Coll, a forty-year-old native of Valencia, began his education in Spain and completed it in England, studying there with Thomas Adès, a master of twenty-first-century opera. Coll’s early works, with their prickly eclecticism and their fondness for instrumental grotesquerie, reflect the influence of Adès and György Ligeti, among others. Lately, Coll has found a distinctive voice—a kind of romantic neo-modernism, abrasive and rhapsodic by turns. For the maverick violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaja, Coll has written a Violin Concerto that is among the finest recent examples of an overworked form: anarchic virtuosity in the outer movements offsets a central episode of desperate lyrical power.journey-inline-newsletterinline-newsletter