BERIO Sequenza III for voice (1965)
BERG Lulu Suite (1934)
GERSHWIN Girl Crazy Suite
arranged by Bill Elliott and Barbara Hannigan; Orchestrated by Bill Elliott
Barbara Hannigan soprano and conductor
LUDWIG Orchestra
Label: Alpha Classics
CD+DVD: Alpha 293 ⓟ Barbara Hannigan, Ludwig, HarrisonParrott & Alpha Classics / Outthere Music 2016
© Alpha Classics / Outthere Music France 2017
Intl. release: 22 September 2017
Awards
2018 GRAMMY: Best Classical Solo Vocal album
2018 JUNO Award for Classical Album of the Year: Vocal or Choral
The New York Times: Best Classical Music Recordings 2017
De Klara Award: Best International Classical CD
Recording of the Month (December 2017), BBC Music Magazine
Klara’s 10
Presto Classical, Recording of the Year, finalist 2017
ffff Télérama
Le choix de France Musique
Editor’s Choice (October 2017), Diskotabel/NTR
de Volkskrant: Best Recordings of 2017
Buy & Stream
REVIEWS
(5 out of 5 stars)
Hannigan has the capacity to become legendary as a conductor
“Whether she sings or conducts, Hannigan is phenomenal. She does both with great ease”
“It results in a highly charged performance in which color and expression are fully present.”
“Hannigan, now in her mid-forties, is already legendary as a singer. She has the potential to achieve the same status as a conductor.”
De Volkskrant, Frits van der Waa, 29 September 2017
(4 out of 5 stars)
“It begins with Hannigan solo, in Luciano Berio’s 1965 Sequenza III, something of an avant-garde talisman for the wilder diva: here are gasps, moans, manic trills, weird clicks, jabbering coloratura, a syllable soup. The bright sheen of Hannigan’s voice — and that she has slightly transposed the piece up — gives the work more of a girlish tint: this voice could just about belong to one of opera’s bel-canto heroines, but one who has been wound up like a spinning top and is manically pirouetting around the stage. Sequenza III comes up fresh and exhilarating.”
“Intelligent, invigorating, Crazy Girl Crazy is a madly compelling listen.”
The Times, Neil Fisher, 29 September 2017
“Barbara Hannigan suscite aussi l’admiration pour l’intelligence de sa direction musicale.”
ffff Télérama, September 2017
“Barbara Hannigan’s remarkable new (and newly Grammy-nominated) release is a tour de force on multiple fronts. As a piece of programming, the recording — which combines music by Berio, Berg and Gershwin without compromising the stylistic demands of any of them — is an act of subversive genius. And Hannigan, who is famously a double threat as both soprano and conductor, brings her considerable interpretive skills to bear on this repertoire, producing performances that are both buoyant and winningly inventive. At the heart of the lineup is Berg’s “Lulu” Suite, a set of five excerpts from his uncompleted final opera that touch on both the lush expressivity and the jagged angularity of the work. Flanking it like the outer wings of a triptych are Berio’s “Sequenza III,” a burst of beautifully unhinged vocal gibbering, and three songs from Gershwin’s “Girl Crazy” that Hannigan and Bill Elliott have arranged into a Bergesque suite. The overall impact is disorienting, breathtaking and profound.”
San Francisco Chronicle, Joshua Kosman, 07 December 2017
“one of the great late-night-and-bourbon albums of the year.”
“Through this swath of music marches Hannigan, who not only sings and conducts her friends in the excellent Ludwig Orchestra but has conceived and organized the program around a Lulu of her own invention, as if the demimonde antiheroine of Berg’s Expressionist opera—based on the Lulu character in two plays by Frank Wedekind—had enjoyed a fuller existence beyond the action of the stage.”
“Through Hannigan’s virtuosic dispatch of clicks, shrieks, aspirated consonants, and, when called for, just beautiful singing, we sense Lulu’s basic identity, the relationship between the character and her tool of communication, her voice. With the “Lulu Suite,” we see her in full. The music of the first movement, “Rondo,” is so fabulously lyrical that Berg did not do much more than cut and re-splice the orchestral accompaniment to large chunks of Act II. But the suite is wickedly difficult, and how Hannigan managed to sing and conduct the two movements that include the voice is beyond me.”
