CityLife

Piccadilly Station becomes a concert patform for a day

Piccadilly - a performance platform!

FULL of the hope of arrival and the regret of departure, railway stations are where journeys begin and end.
 

On Saturday, July 4, more than 200 RNCM students will come together to perform The End Of The Line (A Brief Encounter), a unique musical experience that will explore these themes at Manchester’s Piccadilly Station.
 

The students have been working on its creation with composer Peter Wiegold, who has been commissioned to create and direct a unique musical installation to fill the public spaces of the station at the end of the day.
 

In January Wiegold’s composition Bow-Wave opened the 2009 Winter Tour of the National Youth Orchestra, while some of his recent works have included To The Shade Of The Departed, a saxophone concerto premiered by Tim Garland and the Northern Sinfonia at The Sage International Jazz Festival 2008, .

Excited by the space

His ambitious piece The Zither With 50 Strings - with Matthew Barley and the Silk String Quartet, a quartet of Chinese instruments - premiered at London's Purcell Room last November. 
 

Toby Smith, the RNCM’s director of performance and programme remembers, “The very first time I pulled into Manchester Piccadilly, at the time of the Commonwealth Games, I was excited by the space – the shapes, the lines, the mix of old and new, and above all the sound of life.
 

“In recent years the RNCM has produced new work in some extraordinary public spaces, and Manchester Piccadilly is perfect in architecture and atmosphere for this new music commission.”
 

Recreating the vibrancy

The piece has been developed in co-operation with Network Rail.
“So far as I am aware, this is the first time in this country that anything on this scale has been staged in a working railway station” observes station manager Duncan Law.

“Throughout the day musicians will come and go, recreating the vibrancy of the station, until later in the evening when they all come together to perform a major work, after which they will fade into the distance, much as trains do.”
 
The RNCM presents The End of the Line (A Brief Encounter) at Manchester Piccadilly Station on Saturday, July 4, at 9pm. Further information is available at link right.