Francisco Coll and Javier Perianes have more duende than ‘Il trovatore’ in Les Arts | Culture

“Olé! “That has a duende!” exclaimed the gypsy dancer La Malena after listening to the pianist Alexander Brailowsky interpret Bach. This is one of the examples that he uses to define this “hidden spirit of painful Spain”, in Leprechaun theory and game. The composer (Valencia, 38 years old) has found, in this 1933 conference, the words to explain the second movement of his work City without sleep (2022): “’Everything that has black sounds has duende,’ Lorca wrote, ‘that mysterious power that everyone feels and that no philosopher explains.’ The elf“, the ineffable, untranslatable spirit of earthliness, of authenticity, of possession…”.

This fantasy for piano and orchestra, which takes its title from one of the poems included in , premiered in London last February. Now, he has had his first Spanish, last Friday, December 20, at the Palau de les Arts in Valencia within the series Symphonic of the Valencian Community Orchestra. We are talking about a masterpiece that confirms Coll not only as . It is a score in which the sharp and expressive sound language, which he had in his symphony, is already perfectly recognizable. Mural (2015) one of its first milestones.

He begins by connecting his kaleidoscopic vision of flamenco with surrealism in Lunges. And we listen to those live iguanas that bite men who do not dream, as in Lorca’s poem. But those tense and angular sonorities advance fluidly in a dialogue where the soloist’s prominence continues to grow. In fact, the piano takes over the central movement, Elf-Nanaand unfolds all its expressive magic in a beautiful lullaby accompanied by the sound of a suspended cymbal. A melody that Coll played on the piano to put his two children to sleep and that thrilled the public with the suspension of its syncopations.

But suddenly the brutal Orgy end. The sharp rhythms of flamenco now intensify with true quejíos that drive the leadership of the piano. And we hear the Lorca insistence of “No one sleeps in the world. Nobody, nobody.” The public received Coll’s new composition with enthusiasm, which will soon be joined by two important absolute premieres in Spain: , and his first large-format opera, enemy of the peoplebased on a libretto in Spanish by Àlex Rigola, which can be seen next season at Les Arts and at the Teatro Real under the direction of the composer.

The architect of the emotion of the central movement of City without sleep was (Nerva, Huelva, 46 years old), to whom it is dedicated. In fact, the composition is a portrait of the Huelva pianist that evokes Nights in the gardens of Spainby Falla, taking advantage of its proverbial musicality. Perianes continued, in the second half, with an excellent interpretation of the Piano Concerto in Gby Maurice Ravel, who brilliantly exploited the Basque aroma of the beginning and the jazzy air of the rag-time end. But he impressed in the slow movement waltz with an exciting and masterful performance that soared supported by the orchestral accompaniment with an exquisite English horn solo. Perianes culminated his performance with a vaporous and fluid Debussy as a tip: prelude no. 8 of the first book, titled The girl with flaxen hair. And these days in the incomparable setting of the Real Alcázar of Seville.

The third protagonist of the concert was the American director (New York, 45 years old) who . Bad news in view of the level reached under his mandate and the consolidation of his attractive symphonic cycle. We are talking about what remains the best Spanish orchestra whose origins were eloquently summarized in 2009 by Agustí Fancelli as “”.

It was enough to listen to the beginning of the concert, with the symphonic poem The cursed hunterby César Franck, to convince yourself of the power and ductility of its members in such a tense and narrative score. Gaffigan wrapped his performance in an ideal arc from the hunter’s initial arrogance to his final demon-ravaged sinking. But his ability to breathe fantasy and color into Ravel’s staves emerged in the end with an admirable The Waltz. In fact, Gaffigan himself commented on his surprise when discovering, in an antique shop in the capital of Turia, the program of a concert conducted by Ravel himself in Valencia that ended precisely with The Waltz. .

But the Valencian Community Orchestra is, above all, a first-class operatic symphonic ensemble. He demonstrated it, once again, in the performance last Thursday, December 19, under the firm and incisive direction of . This replacement of the production of Àlex Ollé, of The troubadour by Giuseppe Verdi, which premiered in Amsterdam 10 years ago and has passed through Paris and Barcelona, ​​has allowed us to return to normality after the Dana tragedy. In any case, the performance did not stand out for notable vocal flashes.

The famous sentence that The troubadour precise of “the four best singers in the world”, attributed equally to the conductor Arturo Toscanini and the tenor Enrico Caruso, shows the difficulty of casting this opera. The only singer who came close to excellence was mezzo Russian, in a solid role as Azucena, although she began Stride the vampire! a little misplaced. She was also the only one who made her tormented and vengeful character believable. On the contrary, the Ukrainian soprano Olga Maslova, in the role of Leonora, started with an irregular cavatina, although she improved at the end with the beautiful Of love on rosy wings.

The Italian tenor Antonio Poli was also an uneven Manrico with some flashes of musicality in his aria Ah yes, my dear!although with problems in the treble that hindered the famous cabaletta Of that pyrewhere he stopped singing in the tight of the chorus to reach the famous high C that Verdi never wrote. Nor did the American baritone Lucas Meachem stand out as Conte di Luna, who replaced in the extremes to Artur Ruciński and has combined . Good performance by the Cor de la Generalitat Valenciana and, among the supporting cast, the bass Adolfo Corrado as Ferrando was better than the soprano Holly Brown as Inés.

The war staging transfers the action to the First World War without achieving a notable theatrical contribution. The main novelty is in the scenic versatility provided by Alfons Flores’s scenography, with those rectangular blocks that sink and rise, seasoned by the outstanding lighting by Urs Schönebaum. However, this predominance of the scenery hinders scenic movement and also visibility due to its excessive darkness. In short, a Verdian production with less elf than the symphonic concert that can be seen again today, Saturday, December 21, .