The London Philharmonic Orchestra co-commissioned Francisco Coll’s Cuidad sin Senũo (City That Never Sleeps), a 20-minute work he describes as an “almost but not quite concerto”. Despite its title from Lorca, avowed debt to Falla’s Nights in the Gardens of Spain, and material derived from flamenco – a shared passion of Lorca and his friend Falla – its style is more elusive than we might expect. The dedicatee is Spanish pianist Javier Perianes, of whom the work is a “musical portrait” and who, with conductor Gustavo Gimeno, gave this world premiere.
Coll's percussive keyboard writing, largely devoid of conventional concerto display, was effective in its duetting with orchestral percussion in the busy opening section. The ensuing slow section produced an evocative stasis, and in the lively closing “Orgia” Perianes was a virtuosic lord of misrule. It is an intriguing work which plays continuously, although Coll’s claim that it “traces one arc over its three parts” was inevitably difficult to perceive on a single hearing. Perhaps in time a recording will appear.
I recently encountered a description of Nights in the Gardens of Spain as “Falla’s most purely beautiful work... also one of his weakest”. Only muddled musicology could invent that oxymoron, but this performance revealed a work of beauty and strength, not weakness. Its sensuality is organic (much grows from the opening motif), and Perianes and the LPO played it with finesse, alert to the poetry of those Moorish arabesques in their melodic lines, evoking the iridescent Andalusian night. The strings relished their flamenco guitar-like passages, while Perianes sang his keyboard cante jondo (deep song) like a gypsy from Cordoba’s mountains, bringing us as close as non-Spaniards can come to that untranslatable quality of duende, which Lorca called a “mysterious power everyone feels, but no philosopher can explain”. Perianes’ playing was subtly evocative, in this his second self-effacing task as primus inter pares as much as soloist.
The concert was framed by works of Falla’s close friend Stravinsky. His early Scherzo fantastique still makes an impression in as balletic a performance as it received here, and was one of the works that won its then unknown composer the commission from Diaghilev to write The Firebird. The suite (or parts of it) from the full ballet score was conducted everywhere by the composer, including in this hall in 1965 (worth a look on YouTube). He needed income from performing, and could rely on its impact, as few works make such a satisfying close to a concert. Nonetheless Stravinsky’s reputation as a conductor was not high, so it is unlikely he always exerted quite the command that Gimeno did here. From the shimmering Introduction, via some beautifully played wind solos in the Princesses’ Round Dance, and an Infernal Dance with mighty sledgehammer chords, this was often a dashing (in both senses) account. An exquisite solo horn led us into the noble Finale, setting the seal on a compelling second half.
