★★★★☆
Imagine the sound of one bagpipe. Multiply that by nine. Then picture being right up close, enveloped by the noise for the best part of 17 minutes, in a dark concert hall, lit up with red light. That’s the experience of Julia Wolfe’s Lad, which was the climax of the Manchester Collective’s latest tour programme, a patchwork of genres, eras and styles that shouldn’t work together but, by some mysterious alchemy, absolutely do.
If anything, this version of Lad was even more intense than the original. The violinist Rakhi Singh has arranged the piece for nine violins, most of which are pre-recorded, and effects pedals. They surrounded her in a dark halo of loud, amplified sound while she played live, looking the picture of serenity. Wailing slow glissandos, a constant-pressure drone and a metallic edge made the music relentlessly claustrophobic, until it broke into Scottish folk rhythms and tunes. But even that reprieve didn’t last long. Alan Keary, aka Shunya, joined on a second violin, and the pair embarked on a frenzied dash to the end. It left me reeling, wondering what had just happened.
Was it the right piece to end on? Hard to know where else to place a piece that’s like a dozen sirens going off at once. It obliterates everything that’s gone before. It provokes and discomforts (that’s a good thing). Was I left wishing Singh and Keary had added just one more short piece — whether sweet, soothing or sorrowful — to bring us back to earth? Perhaps.
Up to that point, the evening had been full of playful experimentation, atmospheric sounds and a panoply of instruments. Tendrils of mesmerising Hildegard of Bingen unfurled over a shruti-box drone. Two pieces by Shunya blended classical, jazz and electronics in dreamy limbo, on vocals, bass guitar, electric guitar and violin. Three folk dances, from Bulgaria and Denmark, saw the audience joining in to learn wonky rhythmic patterns and to add a humming backtrack. And Lad didn’t have the monopoly on intensity. Singh also gave a generous, committed performance of Bach’s solo Chaconne, a work Brahms described as “a whole world of the deepest thoughts and most powerful feelings”.
Queen Elizabeth Hall, London SE1, October 27 (6 and 9pm), southbankcentre.co.uk
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