Hans Abrahamsen composer
Paul Griffiths text
Barbara Hannigan soprano
Symphonieorchester Des Bayerischen Rundfunks
Andris Nelsons conductor
Label: Winter & Winter
CD: NMC D197
Intl. release: 08 January 2016
Awards
2016 Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition
Gramophone Editor’s Choice – March 2016
Opera News Critic’s Choice – June 2016
Contemporary Gramophone Award – August 2016
Diapason d’Or – November 2016
Edison Klassiek – November 2016
Buy & Stream
REVIEWS
“”Let me tell you how it was.” A mysterious, ululating soprano line opens Hans Abrahamsen’s song cycle – a setting of Paul Griffiths’s novella that uses only words spoken by Shakespeare’s Ophelia, and one of the most spellbindingly beautiful vocal-orchestral works of recent years. It was created for soprano Barbara Hannigan and is a stunning vehicle for her, with its floating, effortless-sounding high notes and pure, expressive tone. Her Ophelia is intense and fragile, sensuous and febrile; her phrasing is elastic and tasteful.”
(5 out of 5 stars)
– The Guardian, 14 January 2016
“Let me tell you, by Hans Abrahamsen, is the only work on his new album, so if you’re not streaming it, you might wonder about value for money. Yet the piece, a winner of a Grawemeyer and an RPS award, contains a whole ocean of melancholy and ferocity.
This is realised by the extraordinary soprano Barbara Hannigan and by Abrahamsen’s wondrous score, which embraces Romantic echoes and fascinating microtonal clusters. The text comes from a short novel by Paul Griffiths (a former Times music critic) that uses only the words sproken by Ophelia in Hamlet, but reordered and repeated.
What emerges is a postmodern portrait of a woman with much more of an inner life than even the Bard may have realised. At the close, she wanders into the snow rather than drown herself, the glistening music matching this wintry self-extinction step for step.”
(5 out of 5 stars)
– The Times, 05 February 2016
“Breathtaking moments in new song cycle ‘let me tell you’”
“Between Abrahamsen’s intricate, luminous orchestration and Hannigan’s achingly musical performance, “let me tell you” ranks as one of the most compelling contemporary works for voice and orchestra. … Breathtaking moments are everywhere. Perhaps the most memorable orchestral passage arrives in the fifth song. As Ophelia addresses her (imaginary?) lover with the words “You sun-blasted me and turned me to light,” the orchestra, roiling in chaos, suddenly turns crystalline, descending in shards of glass. In terms of vocals, none matches the moment in the final song where, on the phrase “snow falls,” Hannigan launches a delicate, radiant high C out of thin air. A YouTube video from an Amsterdam performance finds one violinist fighting back tears as Hannigan’s note falls back into the orchestra.
That’s the kind of effect the music tends to have on audiences. I saw it firsthand when Hannigan gave the New York premiere at Carnegie Hall in January with the Cleveland Orchestra. This recording benefits from the detailed reading of conductor Andris Nelsons, who led the world premiere in 2013, and nuanced playing from the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra. Rarely do music, words and performance so brilliantly coalesce.”
– Washington Post, 19 February 2016
“Danish composer Hans Abrahamsen wrote let me tell you, a half-hour musical monologue, specifically for the shockingly versatile Canadian soprano Barbara Hannigan, and it shows; it’s an extraordinarily good pairing of a challenging contemporary work with a virtuoso performer.”
“The piece requires supreme vocal control, and Hannigan, unfazed by the treacherous tessitura, the jagged leaps and the unforgivingly sustained vocal lines, makes it sound like the music is pouring forth naturally from deep within her. Her Ophelia emerges as a mesmerizing sorceress who intones Delphic yet essential utterances on the nature of language, memory, time, nature, music and love.”
“Hannigan…cements her status as one of today’s most astonishing musical artists.”
“Andris Nelsons leads the Symphonie-orchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks in an immersive, superbly crafted performance.”
– Opera News, June 2016
“Danish composer Hans Abrahamsen’s half-hour song cycle for soprano and orchestra premiered in Berlin in 2013 and won the $100,000 Grawemeyer Award for music composition in 2016. The honor was well deserved. Paul Griffiths’ libretto draws on words spoken by Ophelia in Shakespeare’s “Hamlet,” transformed by the music into an ethereal dream-monologue portraying an Ophelia at once fragile and febrile, disturbed and coolly rational.