The New Yorker, Russell Platt, 04 December 2017
“Berg’s chromium-plated orchestral textures gleam and shimmer in Hannigan’s hands”
“A triumph”
The Artsdesk, Graham Rickson, 02 December 2017
“On this stunning label debut on Alpha Classics, Canadian soprano Barbara Hannigan takes multi-tasking to new levels. Not only does she sing and conduct Berg’s technically and emotionally demanding Lulu Suite, as well as performing Luciano Berio’s dazzlingly virtuosic Sequenza III for solo voice. She has also (together with Bill Elliott) arranged a marvellous new suite from George Gershwin’s Girl Crazy, brilliantly orchestrated by Elliott. Furthermore, she and the Ludwig Orchestra (a flexible Dutch ensemble collective) succeed triumphantly in presenting a coherent programme that binds these seemingly disparate works together.”
“Berio originally composed Sequenza III (1965) for the legendary Cathy Berberian, but Hannigan steps out boldly from under that long-reaching shadow, transposing the work up (as allowed by Berio’s score) to tap into a girl-like image of the imagined 15-year-old Lulu. Hannigan negotiates the huge challenges of this avant garde score – with its vocal clicks, breathless vowels, enigmatically fractured text, and wide dynamic and pitch ranges – with seeming effortlessness (in fact, it must reflect many hours of hard work). She is by turns playful, coquettish, wistful and reflective, and the result is as absorbing and convincing as it is challenging.
And it makes for a brilliant curtain-raiser (in the manner of an imagined prequel) to the Lulu Suite itself. Here Hannigan – who has portrayed Lulu on stage to great acclaim – is completely at one with the Ludwig players, and a clearly happy working relationship is reflected in performance of remarkable emotional openness, lyricism and sensuousness.”
“These are sophisticated, witty arrangements, rounded off with an exuberant, jazzy, big-band version of ‘I got rhythm’: it’s the cherry on the cake of a tremendously entertaining disc which explores real emotional depths as well as delighting the ear.
Add to all this a classy recording from the Alpha team, attractive presentation and a bonus 20-minute behind-the-scenes DVD, and this wonderfully crazy disc deserves every success.”
Disc of the Week
Europadisc, September 2017
(4 out of 5 stars)
“La soprano canadienne Barbara Hannigan a fait sensation ces dernières années avec quelques-unes de ses interprétations spectaculaires, dirigeant les musiciens tout en chantant (voir la vidéo plus bas). Elle joint ici pour la première fois sur disque ses deux passions, direction et chant, dans un programme qu’elle ouvre cependant en solo avec Sequenza III, de Luciano Berio, qui lui permet de déployer tout l’arsenal vocal dont elle dispose. C’est ensuite devant le Ludwig Orchestra, d’Amsterdam, qu’elle chante et dirige Lulu Suite d’Alban Berg, offrant une interprétation impeccable. Le programme se termine avec la Girl Crazy Suite, arrangée avec le concours de l’orchestrateur Bill Elliott d’après la comédie musicale de George et Ira Gershwin. Servie avec la même instrumentation que celle de Berg, la musique de Gershwin est d’une tout autre couleur, mais la chef et la chanteuse y brillent tout autant.”
Voir, Réjean Beaucage, 2 October 2017
(4 out of 5 stars)
“Multitasking is second nature to Barbara Hannigan. The most versatile of stage performers, she not only sings on this disc, but conducts, whimpers and mutters, whispers and shrieks. The latter occur in Berio’s Sequenza III, a virtuoso solo for soprano that does not involve conventional singing. Berg’s Lulu Suite gets a romantic performance, strong on limpid, singing lines from the Ludwig Orchestra.”
Financial Times Richard Fairman, 29 September 2017
Performance: (5 out of 5 stars)
Recording: (5 out of 5 stars)
“Barbara Hannigan’s debut recording as conductor-soprano is an illuminating and imaginative tour de force”
“Crazy Girl Crazy is an album that – just like its muse and protagonist – flouts the rules”
“The litheness of Hannigan’s voice beguiles, so that the near-segue into the Lulu Suite (1934) comes as a sense-sharpening emotional jolt.”
“It’s a highly personal, sensual reading: lavish with orchestral detail and, when it comes, a spellbinding ‘Lied der Lulu’.”
“‘Music is music’, as Berg once said to Gershwin, and as the bonus film reminds us. But it takes a performer of Hannigan’s calibre to show how gloriously illuminating supposedly lateral connections can be.”
Recording of the Month
BBC Music Magazine, Steph Power, December 2017
“…so kann Hannigan darin zugleich mit ihren stimmschauspielerisch schier grenzenlosen Möglichkeiten brillieren und beeindrucken. Bei den Glossolalien von Berio schafft sie den Spagat zwischen Groteske und Tragödie. Das „Lied der Lulu“ ist bei allem traumwandlerischen Melos zugleich auch erschütternd und beklemmend. Und der bittersüße Klangblütenzauber von Berg findet sich nun tatsächlich auch in der Gershwin-Suite wieder, in der die Allrounderin Hannigan das Leichte mit dem Ausdrucksstarken vereint.”
