Sunday 5 October 2025
RNCM, Manchester
****
A tribute to the variety of sounds that strings make, and the human connections that music brings
Some concerts are about the music only, the sheer joy of music-making. Others have an external framework, which may be emotional, intellectual, musicolgical, or even spiritual; or a mixture of all of these. Sunday afternoon’s excellent concert by Manchester Collective at the RNCM in Manchester combined all these elements.
Linda Begbie, the Collective’s new Chief Executive, introduced the concert. Last week, she had been auditioning young students for the new Manchester Collective studio at the RNCM. They expressed their fears about a world that was ‘very dark and dangerous, a very scary place.’ With evident emotion in her voice, she said that music is all about connection, ‘if we move away from this, that’s where things go wrong. ‘The Collective’s ethos, she said, was about bringing full humanity to their performances so audiences could meet them there. The concert would address life, death, and divine ecstasy.
Rakhi Singh, Co-Founder and Co-Artistic Director of the Collective, and lead violinist and conductor for this concert, took up the theme, describing her arrangement of the ninth-century Christian hymn Veni Creator Spiritus as an invocation of the Holy Spirit. She said that the Collective tries to evoke its spirit in the rehearsal room, but it usually only appears in front of an audience. She echoed the feelings of Begbie’s students, that the world seems to be falling apart; we need to find our kindness and courage, and use our despair and outrage to take positive action.
I would try to imagine what a Shaker ceremony must have felt like – those normally stern souls suddenly sprung loose in a rapture of religious ecstasy as they shook in sympathetic vibration with their creator
John Adams on ‘Shaker Loops’
The John Adams piece, Shaker Loops, also has a spiritual aspect. Adams was inspired by the minimalism of pieces for tape loops, repeated looping patterns found in pieces like Steve Reich’s It’s Gonna Rain (1965).
Adams was also inspired by the ecstatic, spiritual dancing of the Shakers religious community, which was set up in the North West of England in the eighteenth century before moving to America. Reading his works over sections of the music, Lancashire-born poet Christ Bryan celebrated the Shakers and its founder Ann Lee in the first of three poems, Genesis. He honoured Lee as ‘The Seer.. God the Mother’, who founded the Shakers as an offshoot of the Quakers, during the Industrial Revolution, when,
‘The town’s waters are no longer used for baptism
Crucified new to the crux of commerce.’
The second poem, Exodos, laments, in Bryan’s words, ‘the spiritual malaise of modernity and materialism of all forms – theological, philosophical and economical.’ It begins with evocative words describing a post-industrial landscape,
‘The provocation of concrete is now in bloom
The endless bankrupt brick blossom.’
The third and final poem, Revelation, like the other poems, takes its name from one of the books of the Bible. It’s a joyful reworking of the Shaker Hymn A Beautiful Day,
From brook and from fountain come voices of welcome
To look beyond to that region where the supernatural lay
Where beameth forever a beautiful day.’
Singh described the divine connection of music and dance in Adams’ piece; she said the Collective sought a divine connection in their playing and brought it to the audience.
The musicological aspect of Sunday’s concert was touched on by Adams in his programme note to Shaker Loops, referring to the musical meaning of to shake, ‘meaning either to make a tremolo with the bow across the string or else to trill rapidly from one note to another.’ The viola player Ruth Gibson introduced Terra Memoria for string quartet by the late Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho by asking players to demonstrate the varied string techniques used by the composer. This was not just a technical exercise. The piece illustrated the whole range of emotions that form part of the grieving process, from lamenting, pain, anger and resignation to moments of reconciliation and yearning, and hope.
“The title Terra Memoria refers to two words which are full of rich associations: to earth and memory. Here earth refers to my material, and memory to the way I’m working on it.”
Kaija Saariaho
The concert’s opening piece, Such Different Paths by the Bulgarian-British composer Dobrinka Tabakova, also featured varied string techniques. The composer asks for playing at one point to sound ‘like a folk fiddle, and elsewhere asks the players to ‘think Baroque.’ The Collective, here consisting of a septet, brought out the full range of colour in this dense and complex piece.
Throughout the concert, The Collective embraced all the music’s musicological, intellectual and spiritual aspects, absorbed them, and created an emotional whole. Their playing throughout was virtuosic, passionate, precise yet emotional. They continue on their mission of communicating deeply through music.
Performers
Rakhi Singh Violin
Haim Choi Violin
Will Chadwick Violin
Donald Grant Violin
Rose Hinton Violin
Anna Tulchinskaya Violin
Bethan Allmand Violin
Mira Marton Violin
Eloise MacDonald Violin
Ruth Gibson Viola
Abby Bowen Viola
Gemma Dunne Viola
Ben Michaels Cello
Alex Holladay Cello
Jess Schafer Cello
Alice Durrant Double bass
Christ Bryan Live poetry
Repertoire
Dobrinka Tabakova Such Different Paths
Kaija Saariaho Terra Memoria
Hymn arr. Rakhi Singh Veni Creator Spiritus
John Adams Shaker Loops feat. Christ Bryan
Read on…
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