On 22 March Francisco Coll makes his conducting debut with the BBC Symphony Orchestra in a concert at Maida Vale Studios, giving the UK premieres of his Aqua Cinerea (2005; rev. 2019) and Hímnica (2020), alongside music by Manuel de Falla and Jesús Guridi.
Hímnica received its world premiere at the KKL Lucerne in 2021, conducted by James Gaffigan. The 10½-minute work was the first piece Coll wrote for forces of its size – the same forces as used in Robert Schumann's 4th Symphony. He describes the piece as a “a kind of passacaglia, or chaconne, in which a hymnic theme develops in different ways within one adagio tempo”. He continues,
The work contains elements of grotesque humour – traces of a dream-like waltz, for example – but I did not intend to create a pessimistic work. Rather, I hope that it contains beauty and hope. Hímnica begins and ends ‘lontanissimo’, as if its span could be a fragment of something larger – or perhaps even something eternal.
In August 2022 Coll conducted the Finnish premiere of the piece at the Fiskars Summer Festival; the same month it received two performances from Gustavo Gimeno and the Concertgebouworkest Young at the Concertgebouw and Elbphilharmonie.
Aqua Cinerea, Coll’s Op.1, offers a foretaste of an explosive and unsettling compositional imagination: the work’s ambiguously poetic title, evoking ash-grey water or perhaps the image of ash falling as rain, is the composer’s own creation. Many of the characteristics now associated with Coll’s mature style – a tendency to extremes, fluidity of formal thinking, sudden moments of rhythmic excitement, brooding sensuality – are anticipated in its concentrated 10-minute span; its treatment of musical line reflects his strong ongoing preoccupation with the great polyphonic composers of the renaissance.
The BBC Symphony Orchestra will be the eighth orchestra to perform the piece, whose exponents have included the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra, the LA Philharmonic, Toronto Symphony Orchestra, and Orquesta Sinfónica del Principado de Asturias; it was recorded in 2021 by Gustavo Gimeno and the Orchestre Philharmonique du Luxembourg alongside Coll’s Violin Concerto, Hidd’n Blue, Mural and Four Iberian Miniatures.
Coll is currently Artistic Partner with Orquesta Sinfónica del Principado de Asturias across three seasons, which sees him conduct repertoire including Berio, Mussorgsky, Stravinsky and de Falla, alongside his own music. As conductor he has recently enjoyed successful debuts with Kammerorchester Basel, Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France and Orchestre Philharmonique du Luxembourg, and the Orquesta Sinfónica de Castilla y León; he also conducted Camerata Bern on the award-winning recording of his double concerto Les Plaisirs Illuminés with Patricia Kopatchinskaja and Sol Gabetta. He is represented worldwide by Askonas Holt.