Madrid surrenders to the music of Francisco Coll | Culture

“Nowadays, either you are eclectic or you are nothing,” he snapped at a Princeton student regarding contemporary composition. The American musicologist evoked that phrase in 1999, , to explain his admiration for the British composer, who, at barely 28 years old—as he maintained—had come “to the rescue of modernism” with his first opera, Powder Her Faceand with the orchestral work Asyla.

Taruskin defined it as “surrealist”, a label intended to place it both outside of post-avant-garde academicism and outside of any neoconservative temptation. This is a composer who works with recognizable sound materials, which he deforms from within and makes strange without completely breaking his identity. The result is music with immediate impact, capable of seducing on the first listen and, at the same time, revealing meticulous technical sophistication.

These comments would serve today to portray his only disciple, the Spaniard (Valencia, 41 years old). We confirmed this on February 11 and 12 with the first monograph dedicated to his music, included by the Juan March Foundation in its consolidated Aula de (Re)premieres series, and with the first performance at the Teatro Real of his opera enemy of the people.

If the March monograph opened with the absolute premiere of Sefarada suite for guitar in which he distorts several Sephardic melodies from his attractive sound universe, the opera begins with a bullfighting pasodoble in asymmetrical time and a shrill orchestra that seems about to stumble. His music, as attractive as it is complex—as is the case with his paintings—is not only heard: it is experienced on a physical and emotional level.

The comparison with Kiefer is not gratuitous. Coll also paints and recognizes the great German neo-expressionist among his references. The Valencian composer uses pictorial creation as a complement to his scores and creates a painting for each of them, which allows him to embody in a unique way the inter-artistic phenomenon associated with modernism.

Therein lies, in fact, its main difference with Adès. In Coll, the deformation of the material responds more to an expressive intensity with Mediterranean roots: something more visceral and less ironic than in the English composer. His way of making the everyday disturbing leads to a sensory vertigo, with a profusion of syncopated melodies and densely instrumented explosive gestures that contrast with lyrical oases where time seems to stop.

That ability to articulate avant-garde and tradition with one’s own voice without giving up the connection with the public has been worth it. The award has also recognized the wide international dissemination of his work, in areas that, unfortunately, no other contemporary Spanish composer has access to at this time. Thus, your piano concerto It will be released next month.

Coll was unable to be present at this Madrid double showcase due to a health problem that forced him to rest. In January he announced that he had to retire from the musical direction of his opera at the Teatro Real and hand over the baton to the Swedish director Christian Karlsen, a firm defender of his music and specialized in contemporary repertoire.

Karlsen ensured remarkable fluidity in the 80 non-stop minutes of the opera, extreme contrasts and found an effective balance between orchestra and voices. He did not manage, however, to fully transfer the warmth that the composer himself gave in Valencia to the most lyrical passages. The asymmetrical pasodoble that opens the opera sounded in Madrid at a higher speed and without that disturbing air of festive charanga that it had at its premiere, although it was well integrated as the main leitmotif of the opera, which portrays moral and political corruption.

The script of , based on the play by Henrik Ibsen, where a doctor is disowned for denouncing the pollution of his town’s prosperous spa, compresses the original plot practically without giving up any of its elements. The result results in simplifications and schematisms that are not very compatible with an opera that barely allows room for lyrical expansion. The action focuses on five characters—the Doctor, his brother the Mayor, his daughter Petra, the newspaper editor Mario and the businesswoman Marta—without a precise spatial or temporal location. Especially problematic is the Doctor’s dramatic arc, whose transition from idealism to authoritarianism lacks a convincing evolution.

Rigola also signs the stage direction, transferred to the present day and set on a sunny beach, with scenery and costumes by Patricia Albizu, video by Álvaro Luna and lighting by Carlos Marquerie, which evolves towards increasingly gray, reddish and dark tones as the action progresses.

The most solid thing about the opera is Coll’s score, which alternates brief orchestral interludes of great refinement with vocal writing that combines a tense and varied recitative with punctual lyrical veins. In Madrid it was maintained, although the group sounded more settled. The American soprano stood out again as Petra, with coloraturas of great power and special musicality in the arioso Love is life, pleasure and pain. The Murcian baritone found greater warmth as Doctor, despite the demanding writing in the high register.

The tenor from Granada was more confident as Alcalde and solved with solvency a tessitura that reaches the high F natural. They also offered more consistent features mezzo-soprano Hispano-British like Marta and the Aragonese baritone like Mario. The ensemble shone, along with the Main Choir of the Teatro Real, in the citizen assembly scene of the second act, resolved with overflowing musical imagination.

The final applause at Real had a similar echo the day before at the Juan March Foundation. There, a monographic program of about 90 minutes without pause was presented, made up of eight compositions written between 2014 and 2025. The itinerary began with the absolute premiere of Sefaradperformed by the Swedish guitarist Jacob Kellermann, who underlined the expressive intimacy, flamenco tension and oriental perfume of the work. The score includes tuning changes (detuning) and, in the last section titled She isthe use of a slide or thimble on the fourth finger, which introduces subtle glides or glisndi.

He continued Four Iberian miniatures for violin and piano, where the Ukrainian violinist Roman Kholmatov – associate concertmaster of the Valencian Community Orchestra – explored the grotesque and racial component of a writing that deforms what is Spanish without making it unrecognizable. Kholmatov also stood out alone in Hyperlude IVwhere Bachian inspiration is transformed through the hypermodernity of . The philosophical background reappears in Rhizomedialogue without hierarchies between violin and cello, shared with the Catalan cellist Sara Chordà.

The Valencian pianist Hilario Segovia took on the keyboard pieces, in addition to his participation in Four Iberian miniatures. He excelled in Madresound evocation of the homonymous painting by , written in 2022 within a series dedicated to Spanish painters, to which it also belongs Meat Balltribute to . Segovia began his intervention as a soloist with Three pieces based on “Turia” (2020), where the old Valencian riverbed becomes a soundscape with gardens, fountains and even an opera house.

The closure corresponded to “Codices” string quartet (2022), performed by 4Sonora. The work alternates the folkloric and the mystical: it opens with a movement inspired by a Ukrainian tango and includes another that evokes the quejío of cante jondo. The two movements titled Canto and, above all, the last one.

This starts with the final chord of the Five movements for string quartet, op. 5from , transformed into an expressive chorale that leads to a Ugaritic melody dated around 1400 BC. C., considered the oldest recorded by humanity. The music progressively fades into silence as the cello relaxes its fourth string and strikes the tailpiece without an audible sound. An ending of extreme concentrated tension that eloquently summarizes the physical and emotional impact that his music provokes.