The Unthanks sing Emily Brontë's poems at Leeds Town Hall premiere

Commissioned by the Brontë Society, the songs have been written and recorded – using Emily Brontë’s piano in her Haworth home – by Unthanks' Barnsley-born composer, pianist and producer Adrian McNally and performed with Tyneside sisters Rachel and Becky Unthank.

Funded with support from Arts Council England, The Emily Brontë Song Cycle is available on record from The Unthanks; as a listening experience on the moors at the Brontë Parsonage Museum in Haworth, and in concert in Leeds.

The Unthanks have turned ten Emily Brontë poems into song, and because the Brontë family home in Haworth is now a working museum, the writing and recording had to take place after nightfall.

McNally wrote the music for the whole record during his first evening at Emily’s piano, a rare example of a five-octave cabinet piano, probably made in London between 1810 and 1815.

The days of the residency were spent working on the songs on a beautiful German upright at nearby Ponden Hall – another house associated with the Brontë family – before McNally tested his work in progress on Emily’s instrument at the museum each evening.

Rachel and Becky Unthank "sing Emily Brontë" at the Haworth recording sessions

Several weeks later, McNally returned to the Parsonage with Rachel and Becky to record the songs late into the night.

The Unthanks selected the Emily Brontë poems that spoke to them most, such as Shall Earth No More Inspire Thee, High Waving Heather, Lines (The Soft Unclouded Blue Of Earth) and The Night Is Darkening Round Me.

"Setting Emily's poems to music feels like a departure for us because lots of our projects have a political bent with a working-class orientation, though we broke that mould to an extent with our Molly Drake project, when it was good to illustrate that the northern left-wing manifesto isn't exclusively what we're interested in. We're more interested in humanity full stop," says Adrian.

"Emily Brontë is so singular and her work is so unique that she's absolutely fascinating, and had we been bigger Brontë fans at the start, we would have been petrified at the task in hand, so it helped that we came it at afresh. I read Wuthering Heights as background and then there were hundreds of poems to choose from.

"We're known for not shying away from dark material, and Emily is remorselessly dark; the lack of moral compass she offers is fantastically brave and refreshing."

The ever-evolving folk band are synonymous with bringing historically rooted projects to life, drawing attention to subjects such as the Foundling Museum, the Children’s Employment Act of 1842 and the shipbuilding and coal-mining industries, as well as underlining the work of important artists such as Molly Drake, Robert Wyatt and Graham Miles.

The artwork for The Unthanks' Lines trilogy box set

"There are two types of band," says Adrian. "There are those who have a very successful record and think, 'how can we repeat that?', and so they keep making the same record, and their fans don't seem to mind or notice!

"Then there are bands like us, where we see ourselves as being on a journey and we just have to hope that people see that as interesting, like making the three Lines records, each with a different female perspective from times when we don't have a lot of female perspectives.

"First of all, we're always story driven and content driven and we're far less interested in the musical genre. My feeling is why would a painter keep painting the same painting with the same paints, and it's the same with The Unthanks."

If you miss tomorrow's concert, be sure to head to Haworth for Shall Earth No More Inspire Thee - Emily Brontë Song Cycle, the aforementioned audio experience on the moors with The Unthanks, which runs at The Brontë Parsonage Museum from this week to March 31 next year.

Visitors can pre-book to reserve headphones, online at bronte.org.uk, to experience the song cycle while treading in Emily's footsteps through the churchyard and over the Haworth moorland.

Taking in views of Top Withins, the ruined house location that many believe to have been Emily’s inspiration for Wuthering Heights, audiences will simultaneously journey through her poems and the landscape that inspired her, accompanied by The Unthanks' music.

Tickets for The Unthanks Sing Emily Brontë in Leeds Town Hall's Victoria Hall tomorrow at 7.30pm are on sale at leedstownhall.co.uk. "There's a warm-up show in Northumberland, but Leeds is classed as the premiere; and it may be a one-off or it may not," says Adrian.

"When you do project-led work, the show you deem to be the culmination of the project is confirmed before you do the work, but until you have time to appraise it, you can't be sure if you're happy with it or there'll be enough interest in it for more shows.

"So many of our projects have started off as a one-off but we've then been 'pressured' into doing more shows. We're lucky to have a very trusting audience who are prepared to come out and see a show when they know they're not going to hear a single song they know, and we did that three times in one year with our Diversions project, but that's because there's been a shift in how people 'receive' music.

"In the old days, they would tolerate a new record for a few songs and then want the hits, but now people are coming to shows to hear the new work."