Choices (Original Score) by Manuel Vella Rago is a musical meditation on the burden of choice, the complexity of human emotion, and the fickle nature of fate. From the opening, brooding piano chords, the opus establishes a tone of reflection, inviting us into the artist’s inner sanctum of thoughts and feelings. The low bass notes and the delicate strings arrangement are the foundation for a work that is as much cinematic as deeply intimate. Silence, in this composition, is not absent; rather, it is a force in itself, uniting in potent measures, breathing, making space, making room to feel, to contemplate. It’s a reminder that choices are often defined as much by what we hold forth as what we keep back.
As the music swells, the cinematic scale expands. There’s drama in the phrasing, in the slow but intentional stacking of piano lines and string harmonies. By not using words, an unbounded conversation happens between the viewer and the work. Each listener will find their own meaning within the rise and fall of tension within the piece, a pause before a life-changing act or the real time unfolding of consequences as they are realized. No one story is the only one Choices tries to tell, it allows the mind to wander through a labyrinth of memories, regrets, and hope.
Choices is, at its core, an examination of contrasts. The introspective stretches of solo piano channel solitude and personal reckoning, while the ascendant dramatic sections echo outside forces that guide our choices. It’s also undeniable that push and pull on display here, as if the music is wrestling with the very notion of choice, as if it were toggling between certainty and doubt, between action and inaction. It is this duality that renders the piece so emotionally rich, so philosophically profound.
Halfway through, there’s a pivot – a sonic metaphor for a decision made, a route chosen. Now the tempo shifts, percussive elements sulk into view and the mix starts to swell with a sense of urgency. There are those moments in life, when there is no longer room for hesitation, when a decision must be made, and the outcome accepted. The music mirrors this inevitability, barreling ahead with a greater sense of movement and energy. It’s a stark break from the song’s earlier, more thoughtful passages, and a reminder that while reflection has merit, action is what counts in the end.
The piano solo serves as the final touch of reflection in the closing minute of the composition before being delicately faded into a breakdown. The strings and keys intertwine, not in resolution, but acceptance. This sense of longing in those concluding notes – choices once taken do not end, they echo across the landscape of time, and they become the paths we tread, the sounds we make. It ends not with grandiosity but with quiet poignancy – an acknowledgment that every decision is consequential, that every path taken means another one unwalked.
This is an experience, not merely a composition to admire, but a journey as through the quagmire of the human condition, which through careful artistry, permeates the playing of Manuel Vella Rago from his expressive musicianship as he creates something more for himself. Choices was recorded at TobyMusic Productions in Malta, and serves as a touchstone for the power of storytelling through music, providing both personal catharsis and universal relatability.
With Manuel still writing and performing, one can only look forward to the new stories and emotions he will convey through sound. To a certain extent, with Choices, he has established that music is ultimately not about cloistering oneself away from the world, or even melody, as much as a probe into the very fabric of being – something we hear, something we feel, and still something else that can burgeoned. We have added Choices to our New Music Spotlight playlist, and our TIMELESS playlist, whilst we continue to stream Manuel Vella Rago‘s wider discography, including the related compositions, Imperfect Choices and the original, Choices.