Rondo, Guido Fischer, 04 November 2017
“The Canadian soprano Barbara Hannigan, though, is something else, and for her debut recording on Alpha she’s devised and directed a programme of music by three composers I never thought I’d see sharing the billing on a soprano album: Berio, Berg and Gershwin. But Crazy Girl Crazy is no ordinary ‘soprano album’ – it’s all built around one of Hannigan’s signature-roles (Berg’s mercurial Lulu), but the emphasis is firmly on the music itself and the story which binds these three unlikely bedfellows together rather than on the unconventional diva herself.
“The Suite from Berg’s Lulu (with Hannigan singing the roles of both the eponymous anti-heroine and the Countess who loves and dies with her) seems to emerge organically from the Sequenza, and the transition into the new Gershwin Suite is hardly less seamless – using the same orchestration as Berg, Hannigan and Elliott play up the affinity between Berg’s jazz-inflected score and the big band sound-world of Girl Crazy so that the link (which could sound contrived on paper) comes across as entirely natural.”
“This is a fascinating Portrait of the Artist as a Woman both young and mature, a sequence of songs of innocence and experience which capitalises on both the eternally girlish qualities which have become a hallmark of Hannigan’s artistry and the formidable musical authority which she’s built up over a career immersed in the complexities of contemporary music. It’s also a hugely alluring listening experience, and I strongly urge you to give in and embrace the ‘craziness’.”
Recording of the Week
Presto Classical, Katherine Cooper, September 2017
“Diese CD sollte man sich nicht entgehen lassen. Es ist vor allem die Sängerin und Dirigentin Barbara Hannigan, die hier einfach nur fasziniert. Hören Sie sich nur Luciano Berios ‘Sequenza III’ an, ein Stück, das ohne instrumentale Begleitung dargeboten wird. Ursprünglich für Mezzo-Sopran geschrieben, hat die Sopranistin die Partie etwas höher gelegt und beeindruckt mit ihrem absolut reinen Gesang und ihrer hellen, anmutig klingenden Stimme.
Auch die ‘Lulu-Suite’ von Alban Berg wird mit Hannigan zu einem Leckerbissen. Stimmlich und deklamatorisch singt sie den Text mit einer kaum zu überbietenden Perfektion und begeistert auch als Dirigentin, die sowohl das Sinnliche wie auch das Tragische und Dramatische in Bergs Musik bis ins letzte Detail auszuloten versteht.
Hervorragend spielt das holländische Ludwig Orchestra, das auch in George Gershwins Suite mit präzisem Spiel, einem tollen Gefühl für Rhythmus und einer großen Präzision für sich einnimmt. Auch hier hat Barbara Hannigan die Musik fest im Griff und dirigiert und singt einen Gershwin, wie man es sich besser nicht vorstellen kann.
Der Klang dieser CD ist ebenfalls überragend.
Als DVD-Bonus gibt es noch den sehenswerten Film ‘Music Is Music’ von Mathieu Amalric.”
Pizzicato, Alain Steffen, 09 December 2017
“Lulu and Girl Crazy Belong To Barbara Hannigan”
“Hannigan navigates her way through this contrapuntal labyrinth with total mastery, and her musicians play superbly.”
“This is fresh and authoritative music-making from one of the most gifted performers of our time.”
ludwig-van.com, Paul E. Robinson, 30 December 2017
(4 out of 5 stars)
“her effortless style is bewitching”
“fierce musicianship”
The Guardian, Kate Molleson, 14 September 2017
“Barbara Hannigan is an equally unique phenomenon as Lulu is: a true wonder of nature. She already proved that in the Brussels La Monnaie production… on this CD she proves it again. Not only in her capacity as a singer, but also as a conductor. And how! She presents an extremely stimulating programme that is like clockwork, both musically and dramatically.”
“Included is the short film by Mathieu Amalric, Hannigan’s partner, which provides a perfect visual and auditory reflection. It is a beautiful collage of rehearsal fragments of all three works performed … the movie is actually a composition, read: a visual reflection of the music and all its layers.”
“The performance of the Ludwig Orchestra is of unprecedented high quality.”
“To sum up, it will be crazy if Crazy girl crazy doesn’t win lots of awards.”
OpusKlassiek, Maarten Brandt, September 2017