Thrilling, audacious and weighty, Coll’s Mural was premiered by the Orchestre Philharmonique du Luxembourg under Gustavo Gimeno in September. The 24-minute orchestral work is an extraordinary achievement, handling vast forces with an impressive single-mindedness to create a five-movement work of stark and unsettling poetry.
In Mural, Coll says, he feels ‘that a period in my work is closing. As if across a mural, the piece presents a synthesis of the musical language I have developed in the last decade. Its structure and harmony have been a constant obsession through the two years it took me to complete. I had the feeling of returning to the traditional problems of composition. I am trying to approach simplicity in each new work; structure, rhythm and harmony are crucial in the process, and melody is becoming more and more important.’
The work receives its Spanish premiere in April with the Orquestra de la Comunitat Valenciana under George Pehlivanian, then tours the UK this summer with Thomas Adès conducting the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain.