The Spanish Ministry of Culture, in collaboration with the National Institute of Performing Arts and Music, has honoured Francisco Coll with the Premios Nacionales de Música 2025 in recognition of his work as a composer. He receives the award, endowed with a 30,000 EUR prize, alongside the conductor Pablo Heras-Casado.
The jury praised Francisco Coll for his "ability to find his own voice anchored in the roots of Spanish culture, in which avant-garde and tradition come together, marked by a distinctive lyricism that has allowed him to connect with a broad audience."
Francisco Coll remarked,
I am deeply honoured to receive this award and enormously grateful to the jury for the high esteem in which they hold my work. This recognition from my home country means a great deal and I am humbled to be awarded this prize from the Ministry of Culture.
The prize reflects Coll’s growing centrality to Spanish musical life, with his works performed by all of the country’s major orchestras and ensembles in recent years, and finding champions among important Spanish musicians internationally, such as Gustavo Gimeno, Javier Perianes, and Cuarteto Casals. In 2022 Coll began a multi-season role as Artistic Partner to the Orquesta Sinfónica del Principado de Asturias, as both composer and conductor; in 2025 they premiered Lilith and in 2026 will give the Spanish premiere of Coll’s Piano Concerto for Kirill Gerstein with Thierry Fischer.
Enemigo del pueblo, Coll’s first evening-length stage work, premieres at the Palau de les Arts Reina Sofía in November 2025, before transferring to the Teatro Real in February 2026. The 80-minute work, with a text after Ibsen by Àlex Rigola, represents the first time the Palau de les Arts have commissioned an opera by a living composer, and celebrates their 20th anniversary. Valencia has special significance for Coll, as his hometown, place of his musical studies (at the Conservatory) as well as a residency from 2018-2020 with Orquesta de València, with whom he also conducted the premiere of the first version of Lilith in 2022.
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