Freya Waley-Cohen: Talisman + Q&A | Manchester Collective

Sometimes, describing a piece of music is best left to the writer. We’re so thrilled to have worked with Freya Waley-Cohen on ‘Talisman’, which we commissioned and premiered for the BBC in March 2021. The performance is followed by a Q&A with the composer and BBC Radio 3's Elizabeth Alker.
Here, Freya describes some of the thinking that led her to create this remarkable work: “Writing Talisman I was thinking about objects that hold special power, magic and meaning to people. I was thinking about how this meaning is imbued by an event or a story - like the object is a distilled moment in time. And how the meaning is often conveyed or extracted through ritual, another ‘event’ that somehow becomes part of the object. These moments and objects that hold magical or occult powers, exist in a sort of liminal space in our minds - we can believe them and not believe them at the same time. That place of strange mystery and contradiction is where this piece sits.”
‘Talisman’ is commissioned by Manchester Collective and Zeitgeist, and supported by PRS Foundation’s The Open Fund.
Recorded at The Stoller Hall, Manchester on 25 March 2021
PERFORMERS
Violin - Rakhi Singh, Max Baillie, Jonathan Martindale, Sarah Brandwood-Spencer, Eva Thorarinsdottir, Donald Grant, Rosemary Attree
Viola - Hélène Clément, Ben Newton, Lucy Nolan
Cello - Marie Bitlloch, Jonathan Pether
Bass - Alice Durrant
PRODUCTION
Recording - BBC Radio 3, for ‘Live in Concert’
Producer for the BBC - Les Pratt
Director of Photography - Adam Blyth
Camera Operators - Dan Parrot, Tobenn Whitaker
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