Jonny Greenwood and Hallé Orchestra Deliver Compelling Manchester Performance
Amid a sea of musicians dressed in traditional concert black, his baggy white trousers inevitably stood out as a visual statement. For an orchestra that has been a cornerstone of the classical mainstream for well over a century and a half, the evening's choreography presented some awkward moments: lengthy resets between musical pieces, a second half that threatened to commence before the audience had fully settled, and a celebrity guest who departed swiftly with minimal acknowledgment of the applause. Yet despite these production quirks, the artistic collaboration between Manchester's venerable Hallé Orchestra and Jonny Greenwood – the acclaimed Radiohead guitarist and award-winning composer – proved to be musically compelling and artistically significant.
Reich's Pulse and Greenwood's Water
During Steve Reich's contemporary masterpiece Pulse, Greenwood positioned himself behind the Hallé musicians, his body angled with casual confidence as he provided the work's essential rhythmic foundation on electric bass. His playing demonstrated subtle expressiveness, with a featherlight plectrum technique that allowed the bass's occasional deviations from repeated patterns to emerge as stylish releases. Meanwhile, the Hallé's wind and string sections navigated Reich's Copland-esque melodic lines with precision under conductor Hugh Tieppo-Brunt's direction, resulting in a cool, understated performance that balanced tradition with contemporary sensibility.
Greenwood's own 2014 concert work Water proved immediately gripping from its opening moments. The piece emerges from gently scintillating piano and violin textures, overlaid with substantial bass elements and the glittering drone of three tanpuras – one of which was played by Greenwood himself. At a particularly striking moment, a gleaming major chord on the organ broke through the musical texture with euphoric luminosity, before solo lines gradually diverged from established patterns, introducing deliberate dissonance that soured the previous diatonic harmony. Elsewhere in the composition, the string section transformed into what sounded like a synthetic organ, their tone achieving delicious intensity as they played chords that blurred disturbingly at their edges.
World Premiere and Historical Context
The evening featured the world premiere of Greenwood's Violin Concerto, which began with a vicious glissando from soloist Daniel Pioro that was instantly echoed by the Hallé's string section, initiating an extended imitation game throughout the work. The concerto contained genuinely beautiful moments, including a dim recollection of Vaughan Williams' The Lark Ascending that emerged amid nightmarish pitch bends to particularly haunting effect. Despite Pioro's undeniable virtuosity – fearless even in the violin's highest stratosphere – and despite the Hallé's honeyed tonal quality combined with Tieppo-Brunt's precise conducting gestures resembling air traffic control, the piece ultimately felt oddly formless in its overall structure.
The program commenced with Witold Lutosławski's Musique Funèbre, whose desolate counterpoint, oozy chromatic progression, and occasional searing unisons clearly foreshadowed elements of Greenwood's distinctive sound world. This opening selection also served to showcase the Hallé's string section as a world-class ensemble in their own right, establishing the musical excellence that would characterize the entire evening's performance at Manchester's Bridgewater Hall.