With the orchestra as active partner, musical time is slowed down and speeded up, creating a shifting sonic tapestry of quiet, luminous beauty. The opening haze of piccolos, violin harmonics and celesta draws you into an interior world that, once heard, is not soon forgotten. Hannigan’s singing is silvery-pure of tone and refined of expression, and she receives urgently committed support from Nelsons and his fine Bavarian ensemble. Highly recommended.”
– Chicago Tribune, 2 March 2016
“As this filtration process is itself worked through Abrahamsen’s half-hour score, however, the idea has undergone another transformation. The spare yet pregnant lines of text meet Abrahamsen’s finely spun textures and each word feels felt and weighed in music. Possibly you don’t even need to know that Barbara Hannigan is singing Ophelia’s words any more, yet her vehemence and passion suggest she thinks justice is finally being done to a woman who never did get much chance to tell her side of the story.
Hannigan premiered the piece in 2013 (then it was performed by the Berlin Philharmonic under Andris Nelsons; now the Latvian has recorded it with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra) and had reportedly coached the composer on the intricacies of vocal music for what was his first sung work. One imagines these sessions produced the use of stile concitato emphases on repeated syllables, a flick of Monteverdi added to a more usual Hannigan repertoire of jarring leaps and plunges across her formidable range.
The Bard’s Ophelia drowned in the brook; this one wanders into the snow, her tread hypnotically evoked by paper softly rubbed around the skin of a bass drum. It’s a tiny, tragic Winterreise, but its final sung echoes are defiant: ‘I will go on’. The rest is silence.”
– Gramophone, February 2016
“Attention, événement! Créatrice de Written on Skin de Benjamin, Barbara Hannigan est la femme de toutes les expériences. On la retrouve ici créant un cycle de mélodies du compositeur danois Hans Abrahamsen. Paul Griffiths a écrit les poèmes en recomposant les phrases d’Ophélie dans Hamlet. Cette mystérieuse dualité, la formidable orchestre de la radio bavaroise nous la raconte comme dans un monde en suspension autour de la voix, souveraine mais lointaine de Hannigan, qui, due souffle au cri, nous conduit où elle veut. Un moment d’extase sublime.”
(4 out of 4 stars)
– Le Soir, Serge Martin, Mars 2016
“His new orchestral song cycle, “let me tell you,” written for the soprano Barbara Hannigan, has won this year’s Grawemeyer Award (the closest thing that classical music has to a Nobel Prize), and has caused a sensation everywhere that Hannigan has performed it, with several of the world’s finest orchestras. Now it is out as a CD single on the Winter and Winter label, with Hannigan, the conductor Andris Nelsons, and the mighty Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra turning in a riveting and impeccable performance. The composer’s musical relationship with Hannigan is not the stuff of abstract diva worship, but of an artist to his muse—in the twentieth century, the examples of Samuel Barber to Leontyne Price and of Luciano Berio to Cathy Berberian come most easily to mind, contacts that produced lasting music of deeply original and expressive character. I choose one neo-Romantic and one modernist example deliberately, since “let me tell you” has indelible elements of both traditions.”
– The New Yorker, Russell Platt, 22 March 2016
“Barbara Hannigan, the most virtuoso soprano of our time, is as always flawless, vocally very intelligent and gives maximum focus to the music and text…and is intensely emotional. … Contemporary music at its very best, already a classic, a “big 10″ from Luister for Barbara Hannigan. It is already my CD of the year.”
– Luister, March 2016
“Masterful Abrahamsen”
“It is an incredibly beautiful piece. Lyrical in the vocal approach, evocative in the instrumentation, mysterious in the sometimes icy tones, and in the central phrase in song four, “You are the one who loosed out this music”, distinctly romantic. An essential key to the success of the piece is the presence of soprano Barbara Hannigan … Hannigan sings like an angel. One of the most beautiful CDs of the year, that is certain.”
(5 out of 5 stars)
– Het Parool, 21 January 2016
“Barbara Hannigan sings masterfully as always”
(5 out of 5 stars)
– De Volkskrant, 13 January 2016
“Hans Abrahamsen set “Let me tell you” to music with the focus on the phenomenally lyrical voice of Barbara Hannigan. The highly successful score is making a triumphal march to orchestras around the world. Fragile music, intimate, stammering, full of enchantment. A piece so urgent that you get the feeling that it has to exist.”
(5 out of 5 stars)
– Telegraaf, 13 February 2016
“Magical world of colors and sounds”
“She floats through the highest echelons of the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, which sounds like a magical prism of sounds transfigured into blinding beams of light or fluffy snowfall. … The music is constantly steeped in emotion; the poignant conclusion with Hannigan slowly descending without ever touching the ground.”
