Manchester Collective review – Freya Waley-Cohen’s incantations cast a powerful spell

Ritualistic … Fleur Barron and Manchester Collective perform Spell Book. Photograph: Cesar Vasquez Altamirano

In 2019, Freya Waley-Cohen discovered Witch, a cycle of poems by Rebecca Tamás. Among the longer poems in the collection are a series of shorter “spells”, which Tamás defines as taking us “into a realm where words can influence the universe”. Almost immediately Waley-Cohen began making settings of some of these texts; it seemed “fitting and almost natural”, she thought, “to bring these incantations into the ritualistic setting of the concert hall”. Her Spell Book, performed complete for the first time by the Manchester Collective, with soprano Héloïse Werner and mezzos Fleur Barron and Katie Bray, now contains eight of these pieces, two of which were receiving their first performances here.

Heloise Werrner with the Manchester Collective at Milton Court, London. Photograph: Cesar Vasquez Altamirano