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On 29 October Francisco Coll’s Piano Quintet ‘Las Lógicas Exquisitas’ premiered at the Centre Cultural la Beneficència, València. It was be performed by Juan Luis Gimeno (violin), Santiago Juan (violin), David Fons (viola), David Apellániz (cello) and Luis Fernando Pérez (piano). It was commissioned for the Iturbi International Piano Festival by Diputació de València.

The 7 ½ minute piece is cast in two movements which proceed without a break. The first movement is a vigorous Rondo, the music teeming with sharply-articulated accents and sudden dynamic contrasts. An Air follows, initially ethereal and growing in lyrical intensity. In this overarching structure, whose titles evoke the contrasting forms of a Baroque suite, the rhythmic and percussive tensions of the first movement loosen into the more sustained and diaphanous second.

Writing for Scherzo, Jesús Castañer commented of the piece,

The first movement of Coll's work was a kind of oblique and grotesque dance. Its design, rhythmically disfigured until it was almost lost in the strings, was nevertheless relatively easy to follow on the piano. Here the Valencian once again demonstrated his talent as an illusionist: it was not clear whether he was evoking a waltz, a Classical minuet or the sound of a synthesizer in a nightclub. It was probably everything at the same time.

His most recent works entail a deeper and more introspective approach towards things; each time he seems to give more space to intimacy, and with it his music is gaining in clarity.

If before many of his works seemed to remain 'hot', his current music seems, on the contrary, much more defined, the result of an acquired technical, intellectual and personal maturity. A fundamental role has undoubtedly been played in this, without a doubt, by his approach to traditional forms, particularly in chamber formats…The Piano Quintet has been but one more example of this trend. I am curious to see how this change will impact the of his work (symphonic, operatic, etc.) in years to come. So far, this has been an 'exquisite' preliminary.

This is Coll’s second commission from Iturbi. He has recently completed Madre for the 22^nd International Iturbi Piano Competition, which takes place from 31 May to 9 June 2023. Coll’s 7-minute work for solo piano will be performed by all entrants reaching the second round of the contest.

The Piano Quintet follows another chamber work for piano and strings premiered this year. In January 2022 Trio Isimsiz gave the first performance of his Piano Trio in Madrid, with the UK premiere at the Aldeburgh Festival in June.