This Thursday's livestream broadcast from the RNCM showcased some students from the RNCM playing alongside members of Manchester Collective in a special one-off Un-Christmas concert.
Narrated by Tom Redmond, this was a concert with a difference... it was a story with music. But the differences didn't stop there... this was a Christmassy Non-Christmas Un-Christmas concert. Redmond is well known locally for his work with The Halle Orchestra and Chetham's School Of Music, and he is always occupied over the festive season narrating family-friendly Christmas stories with the help of orchestral seasonal soundscapes. The difference here was that this was not Christmas music, and the story told of the 'darker' side of the festivity, taking us back to its Pagan origins, the beliefs at the time, and how those beliefs have been transmogrified through the centuries from nation to nation. As well as having a little slam st how Christmas has become little more than a Capitalist commercial enterprise!
With music such as contemporary composers' Hans Abrahamsen's 10 Preludes For String Quartet and Ruta Vitkauskaite's Imper, the music was surprising, jarring, discordant, aetherial, dramatic, unpredictable, sometimes nightmarish; but brought back to sanity with other works such as Warlock's Capriol Suite and Taverner's The Lamb. This juxtaposition of familiar and frightening; harmonic and enharmonic, lyrical and strident worked surprisingly well; and let's face it, if any ensemble can wring every nuance and bring fresh narrative meaning to a piece of music then it is Manchester Collective. Under the direction of Rakhi Singh, it seems there is nothing the Collective cannot tackle and put a fresh and illuminating spin on it without losing sight of the composer's original intentions or the music's origin.
Redmond too is a master of bringing text to life, and here he placed just enough emphasis on the story making it engaging, informative and complimentary to the music.
The best non-Christmas Christmas concert I've seen!
Reviewer - Alastair Zyggu
on - 4/12/20
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