra in five concerts between 25 – 27 September. He will conduct Robert Schumann’s Concerto for Cello and Orchestra in A minor, Op. 129, with soloist Victor...

Reviews

“Roberto González-Monjas did it, because he is in a great moment of artistic maturity that allows him to mold a brutal “physical” part (third movement, for example) that also requires absolute devotion to transmit that urban and street paroxysm. The high technical qualities of González-Monjas and especially his compromised attitude are fundamental in this concert, also regarding the delicacy of the Adieu, the care at the time of sewing harmonics and understanding with an orchestral part that has much to express.”

Samuel González Casado

Mundo Clasico

“In all it’s 64 minutes’ worth of music, saved from outstaying its welcome by Mozart’s ever-questing ear for an effect, among the most piquant perhaps being the pizzicato passage towards the end of the Andante. It’s played admirably here, under the direction of the well-travelled Roberto González-Monjas”

David Threasher

Gramophone

More Reviews

“He is the comet at the Winterthur classical sky: Roberto Gonzalez-Monjas…The famous Haffner Serenade KV 250 by Mozart and the Serenade op. 1 by Othmar Schoeck are included, with Gonzalez-Monjas acting as both conductor and solo violinist. It is amazing how easy and accident-proof the orchestra is now able to play… Mozart has composed movements two to four as a veritable violin concerto full of songfulness and virtuosity, a feast for the violinist Gonzalez-Monjas. With his filigree style and his wonderfully singing violin sound, he dominates the Serenade over long distances…” – Schewizer Musikzeitung, Verena Naegele, July 2018 (CD review)

“Under the baton of the first concertmaster Roberto González-Monjas, the orchestra played with a sonorous tone, and the Ensemble Corund sang with naturally simple vocals. In addition, Gonzalez Monjas built the special Requiem form very organic. The dramaturgy was poignant, the short, violent crescendos unfolding with powerful force.” – Der Landbote, Sibylle Ehrismann, March 2018

“González-Monjas was above all a versatile interpreter, capable of making the most of the tensions that occur in the work [Salonen Violin Concerto ] and recreate in moments of calm. …The soloist left an unbeatable tympanic atmosphere in Pulse I, while in Pulse II it seemed to take the spectator…to an atmosphere of great energy. When he arrived at Adieu, González-Monjas, achieved a melancholy air, without missing the powerful contrasts well provided by the orchestra, and let the sound fade from the acute. The violinist was inexhaustible, in a work that gives no respite, when it comes to delving into the resources that he provided to make them patent. “ – Agustín Achúcarro, Codalario.com, 19 February 2018

“At times when the orchestra launches in full sail, knows how to dose more collected, such as the evocation of the hero’s companion, whose typically feminine intemperance, the fickleness (so feared by men in a woman), are represented by a violin solo with a virtuosistically voluble character, beautifully interpreted by Roberto González-Monjas.” – Stefano Ceccarelli, L’Ape musicale, 25 January 2018

“With verve, verve and enthusiasm as well as excellent technical skills, the instrumentalists present a stringent, sophisticated interpretation of the two works…Roberto Gonzales-Monjas…serves his soli with technically playful lightness and classical interpretation.” – Pizzicato, October 2017