Francisco Coll’s new harpsichord concerto was written for Mahan Esfahani. With a solo part that’s hyperactive in the outer movements, dark and inward in the central Lento, which is linked to the finale by the briefest of retrospective cadenzas, it has all the characteristics we’ve come to associate with Coll’s works. The disruptive and unstable rhythms, abrupt switches of mood and direction, and intricate, slightly brittle meshing of the harpsichord and the chamber orchestra kept the music constantly on the move, never staying in one place for too long. Even its ending seems provisional.
Coll was born in Valencia, and though he never parades his roots, there are just enough hints of something flamenco in the new concerto to make it a nice fit in the all-Spanish programme the Britten Sinfonia had devised for the premiere. There were three works by Manuel de Falla. The concert ended with a slightly tame, over-civilised performance of the concert version of his ballet El Amor Brujo, but there was also the luscious song with ensemble Psyché, in which contralto Claudia Huckle was the restrained soloist, which seems to inhabit the same world as Debussy’s late sonatas, and the splendidly terse Harpsichord Concerto, in which Stravinsky’s neoclassicism is the model.
Esfahani was the easily agile soloist in that concerto, too, and he also contributed a group of four sonatas by Domenico Scarlatti (Italian by birth, Spanish by adoption), which he dispatched with almost nonchalant brilliance. The Britten Sinfonia had played some Scarlatti, too – three of the sonatas, specially arranged by John Woolrich, in his typically deft, witty way.
• Broadcast on Radio 3 on 9 February. Then available online for 30 days.
