After the sacrificial cataclysm there’s a tiny upward rush of flutes, a single crash and it’s over. Stravinsky wrestled with the ending of The Rite of Spring (1913). Its abrupt last gulp catches you unawares, as if the entire orchestra, vast in size, has vanished into a sinkhole. As a finale to a weekend of concerts, it’s an arresting choice. A taut, convulsive and virtuosic performance by the Hallé orchestra, conducted by Delyana Lazarova, brought to a close the inaugural Manchester Classical weekend: 16 events in two days, in which Manchester’s many resident ensembles united to celebrate the city’s rich and interlinked musical life.
All took place in the Bridgewater Hall and its foyers. Seating was unreserved, each work introduced from the platform with pithy explanations. Events, lasting no more than an hour, were cheap or free. Food stalls parked outside added to the festive air. An estimated 10,000 people came through the doors. They could have been out in the sun or at home watching Glastonbury, but the event had its own cumulative buzz. There was even community singing-along with the BVG Indian Choir of England (microtonal nah-nah-ing) and the Hallé Ancoats Community Choir (tonal doo-be-doing). Who needs Jacob Collier?
This gathering is not to be confused with Manchester international festival, now under way until mid-July. Instead, Manchester Classical, as its name indicates, is unashamedly that: classical. Spearheaded by the Hallé, with the BBC Philharmonic, Manchester Camerata, Manchester Collective and the Royal Northern College of Music, its aim is to entice audiences new and old to sample the music-making on offer in the city all year round. I missed the opening concert – a new commission with the Hallé Children’s Choir celebrating the work of Victoria Wood – so began with Béla Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra in the first of three BBC Philharmonic concerts.
Anja Bihlmaier, who will make her Proms debut with the orchestra later this month, conducts with neat, incisive gestures, rock-stepping back and forth on the podium cha-cha-cha style. Her compact energy communicated itself to the players, especially in the perpetuum mobile that speeds up to a frantic scramble – deftly managed – in the last of the concerto’s five movements. She shared the BBC Phil’s concerts with fellow conductor Joshua Weilerstein, whose own style of zest worked effectively in Maurice Ravel’s Spanish-inflected Alborada del Gracioso. Weilerstein took the opportunity, during a live Radio 3 broadcast, to urge support for this Salford-based orchestra. He praised, especially, their versatility: their concerts ranged from Beethoven to Lili Boulanger, Tōru Takemitsu and William L Dawson (The Bond of Africa from his Negro Folk Symphony).
Two chamber groups, Manchester Collective and, larger in size, Manchester Camerata, chilled the mood – not only via lighting designs – with bold, 21st-century challenges. The collective introduced their own commission, Hannah Peel’s spikily atmospheric Neon (just out on limited edition vinyl), and performed Steve Reich’s Double Sextet, accompanied by visual projections of Manchester club life of the 1980s and 90s (think Haçienda), captured on 8mm black-and-white film by Graham Hector. The Camerata’s equally impressive late-night programme was described as a sonic meditation, with violinist Daniel Pioro and works by Anna Clyne, Nikki Martin, Holly Harrison and Pēteris Vasks.
Each concert, from every ensemble, had range and diversity. Perhaps the most impressive was the Hallé’s, with Kahchun Wong, who will succeed Mark Elder as principal conductor next year. After saxophonist Jess Gillam proved herself an ever-stylish soloist in John Harle’s Briggflatts, the orchestra played Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition (arr. Ravel). The work was originally written for piano, and has its own distinctive character in that medium. But Ravel – other arrangements, well over 60 and counting, are also available – knew how to make an orchestra dazzle to maximum effect. The response to the performance, for the players and their new conductor, was tumultuous. In any circumstance, the majestic final movement, the Great Gate of Kiev, rattles the senses. At that precise moment – Saturday early evening – the Wagner group convoy was threatening Moscow, the fate of a potential mutiny unfolding hour by hour. You may think going to a concert is about shutting out the world. More often than not it’s the reverse.
Filling the Purcell Room in London for two performances of Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time (1941), the German-Japanese pianist Alice Sara Ott was joined by star chamber music players: violinist Thomas Reif (concertmaster of the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra), cellist Sebastian Klinger and clarinettist Sebastian Manz. I attended both, and if anything changed between accounts it was chiefly the intensity of listening, hearing more, hearing differently: the near breathless whisper of the clarinet, the unforced lyricism of violin and cello. Ott, who plays with bare feet and lithe clarity, moved between velvety pliability (in the cello Louange movement) to percussive rawness, always an equal partner. Messiaen’s inspiration was the biblical Book of Revelation: an angel clothed in cloud, head wrapped in a rainbow, face like the sun, legs as pillars of fire. A great performance, as both were here, can make this apocalyptic ambition seem entirely reasonable.
Star ratings (out of five)
Manchester Classical ★★★★★
Alice Sara Ott & Friends: Quartet for the End of Time ★★★★★
