Throughout my life I seem to always come back to the question of how to make music (especially contemporary classical music) accessible and mean something to everyone. We’re so often bogged down in convention (sometimes I even feel this when composing my own original music) that music-making can feel like an exercise in meeting certain criteria rather than expressing something much deeper and more truthful. If you’ve read any of my reviews before, it will come as no surprise that I find Manchester Collective’s approach thoroughly refreshing and innovative, surpassing the need for convention and getting straight to the truth of the music. 

Their new release, ‘The Centre is Everywhere’ marks their first full-length album, as well as their fifth anniversary. In five years, they have utterly cemented themselves as leaders in innovative and accessible wide-ranging projects. This release contains three pieces. First is Glass’ ‘Company’, followed by a new composition by Edmund Finis from which the album takes its name, and to finish, Schoenberg’s ‘Verklärte Nacht’. One of the keys to this album is that even the traditional recording conventions have been rethought, leading to the listener experiencing a different ‘centre’ to the sound at different points. This really allows the Collective to explore the music in a way they would be unable to do during a live performance. As such, this is one of the most innovative and engaging projects to come out of the last year’s musically devoid climate, which is very exciting indeed.

The Glass opens freely and expressively, far from the mechanical approach we might come to expect from minimalist music. Rakhi Singh, the Collective’s co-founder and musical director, has described listening to Glass play his own music a few years ago and infusing the approach in this recording with his own freer than perhaps expected style. This works incredibly well, maintaining the timeless quality of the music while also transforming basic musical cells into more expressive gestures which lead the music in more interesting directions than you might expect. Adam Szabo, the CEO of the Collective, describes the fourth movement as having the effect of listening to ‘the memory of music’ due to its close recording technique, the faintness of the pitches and the heightened extraneous noises caused by the instruments, and this is such an evocative image. Throughout the album, the recording manages to capture a raw yet polished, truthful sound in the ensemble. 

Moving onto the Finis, I had no idea what to expect, and got my favourite part of the release. The composition is beautiful and the performances breathtaking. As I’ve said before, the performers never show off, and always let the music speak first. There is some incredible, subtle playing as well as some gorgeously expressive and sonorous melodic moments, all exactly where they need to be. The piece itself is interesting on a number of levels, there is a gradual and very deeply powerful development about it, as well as some fantastic standout sections. The layers of instrumentation and harmony are incredibly well realised by the ensemble, where the music appears to demand a deep understanding of which notes or patterns within still chords should be given emphasis. That, I suppose, is one of the themes of this release as it asks the question of whether changes in emphasis affect changes in experience.

Finally, it was the Schoenberg which I was most nervous for. I’ve never really got on with him as a composer, and while I’d heard this piece before I’d never really had any strong feelings either way about it. I’m not sure, then, how the Manchester Collective managed to make it such an enjoyable experience. Perhaps it’s the context of the album and the pieces leading up to it which allowed me to get in the right headspace to appreciate the piece more. Or perhaps it was a deep musical understanding from the ensemble, bringing a perfect balance of emphasis and expression. I suspect the truth lies in both. Yet again, they have curated a programme which nobody else might have thought of, and yet makes perfect sense in practise when the music is taken and performed in its most human, purest way.

The thing that makes this so successful though is that it will appeal to literally anybody who has the faintest desire to listen to music. The performance invites deep thought and understanding very easily if that’s what you enjoy, but it is also just fantastically enjoyable in its own right. It’s something I would be happy to recommend and discuss to anyone from my beginner students to musical academics. Yet again, Manchester Collective show us that the link between all music, and the key to unlocking it, is simply its humanity.

‘The Centre is Everywhere’ is out now from Bedroom Community.