Scores and parts in preparation

Ciudad sin sueño (2021-22)
fantasia for piano and orchestra

I.     Desplantes –
II.    Duende –
III.   Orgía

Ciudad sin sueño (‘City That Does Not Sleep’) shares its name with a poem from the third section of Federico García Lorca’s Poet in New York. Much of its musical material derives from Spanish Flamenco. Like Manuel de Falla’s Noches en los jardines de España this 20-minute work is almost – but not quite – a concerto. Tracing one arc over its three parts, it behaves more like a fantasia: developing its material freely, in a manner that is ostentatious, intense and almost improvisatory.

A rich, exotic and unique musical style born out of Spain’s nature as a crossroads of cultures, Flamenco is something I feel born into. In this work I dive into my inheritance, reworking traditional material as a sculptor moulds clay. Filtered through my own imagination, these familiar tropes become more like hallucinations.

‘Desplantes’, the first part, takes its name and character from some of Flamenco’s signature gestures; rude, flamboyant movements imbued with a particular kind of effrontery.

"All that has dark sound has duende", wrote Lorca, "that mysterious power that everyone feels but no philosopher can explain." El duende – the ineffable, untranslatable, spirit of earthiness, authenticity, possession…

In the last part, ‘Orgía’, the music takes on a festive character. It moves erratically through angular and repetitive rhythms in a kind of excessive spiral, in which the soloist becomes the leader of the group.

I wrote Ciudad sin sueño at the invitation of Javier Perianes – a wonderful champion of and ambassador for Spanish music. It is dedicated to him in the form of a musical portrait.

Francisco Coll