18-11-1999
Conductor is destined for high honours

Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra.
Gloucestershire Echo

The brilliant young Spanish conductor Pablo Gonzalez took over this concert at short notice and inmediately won favour with the discriminating audience.
His beautifully controlled Prelude and Liebestod from Tristan and Isolde brought out the subtleties of Wagner's orchestration and rendered the climaxes all the more powerful and passionate.
Afterwards he wove the wit and elegance of the late 18th century into hs finely judged performance of  Beethoven's First Symphony concluding with a fiesta-like finale.
In Rimsky-Korsakov's Capriccio Espagnol, Señor González was in his element. This was a thrilling evocation of the spirit pf Spain with its dances and sensuous melodies. You could almost feel the noon sun blazing down on the parched plains at siesta-time.
The insistent, constant rhythm of Ravel's Bolero can become boring but there was not a hint of tedium in this carefully built up interpretation.
[...] The gilt on the gingerbread came with a generous encore, the flamboyant conclusion to Stravinsky's Firebird.
The BSO have never sounded better and in Pablo Gonzalez theu have an exciting talent who is destined for the highest musical honours.

                                                                                                                                              Roger Jones