Cries And Whispers: Leeds

Programme
Widmann String Quartet No. 2, "Choralequartett"Britten String Quartet No. 1Gesualdo Selected MadrigalsShostakovich String Quartet No. 8
Creative Team
Manchester Collective String Quartet

About The Show
Our string quartet concerts are some of the most personal shows that we build. There’s something about that particular lineup which feels terrifyingly intimate - like there’s a direct connection between each of the four players, and every listener in the room.
There is darkness in this programme. Widmann’s “Chorale” Quartet is inspired by the seven last works of Christ on the cross - his string music is augmented by unsettling sounds of rubbing and scratching that evoke skin and bone on wood. Britten’s music emerges from a mist: fragile, lost, and precious. We perform some intensely expressive and sacred music by Carlo Gesualdo, an Italian musical genius hundreds of years ahead of his time. Finally, we conclude with the huge emotional impact of Shostakovich’s Eighth String Quartet, a biographical scream written by a man desperate to create, haunted by fear and political oppression.
This music will move you if you let it - it will scare you and inspire you.

Manchester Collective
Manchester Collective are changing the way people experience live music. Since their first set of “powerful, moving, & extraordinary” shows in 2017 (Yorkshire Post), the work of the Collective has expanded at breakneck speed. They now play in concert halls, warehouses, and factory spaces in 18 cities across Europe and the UK, performing a combination of cutting edge new music, classical masterpieces, and staged theatrical work to a hungry, new audience.
Recent performing highlights include international concert debuts in Holland, Switzerland, and Northern Ireland; appearances at the Southbank Centre in London to perform The Centre is Everywhere, a major new commission by Edmund Finnis; and a critically acclaimed tour of Pierrot Lunaire, a staged production of Arnold Schoenberg’s masterpiece featuring a newly commissioned English libretto by David Pountney, and presented by BBC 6 Music’s Elizabeth Alker.
New music has always been of vital importance to the Collective - in 2019/20 they premiere major new works by Paul Clark, Erland Cooper, and Alex Groves. The current season will also see the Collective mount their largest ever international tour - a revival of 2018’s critically acclaimed Sirocco, featuring South African cellist Abel Selaocoe.
Manchester Collective’s work has been featured by the BBC on an ongoing basis, most recently in the form of a one hour “supercut” of exceptional live performances from around the UK, broadcast on Radio 3. Other recordings have appeared on Classic FM, NTS Radio, Melodic Distraction, and on Tender Symmetry, released on the Erased Tapes label in 2018.