Hania Rani - Non Fiction

A Closer Listen

How does music communicate across the ages, and what can it teach about fragility, conflict, resistance and peace?  In composing Non Fiction, a symphony presented by the 45-member Manchester Collective, conducted by Hugh Tieppo-Brunt with appearances from Jack Wylie and Valentina Magaletti, Hania Rani drew her inspiration from a surprising source: child prodigy Josima Feldschuh, who performed with the Jewish Symphony orchestra at age 11, wrote music of her own in occupied Warsaw, and died at age 13 while her family was hiding from the Nazis.  The symphony is haunted by the echoes of old enmities, and speaks to a new generation of conflict in Ukraine and Gaza.

The piano concerto unfolds in four movements, beginning with “Sonore – Animato – Meno Mosso.”  The piano rests upon a bed of symphonic drone, an individual voice heard above the larger fray.  There’s great tenderness here, as one might expect from a piece recalling a life cut down too short, and by extension, all such lives.  More pianos join in the blossoming of the second part, as cello and flute represent the highs and lows, the dreams and dashed hopes.  In the third part, one thinks of the beauty preserved and the beauty lost; only six of Feldschuh’s compositions have survived.  The movement builds to a whorl of sound, recalling The Beatles’ “A Day in the Life,” albeit with a real-life component.

The second movement rises from silence with low, rumbling percussion and reluctant strings, like people in hiding, scared to breathe.  The piano emerges to score their collective fear and grief.  A rising scale emerges, then falls silent, only to emerge again.  In the center segment, the orchestra takes over these scales, like a community lifting a banner when the original holder has fallen.  The piece eventually falls into light dissonance and near-silence, echoing the plight of the invaded as it circles back to its beginning.  In the third section, a slow melody, confident in tone, tests its wings.

“Misterioso” reflects its title with dark glissandos, mist-like structures of strings and pointillist piano notes.  The darkest and shortest of the movements, it sets up the finale, although given the subject matter, one cannot expect the last movement to be bright.  It can, however, offer solace and encouragement.  Building from the closing moments of “Misterioso,” which yields a melody whose timbre recalls “Taps,” “Simplice” rises to a subtle, chime-decorated peak before introducing a final sweeping melody that fades into the ether like a lost life.

What voices have been lost in conflict, never to be heard again?  What voices are represented only by scraps of composition, torn diaries, burned photographs?  Is there any need for humanity to be so cruel?  The questions linger in the acrid air.  Rani reminds us of the ability of music to reach the very bottom of our hearts; we wish that this were fiction, but it is not.  (Richard Allen)

Available here