This year will be the third in a row that Samantha Fernando opens a copy of Wintering, by Katherine May. Throughout its deep and wandering journey that considers embracing the fallow periods of life, the book asks, “What if we made peace with the darkest time of year?”
Samantha’s response? An intimate, glacial orchestral piece, performed by one Manchester’s leading musical ensembles.
Wintering is a special commission by the Wigmore Hall in London and sees the Manchester Collective’s string quartet join The Marian Consort vocal ensemble on a national two-week tour. Part-meditation, part-monologue, Wintering channels the near-universal sense of melancholy that settles over the year’s end, mulling it over through strings and voice before freeing it once again. The performance is a welcome break from the hustle and bustle of holiday shoppers outside, and a gentle reminder of the value of rest and retreat.
Wintering is much like a cold wind – deeply felt, but impossible to catch hold of. The music sweeps between low, threatening notes that evoke the feeling of looking into a gaping abyss to sounds that would be unobtrusive at heaven’s gate. In Vista, Wintering’s opener, such is the harmony between vocals and violin that it’s hard to tell where one ends and the other begins.
Breezing forward, Wintering’s fourth number – ‘To Do: Do Less’ – marked itself as a particular standout piece. A duet of spoken word and guided meditation in song, To Do: Do Less struck as an intimate look inside an anxious, but universally relatable mind. “Collect prescription, find a babysitter, laundry, living room, groceries…” echoes in the silence, only to be answered by gentle lyrics of breaths returning to a natural rhythm. Particular applause is reserved for The Marian Consort’s soprano Caroline Halls, who was effortless moving between both roles in her performance.
In the performance, Wintering is enveloped by four other pieces from various composers across history. Orlando di Lassus’ 1570 piece Prophetiae Sibyllarum (‘Sybylline Oracles’, or ‘Sibylline Prophecies’) opens the concert to a dazed, stuttering prologue – a masterclass in key changes that looks back on the sibyls of Ancient Greece, a group of pagan prophetesses said to have foreseen Christ. The National Anthems from David Lang follows behind, bearing vulnerable anxieties of the uncertainty of freedom, and Jonathan Dove’s Out of Time uses strings alone to sketch a memory of a much-missed husband.
With Wintering continuing the introspection after the interval, the performance rounds off with Andrzej Panufnik’s Song to the Virgin Mary. As Polish society collapsed with 1939’s Nazi invasion, Panufnik’s response was to form a boogie-woogie-playing piano duo with fellow composer Witold Lutosławski, touring Warsaw’s bars under increasing Soviet censorship before making a daring escape to Britain in 1954. Song to the Virgin Mary was conceived during his exile in fond memory of the country he left behind: an abstract love letter to, as he described, “the naïve beauty of the religious folk art of Poland”.
The themes of rest, reflection, and the surrender of productivity are as resonant now as they ought to be the rest of the year. In a landscape of rising traditionalism, conformity, and financial slashing for the arts, it’s a real treat to see a personal, more conceptual performance not only included, but tightly embraced in concert halls across the country. Wintering is best enjoyed with a programme in hand to truly appreciate the stories behind each piece. A delight to experience.
Wintering was performed at Stoller Hall on the 27 November 2025 and tours until December 5.