Manchester Collective & Zubin Kanga (Double Bill)

Tchaikovsky said his Serenade for Strings was ‘a piece from the heart’. Beloved by the composer and audiences alike, it’s a technicolour, opulent romance. Here it’s given a Collective twist, blurring into music that lives closer to the present day.

There’s more muscle to the brisk Concerto for String Orchestra by Polish composer Grażyna Bacewicz. Feverishly paced, it’s a real workout for the players, and leaves audiences catching their breath.

In these two works, the composers take inspiration from their heritage to create something new. But what happens when a retreat into history turns violent? After seeing a replica of Schiller’s piano – which was built by WW2 prisoners and unable to play music – Laurence Osborn responds to fascism’s empty attempts to recreate the past in his new concerto. It’s an auditory hallucination where Kanga conjures ghostly samples of piano construction with his keyboard: handsaws, sandpaper, drills.

Time is an illusion. Let’s dispel it.

Schiller’s Piano is commissioned by Zubin Kanga and Manchester Collective. Kanga originally co-commissioned the work as part of Cyborg Soloists, with the support of a UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship and Royal Holloway, University of London. The premiere is supported by the Vaughan Williams Foundation.

After the performance, stick around as Zubin Kanga returns for After Dark, a solo performance in the Queen Elizabeth Hall Foyer. Featuring works inspired by the night (and nightclubs) by Alex Groves, Tansy Davies and Kanga himself, he conjures a variety of futuristic sounds from a collection of keyboards, synthesisers, motion sensors and the piano.