In a crowded post-minimalist world, Hania Rani has carved herself out a respectable niche. The Polish pianist and composer’s erudite yet accessible work often defies genres, appealing to classical, jazz and electronic aficionados alike. This concert comprised two 40-minute premieres and fell pretty firmly into the classical category, yet the lively audience skewed significantly younger than the Brahms and Beethoven crowd. Stylishly performed by the envelope-pushing Manchester Collective, it felt like quite the happening.
Shining occupied the first half, a piece devised for the kind of 12-piece band favoured by Steve Reich and Philip Glass. It’s based on a short story by Jon Fosse; a stream of consciousness tale of a man lost in the woods at night. Opening with sinister discords on bass clarinet, bassoon and horn, its motifs shifted and spun. A pall of smoke and half-lit players conjured images of a ghost story told around a campfire at midnight.
Later, motoric rhythms kicked in, with instruments poking their heads above water only to be submerged again in the undertow. At one point bows bounced off strings like twigs tapping on a windowpane. As with the best minimalist music, Shining draws you in, heightening the senses to each and every rhythmic or harmonic shift.
Non Fiction, Rani’s five-years-in-the-making piano concerto, was inspired by the sketchbooks of Josima Feldschuh, a young pianist forced into the Warsaw ghetto in 1940. The music – frequently ethereal, occasionally sombre and incorporating aleatoric passages – channels human resilience in the face of oppression. In her eloquent program note, the composer speaks of its contemporary resonances.
On paper it’s as absorbing a work as Shining. The soloist – Rani herself – juggled upright and grand pianos, all the while pitted against a multihued 47-piece orchestra including mournful soprano saxophone, busy harp, bass and alto flutes, celesta and electronic tape. At its haunting best, its unrooted harmonies framed sepia-tinted snapshots emerging from the distorting mists of time. In practice, however, balance issues scuppered any feeling of a concerto, the piano drowned in the lavish orchestration. A shame, because otherwise this rather beautiful music had a great deal to say.
