In October and November Tito Muñoz and New European Ensemble premiere and tour Taleas oblicuas for oboe and ensemble of 14 players. Christopher Bouwman will play the solo part in a programme that includes other ensemble works by Coll and Thomas Adès. The first performance is on 30 October in Madrid at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía before subsequent concerts at Valencia’s Palau de la Música and De Nieuwe Kerk in The Hague.
The 20-minute work is cast in three movements. It begins with an insistent, angular pairing of solo oboe and drum kit, to which the other instrumentalists try to fit their own music. Coll’s title evokes the isorhythms underpinning the work, which with other members of the ensemble dovetail and diverge, as oboe and percussion lead the dance. Moments of lyrical stillness sit atop focused, intense activity in the form of flutter-tonguing and string tremolos, interrupted by sudden percussive stabs. Though the piece sees several motifs and gestures return across its unbroken span, it is characterised by a gamut of unpredictable and energetic transformations.
Taleas oblicuas was commissioned by New European Ensemble. They also tour Coll’s Piedras and Liquid Symmetries. Piedras (2009/10) received its world premiere from Thomas Adès and the LA Philharmonic New Music Group in 2011. The title of the 13-minute work means ‘stones’ (which in fact appear among the percussion). Coll says of the work: “Perhaps the most evident thing when one hears the piece is the consistent use of extreme sonorities…[it] continues my interest in blending the stable with the unstable to create a peculiar tension.” Liquid Symmetries (2013), drawing on the ideas of sociologist Zygmunt Bauman, bases its sound language upon a principle of permanent uncertainty. Through a succession of truncated beginnings and endings the 13-minute work takes on a ‘liquid’ structure, in which everything changes. The tour programme also includes Thomas Adès’ Chamber Symphony (1990).
October also sees Coll conduct the Orquesta Sinfónica de Castilla y León in music by Ravel, Tchaikovsky, Rodrigo, and Grieg - in February 2024 they give the Spanish premiere of Coll’s 12-minute orchestration of Manuel de Falla’s Fantasia Baetica with Vasily Petrenko. On 31 October the Kuss Quartett give the world premiere of Coll’s String Quartet - Códices at Stadtcasino Basel. A further performance follows in November at Kloster Wennigsen and then in spring 2024 at the Concertgebouw and Berlin Konzerthaus.