Mauricio Sotelo is today one of Spain’s most prominent and internationally recognized composers. The première of his opera El Público, a work commissioned by Gerard Mortier for Madrid’s Teatro Real, at the Teatro Real itself in February 2015, was met with critical acclaim by the international press and an enthusiastic reception by the audience. Sotelo studied composition with Francis Burt at the University of Music in Vienna, graduating with distinction as winner of the “extraordinary prize” (Diplom mit Auszeichnung) in 1987. He also studied electroacoustic music with Dieter Kaufmann and conducting with Karl Österreicher. He was further coached by Luigi Nono, a composer whose thinking continues to be an important source of inspiration for his work. Mauricio’s works have been performed by many different orchestras and ensembles including the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, the Bamberg Symphony, the SWR Symphony Orchestra, the Vienna RSO Symphony Orchestra, the German Radio Philharmonic Orchestra, the National Orchestra of Spain, the Orquesta Sinfónica de Galicia, Orquesta Ciudad de Granada, St Paul Chamber Orchestra, Stuttgarter Kammerorchester, Klangforum Wien, Artemis Quartett, Cuarteto Casals, Gringolts Quartet, Cuarteto Cosmos and Quatuor Diotima, as well as by soloists including Nicholas Hodges, Juan Carlos Garvayo, Benjamin Schmid, Ilya Gringolts, Patricia Kopatchinskaja or Tabea Zimmermann, to name but a few. His music has been published since 1991 in the Universal Edition catalogue together with works by Bartók, Mahler, Schoenberg, Berg, Webern and Pierre Boulez. Since 2010, Mauricio has been professor of composition at the Escola Superior de Música de Catalunya (ESMUC), as well as a guest lecturer at institutions in Austria, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United States.
Mauricio Sotelo is the creator of the so-called "spectral flamenco" or "alter flamenco" and many of the most significant flamenco artists have been collaborating for more than 30 years in his compositions, such as Enrique Morente, Carmen Linares, Marina Heredia, Esperanza Fernández, Miguel Poveda, Pitingo, Alba Carmona, Alba Guerrero, the flamenco dancers Ruben Olmo and 'La Moneta ', the percussionist Agustín Diassera, the guitarist Juan Manuel Cañizares and throughout all these last years especially the cantaor Arcángel.
• 1986: First Prize for Composition of the Young National Orchestra of Spain (JONDE)
• 1989: First Prize for Composition of the General Society of Authors of Spain (SGAE)
• 1991: Prize of Composition (Förderpreis) of the City of Vienna
• 1992: Prize of Composition of the WDR / City of Cologne Forum Junger Komponisten
• 1996: Opera Prize of the Hamburg Körber Foundation for his work BRUNO
• 1997: Composers' Prize of the Ernst von Siemens Foundation
• 1999: Daniel Montorio Prize for the best stage music for his chamber opera De Amore
• 2000: First Prize for Musical Composition of the International Reina Sofía Prize
• 2001: Spanish National Music Prize
• 2011–12: Mauricio Sotelo is the first Spanish composer to be invited as a Composer in Residence at the prestigious Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin / Institute for Advanced Studies in Berlin
• 2018: GamoMusica Award from the city of Florence/Italy for his entire career
• 2021–22: Composer in Residence of the Centro Nacional de Difusión Musical (CNDM)
• 2022: Composer in Residence at the 71 Festival Internacional de Música y Danza de Granada 2022
"I know, appreciate and admire Mauricio Sotelo as an internationally recognized composer with a very personal style. He is endowed with a brilliant and sovereign metier in all compositional genres and a universal art-philosophical background. I've been experiencing him since I've known him, with all his structuralist character, as it is ensured not least by his training with Luigi Nono, at the same time stylistically open, definitely not denying his Iberian landscape roots and instead constantly introducing them imaginatively."
When a few years ago I met Mauricio Sotelo, he was just about to familiarize himself with Liszt's Sonata. This not only led to a friendship but also induced the idea of writing a work that would relate both to the Sonata and to our encounter. In the last decades, a number of musical works have emerged that are composed interpretations of older ones. We can regard them as a counter-position to historicising performances that have established themselves in many concert halls. According to Hans Zender, himself a contributor to this new species, the composer "is creator. But he is these days also an interpreter of the past to which he relates - whether seeking to surmount it, or to carry on." Sotelo's work is a confrontation of this kind, an argument dealing with the shape and the material of Liszt's Sonata that has resulted in something personal and spectacular.
Mauricio Sotelo's music is one of the most intense illuminations that, in the air of sounds, can find the semantics of words. I heard about Mauricio from one of the greatest composers of our time, Luigi Nono, who I met in 1988 at the Institut for Advanced Study in Berlin. Luigi was the one who asked me if I knew a young Spanish composer about whom, I confess, knew nothing about. Since then, the admiration I felt for Nono is linked to the person and music of Mauricio. The work of two disappeared friends [Luigi Nono and José Ángel Valente] grows, lasts, illuminates and survives in the prodigious sound universe of Mauricio Sotelo.
Your music shows that twentieth-century anti-tonal academic standards can be shattered, just as the atonal music of the last century shattered nineteenth-century tonal norms. Few operas are successful because there is an insurmountable contradiction between the demands of singing and the straitjacket of norms of the second half of the twentieth century. You use "flamenco" as a crutch to not cut your music from any popular roots nor any expressive cues for the listener. There are other ways with other contemporary composers whom I admire when they are not obsessed with experimentalist temptations and when they remain in love with the voice (there are few) and faithful to the expressive vocation of the "opera" genre. So I rarely enjoy contemporary operas because, as I once replied to another journalist, "I am not interested in 'interesting' music." I was recently moved by an opera by George Benjamin, and more recently by your opera "El Público".
"I know, appreciate and admire Mauricio Sotelo as an internationally recognized composer with a very personal style. He is endowed with a brilliant and sovereign metier in all compositional genres and a universal art-philosophical background. I've been experiencing him since I've known him, with all his structuralist character, as it is ensured not least by his training with Luigi Nono, at the same time stylistically open, definitely not denying his Iberian landscape roots and instead constantly introducing them imaginatively."
When a few years ago I met Mauricio Sotelo, he was just about to familiarize himself with Liszt's Sonata. This not only led to a friendship but also induced the idea of writing a work that would relate both to the Sonata and to our encounter. In the last decades, a number of musical works have emerged that are composed interpretations of older ones. We can regard them as a counter-position to historicising performances that have established themselves in many concert halls. According to Hans Zender, himself a contributor to this new species, the composer "is creator. But he is these days also an interpreter of the past to which he relates - whether seeking to surmount it, or to carry on." Sotelo's work is a confrontation of this kind, an argument dealing with the shape and the material of Liszt's Sonata that has resulted in something personal and spectacular.
Your music shows that twentieth-century anti-tonal academic standards can be shattered, just as the atonal music of the last century shattered nineteenth-century tonal norms. Few operas are successful because there is an insurmountable contradiction between the demands of singing and the straitjacket of standards of the second half of the twentieth century. You use flamenco as a crutch to not cut your music from any popular roots nor any expressive cues for the listener. There are other ways with other contemporary composers whom I admire when they are not obsessed with experimentalist temptations and when they remain in love with the voice (there are few) and faithful to the expressive vocation of the "opera" genre. So I rarely enjoy contemporary operas because, as I once replied to another journalist, "I am not interested in 'interesting' music." I was recently moved by an opera by George Benjamin, and more recently by your opera "El Público".