The Hallé and Nitin Sawhney in Concert – Live Review

Thursday 5 December 2024

The Bridgewater Hall, Manchester

*****

Nitin Sawhney’s journey from heart attack to healing through music

Nitin Sawhney is a musical polymath – producer, performer, and composer of over 60 film scores and music for TV including the BBC’s Human Planet, as well as over 20 studio albums. He has worked with Paul McCartney, Sting, Jeff Beck, Ellie Goulding, Annie Lennox, Will Young, Bob Geldof, Andy Serkis, Mira Nair, Anoushka Shankar, Nora Jones, Herbie Hancock and Nelson Mandela. In 2017, Sawhney received the Ivor Novello Lifetime Achievement award and he was made a CBE in the 2019 New Year Honours list.

Despite his stellar career, Sawhney has remained gentle and unassuming, more concerned with making music than the trappings of success. On 4 March this year, he posted something typically self-deprecating about himself on X.

Can’t say what it is… but I’m about to go through something pretty major. Wish me luck 🙂

X (Twitter) 4 March 2024

It came as a genuine shock to his followers when he later clarified the post.

After much reflection, I’ve decided to explain myself regarding the post below…

A few days ago, out of nowhere, I had a heart attack.

X (Twitter) 6 March 2024

He went on to explain that he was rushed to hospital after the heart attack and had a stent fitted to one of the arteries leading to his heart. On 4 March, he was waiting to go through an operation to have another stent fitted, and for a bigger operation the following month.

Before the heart attack, he exercised regularly, ate healthily, and had no history of heart disease. He has since made a good recovery and has been told that as a British Asian he probably had a ‘genetic predisposition… a significantly higher likelihood of cardiovascular disease or heart attacks’, confirmed by his family history.

Sawhney had already been commissioned by the Hallé orchestra in Manchester and had almost finished a piece on the theme of identity, the theme of his album of the same name released in October 2023. But after his heart attack he decided to scrap what he had written and write about his traumatic experience instead. The result is his Heart Suite, premiered on Thursday evening.

Before we heard the premiere of Heart Suite, Sawhney used the strings of Hallé, conducted by Chris Cameron, to add cinematic richness to performances of thirteen of his songs. The band consisted of Sawhney himself on guitar and piano, Eos Counsell on violin, Shapla Salique and YVA on vocals, and Aref Durvesh on tabla.

The band alone featured on the opening piece Sunset, with serpentine and passionate vocals from YVA and vigorous guitar from Sawhney. The song ended with a lovely contemplative section when the tabla dropped out, followed by falling chords, sweet violin and haunting vocals from both singers.

An early highlight was You Are, based on a poem Sawhney wrote pre-COVID. Sawhney said the words changed their meaning in his mind over time; in this gorgeous song the vocal lines remained static as the accompanying chords shifted beneath. There was a lyrical acapella section at the end with solo guitar, YVA singing the final line in a breathy, sensual tone reminiscent of Billie Eilish.

There was applause when Sawhney introduced Homelands, written 25 years ago, from his 1999 album Beyond Skin. This haunting song began with a beautiful violin solo – not on the original song – from Eos Counsell, beginning with a single held note, then florid, virtuosic, evocative and ultimately uplifting playing. Warm vocals from YVA perfectly contrasted with the much faster, more vehement vocals from Shapla Salique; the two duetted superbly throughout their set. 

In The Conference, Sawhney entered into an incredibly fast spoken dialogue with tabla player Aref Durvesh, who then played a virtuosic tabla solo as the audience clapped along joyfully. The classic Nadia was superbly sung by Shapla Salique, accompanied by majestic strings with evocative harmonies.

To enthusiastic applause, Sawhney introduced Immigrant, a lovely piano ballad, as a song inspired by the experience of his parents coming to this country and the ‘crazy rhetoric and nonsense’ about immigrants who ‘bring a lot to this country.’

The singers left the stage as Sawhney played an instrumental version of Prophesy, beginning with the magical sound of delicate, mysterious chords on guitar. Aref Durvesh joined him on tabla, and the two musicians had an equal partnership. The song gradually speeded up and hurtled headlong into a stunning conclusion that brought thunderous applause.

The broadcaster Nikki Bedi, who said she had been moved ‘on a molecular level’ by the first half of the concert, came on stage to introduce Heart Suite for full orchestra. Sawhney told her that he woke up at 5.45 am with chest pain and became increasingly worried, then felt a crushing pain as if a 200 kg weight was crushing his chest. He blacked out and hit a glass ornament as he fell, embedding glass in his face. The paramedics told him he was in the middle of having a heart attack.

“In this highly descriptive and powerful new piece, Sawhney drew on his vast experience as a film composer, taking us on a vivid, moving and immersive journey.”

Within a month, he had started to turn his terrifying experience into a piece of music, beginning with the heart attack itself, then enjoying morphine in the ambulance (this provoked laughter from the audience), finally feeling life returning to his body as the blood began flowing again after his first operation.

In this highly descriptive and powerful new piece, Sawhney drew on his vast experience as a film composer, taking us on a vivid, moving and immersive journey. The first movement, Heart Attack, began with atonal plucked strings, like music from a horror movie. The tension increased as the music spiralled out of control. Ominous chords from Darius Battiwalla on the organ and a brass figure rising in semitones led to silence, then a fearsome organ melody. The orchestra pulsed agonisingly and after another horrifying silence we felt the oppressive, claustrophobic weight on Sawhney’s chest before he blacked out with a crash.

The second movement, Morphine and Memories, began with the orchestra’s leader playing the two notes of the siren heard by Sawhney from inside the ambulance. This motif cleverly developed into an orchestral theme, slow moving and stately, almost Baroque, as the leader played a melody above. A Romantic melody from the strings created an ethereal sense of floating peacefully as the morphine kicked in. A woodwind passage suggested that Sawhney was suspended above himself, looking down on his helpless body. We felt a warm glow as we drifted with Sawhney along a river to a golden, sunlit sea. The whole movement was meltingly beautiful.

The final movement, Operation and Blood Flow, began with a playful description in the woodwind of blood beginning to flow back during the first operation to fit the stent. The pulsing rhythm we heard in the first movement returned, but it was less frightening now as Sawhney came back to life with the blood pulsing through his body. But there was a sense of foreboding as ominous, slow-moving harmonies accompanied frenetic strings. A single held note from the organ led to a short passage like Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D minor, creating a sense of awe. A slow waltz felt joyful but still slightly ambiguous in tone. A cascade of organ notes fell into silence. Finally a glockenspiel and horn duet led to sweeping strings, which created a sense of contemplative calm and relief. The journey ended with an immense feeling of catharsis – to use the poet John Milton’s phrase, ‘calm of mind all passion spent.’

Performers

Nitin Sawhney CBE guitar and keyboard
Eos Counsell violin
Chris Cameron conductor
Shapla Salique vocalist
YVA (Amy Holford) vocalist
Aref Durvesh tabla
The Hallé orchestra
Nikki Bedi interviewer