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

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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.

 

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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)

City Of London Sinfonia/Truro Cathedral Choir - The Fruit Of Silence At Truro Cathedral (2019)

Music of quiet, austere beauty, recorded a year ago this week on a tour by the London Sinfonia.  Whilst exploring the acoustics of some of the UK's legendary cathedrals, they arrived at this Gothic Revival one in Cornwall and were joined by Truro Cathedral Choir.  The ensemble and choir perform at varying locations around the cathedral, to fully exploit its natural resonances.

The programme alternates between choral music and chamber music, taking in 20th and 21st century composers from Peteris Vasks (whose twice-performed piece in different versions gives the concert its title), Eric Whitacre, and Russel Pascoe to John Tavener and Dobrinka Tabakova, whose Centuries Of Meditations suite is the stunning closer (her string quintet Organum Light is another highlight).  Even though he's just represented here by instrumental music, the influence of Arvo Pärt casts a long shadow over all the composers of the choral works.  If you like Pärt, prepare for 70 minutes of heavenly sounds.

link

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Dobrinka Tabakova - String Paths (2013)

Debut album of music by Bulgarian-born, London-based composer Dobrinka Tabakova (b. 1980, Plovdiv).  This superb ECM New Series release focuses on Tabakova's works for strings, written between 2002 and 2008.

First up is Insight, intended to blend the sonorities of a string trio so that they sound like a single instrument - it's a great opener.  Next is a concerto for cello and strings, that emphasises the lead instrument's grounded quality, like "a ship trying to anchor itself".  This is followed by Frozen River Flows, which brings Gubaidulina to mind in its use of accordion, although the inspiration was a Messiaen organ work transcribed for accordion, as well as the titular flow of water underneath ice.

Suite In Old Style, which was being performed at the Lockenhaus Festival where Manfred Eicher discovered Tabakova's music, takes in influences from baroque music and architechture; she described it as "a conversation I wanted to have... with Rameau".  To close, the string septet Such Different Paths gradually introduces the instruments in pairs, passing melodic lines around until the solo violin soars above them.  More music by Tabakova coming up on Monday.

link

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