Chetham's School of Music

Intimate, desolate and terrifying.

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 real darkness in this programme. Widmann’s “Chorale” Quartet is inspired by the seven last words of Christ on the cross – his string music is augmented by unsettling sounds of rubbing and cratching 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 create radical human experiences through live music.