Succulent Portrait: Francisco Coll and the New European Ensemble Shine in CNDM Concert

The second concert of the current season of the National Center for Musical Diffusion (CNDM) In its contemporary music section, it has provided a succulent portrait of the Valencian composer Francisco Coll by the Dutch group New European Ensemble. The concert will be repeated on November 2 in Valencia and on November 5 in The Hague. This already speaks clearly of the specific weight that this still young Spanish creator born in 1985 has achieved.

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The portrait included three of his works, one of them, Taleas obliques, world premiere. Coll’s three works were intertwined by a piece by one of the most celebrated composers of the Netherlands, Michel van der Aa (1970) and one of the greats of the 20th century, the American Elliott Carter (1908-2012).

The concert could have several lines of coherence, for example, four of the five pieces heard correspond to two current creators who are at the best moment of their influence on the current panorama of European composition; Another factor of coherence could be found in the instrumental organic of the New European Ensemble, I will now refer to it; and perhaps there would be another that is usually hidden so as not to stain the immaculate performance of a concert by current creators: the three names are included in the British publishing house Faber Music. Business is business and you don’t have to throw your hands up either, but that’s how things are.

But, let’s return to the organic instrumental of the group. They are announced as 15 instrumentalists, excellent, by the way, without exception. In their Madrid presentation they have appeared with 17, five strings, eight winds, two percussionists, a harp and a keyboard. It is curious that this arrangement almost completely coincides with the instrumental template of the opera La Regent by Marisa Manchado, recently presented at El Matadero (in the case of Manchado there is a sax and in the New, a bass clarinet). There is nothing strange about the coincidence, it is what is normally understood as a skeleton orchestra. In the CNDM concert, four of the five works move between fifteen and seventeen musicians. Only Van der Aa’s piece drops below 12. In short, the sounds tend to be closer, even in Carter’s, which is quite far removed aesthetically and sonically from the current ones, even though the American’s work, Asko concertó, was premiered in the 2000.

A moment from the performance of the New European Ensemble.RAFA_MARTIN

It seems normal that the weight of the concert’s attention goes in the direction of the Valencian musician living in Switzerland after an intense British season. The composition of the program also helps to focus attention, Coll’s pieces are in the order of first, third and fifth, with the intercalation of the two mentioned. The result is to achieve a very acceptable idea of ​​the poetics of the Valencian. Music, his, of a kaleidoscopic concentration, saturated at times and with a great wealth of ideas that often seem to want to tell various stories, despite the overwhelming weight of a colorful abstraction full of sharp timbres. The contrast with Van der Aa, generationally close, is, logically, minor; Between the two they offer a very accurate overview of the concerns of current creative music. But Carter’s presence forces us to question the abrupt distance between music that is barely two or three decades apart, even though Carter was born around 80 years before Coll. You also have to consider that Carter lived to be a whopping 104 years old and that he was active until the end of his days, but his elegant atonal counterpoint and clean lines now sound almost like music from the middle of the last century. None of this is a criticism, and I confess that I love it, but that’s the thing about contrasts.

The New European Ensemble has given an impeccable performance, perhaps bordering on excesses, both in tone and volume, but Auditorium 400 tends to amplify extreme sonorities. Its director Tito Muñoz, with that name like our neighbor, is an American director born in the New York neighborhood of Queens. Sure and clear, he has mastered the sound mass without problems. Special mention for the oboist Christopher Bouwman, who has given the world premiere of the aforementioned piece by Coll Taleas obliques, with moments of sober lyricism and astonishing confidence in his far from easy instrument.

In short, for those who did not know, we already have in Francisco Coll a golden name for the contemporary European scene.

Datasheet

Works by Francisco Coll, Michel van der Aa and Elliott Carter. New European Ensemble. Director: Tito Muñoz. CNDM. Auditorium 400, MNCARS. Monday, October 30, 7:30 p.m.

Faith of errors. In a previous version of this article it was erroneously stated that Francisco Coll’s work is published by Bossey & Hawkes, when in fact it is published by Faber Music.

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2023-10-31 22:00:46
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