Manchester Collective - Heavy Metal (live at the White Hotel, Salford, 11 Dec 2021)

Broadcast on BBC Radio 3 back in January, the Manchester Collective ensemble (previously featured at last year's Proms - link below) gave this concert on their home turf of music for strings, live electronics and percussion.  The programme gets off to a lively start with Bryce Dessner's Aheym (Yiddish for 'homeward'), written to suggest flight and travel.  Things then settle down momentarily for Dobrinka Tabakova's trio piece Insight (studio recording here).

The first commission of the programme follows, and is introduced by its composer Ben Nobuto.  Serenity 2.0 is intended to evoke pachinko arcades Nobuto encountered in Japan, and its blend of pre-recorded sounds with fractured strings and percussion is a highly enjoyable wild ride towards a calm conclusion.  A couple of years ago, the Proms included a piece for bassoon and distortion pedal - now, here's a cello through a distortion pedal, as the Collective's cellist Stephanie Tress performs Michael Gordon's Industry.  Then to close, we get more pre-recorded sound with live strings in the newly-minted commission Squint, composed by Sebastian Gainsborough aka Vessel.  It's a great end to an ear-bending collection of contemporary music.

link

pw: sgtg

Manchester Collective at SGTG:

BBC Proms 2021: Górecki, Eastman, Tabakova etc

Manchester Collective / Mahan Esfahani - Górecki, Eastman, Tabakova etc (BBC Proms 2021)

String-based brilliance from a live concert broadcast last Tuesday.  The Manchester Collective ensemble were founded five years ago, and have since been making waves in the contemporary classical world with works by groundbreaking composers like those featured here.  For their Proms debut, the Collective led by Rakhi Singh appeared with harpsichordist Mahan Esfahani.

 

Esfahani is the star turn on the programme's opener and closer, starting with Górecki's uncharacteristically rollicking Harpsichord Concerto, a suitably energetic curtain-raiser.  The ensemble then dial down the tempo for Edmund Finnis' atmospheric The Centre Is Everywhere, which lent its title to the Collective's debut album.  The first half of the concert concludes with Julius Eastman's Holy Presence Of Joan D'Arc, its churning ten cello arrangement reconfigured for full string ensemble.  Shame we don't get the full sung prelude (it's condensed into a brief spoken passage), but the ensemble's version of the main piece is fantastic.

 

After the interval comes another work that's featured on these pages before (all links below) in Dobrinka Tabakova's Suite In Old Style, its Rameau-influenced writing as entrancing as ever.  Mahan Esfahani returns for the fun swing and mellow blues of Joseph Horovitz's Jazz Concerto in its version for harpsichord, making for a memorable finale.  That's not all though, as the Collective return for a great encore performance of the frenetic Orawa by Wojciech Kilar.  Highly recommended, top-notch playing all round in a superb programme.

 

link

pw: sgtg

Henryk Górecki at SGTG:
Early works
Symphony No. 3
Beatus Vir
O Domina Nostra
Miserere
Kleines Requiem / Lerchenmusik

Totus Tuus

Julius Eastman:

Unjust Malaise (incl. Holy Presence & full Prelude)

Femenine (live 1974)

Femenine (live 2016)

Edmund Finnis:

In Situ (Proms 2020)  

Dobrinka Tabakova:

String Paths (incl. Suite In Old Style)

Centuries Of Meditations (live 2019)