Manchester Collective, Lakeside, Nottingham, 30 November 2023.

4****: William Ruff.

“Manchester Collective in a typically innovative and inspiring programme.”

No one could accuse Manchester Collective of serving up safe, predictable programmes.

The first half of their concert began with violinist Rakhi Singh playing Alia Fantasia by the early 17th century composer Nicola Matteis, an unusual prelude to an adventurous programme. Rakhi was particularly free in her approach to rhythm and to dynamics, unafraid to take the music down to barely perceptible whispers before allowing it to blossom again.

Pianist Kathryn Stott then played Gustave Le Gray by Caroline Shaw. Le Gray was an early pioneer of photography and the music’s extremely quiet, tentative opening was made to seem like a photo developing on wax paper. The gently insistent, repeated rhythms give the music a hypnotic quality, melting gently into Chopin’s Mazurka in A minor, a piece whose delicate sophistication made a tellingly concise contrast.

Kathryn Stott then joined with Rakhi Singh to play Messiaen’s Theme and Variations, not only an accessible introduction to what was to follow but also a piece which revealed sensitive collaboration between piano and violin, musical ideas growing organically out of each other before reaching a soaring climax.

The concert’s main work was Quartet for the End of Time by French composer Olivier Messiaen. It was written and first performed in 1941 whilst the composer was a prisoner of war in Stalag VIIIA. The music is far from easy to listen to but it clearly struck a deep chord in those first listeners at the extraordinary premiere on a freezing January evening, with the half-starved performers heard in silence by their fellow prisoners. Messiaen wrote his powerful statement of faith and hope for the forces available to him: piano, violin, cello and clarinet.

In his introduction cellist Nick Trygstad explained that the ‘end of time’ meant for the devoutly Catholic Messiaen not the end of the world but rather to a mystical existence beyond the constraints of time. He also said that it is a work which really has to be experienced by musicians and audience sharing the same physical space. And he was right. What happened at lakeside was an extraordinary act of community, the slow spacious rhythms hypnotically binding people together (Sergio Castelló López’s clarinet solo being truly extraordinary). The controlled concentration required is formidable but Thursday’s quartet wove a powerful spell over their listeners, the beauty of their playing creating a moving, eloquent silence of response both during the performance and for a long time before the applause rang out.

Manchester Collective: Rakhi Singh (violin), Nick Trygstad (cello), Sergio Castelló López (clarinet), Kathryn Stott (piano)