(5 out of 5 stars)
– NRC Handelsblad, 25 January 2016
“Barbara Hannigan sing, lures, races, sneaks, slides and rises above Abrahamsen’s well-balanced orchestra. It sounds new and unfamiliar, but never unrecognisable and alternates between musical gestures and harmonic and melodic sections in a tonal landscape in which many will feel at home.
Simultaneously contradictions arise: on one hand Ophelia has strong opinions, Hannigan’s crystal clear diction and incredible technique, as well as the violent emotions she describes. On the other hand there are passages with delicate instrumentation including harp, celesta, glockenspiel, marimba and vibraphones, the fine soprano timbre and the small, simple words which is used again and again – the most with only a single syllable.”
– Aftenposten, 16 January 2016
“The Danish composer Hans Abrahamsen received this year’s Grawemeyer Award for his composition, let me tell you, one of the best new compositions that I have encountered. The stars are wonderfully aligned, and the brightest of them is of course the wonderful Barbara Hannigan, whom the composition is also dedicated to. Abrahamsen’s music swirls, radiates, freezes and vibrates together with Paul Griffiths’ text as if they had already been together since birth.”
“Music and text are not autonomous, but they are inseparably one. They tell of the time, the memory of the past, present and future.”
“I’m not making this music more than anything else to say that for me it is perfect. I am sold.”
– Klassinen/yle.fi, April 2016
“The Danish composer Abrahamsen creates a beautiful fairytale-like work in which he optimally uses Hannigan’s expressive voice. On all accounts the result is an excellent recording whereby Hannigan placidly sings technically perfect and Andris Nelsons and the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra create a wonderful, magical atmosphere in a romantic setting.”
– Plato Mania, 05 February 2016
“Hannigan sings her part with lustrous tone, supreme technical command … and remarkably intelligible diction. Like I said of her even more intense performance of this piece in Boston in February, she’s an artist in her prime with an instrument that’s simply a marvel to hear in action; and this score is tailor-made for her.
For his part, Nelsons draws playing of great pliancy, energy, and color from the BRSO. They – with Hannigan – capture the music’s harrowing mystery, tragic aura, and sumptuous beauty in equal measure.
But the real hero here is Abrahamsen, who’s crafted a piece that’s rigorously intelligent, offers ample emotional rewards, and is easily graspable on first listening. And it’s not a shallow stream, either: let me tell you has many more secrets to reveal on subsequent hearings. Indeed, Abrahamsen seems to have written that rarest of works, one that’s great and masterful, and (so far, at least) recognized as such from the start. This is a recording that does him and let me tell you proud.”
– The Arts Fuse, 19 May 2016
“Der Schneefall des Textes ist genauso zu Tönen geworden wie das Glas, die Musik, die Erinnerung – das sind die Schlüsselwörter des Texts. Doch das alles drängt nicht zum Konkreten, sondern konstituiert eine brüchige Welt, von einem zitternd hellen Licht erleuchtet und zunehmend von einer wilden Erregung durchzogen. Die immer alles Neue voller Neugier erforschende Barbara Hannigan hat dieses Faszinosum zusammen mit Dirigent Andris Nelsons vor zwei Jahren in Berlin uraufgeführt, doch die jetzt bei Winter & Winter erschienen Aufnahme ist vergangenen Sommer in München entstanden, zusammen mit den BR-Sinfonikern. Herausgekommen ist nichts weniger als ein Wunder: Suggestivere Musik wurde nur selten geschrieben.”
– Süddeutsche Zeitung, 09 Februar 2016
“Bald setzt die Stimme ein, behutsam, tastend, auf ruhigem Atem. “Let me tell you how it was”, singt Barbara Hannigan, jeden Laut wägend, als suche ihr lyrisches Ich den Worten eine verlorene Bedeutung zu entwinden. Die Stimme gehört Ophelia aus “Hamlet”. …
Publikum und Kritik überschlugen sich (in seltener Einigkeit) vor Begeisterung; … Für eine Musik, die wie ein Luftspiegel dahingleitet, magisch, mysteriös, aus dem Nichts aufscheinend, in ein Nichts verlöschend. Ein Spiegel, in dem sich irisierende Klangflächen brechen, von unbestimmter Herkunft und Form, schwebende Gespinste, die Ophelias stockend abhebende, immer wieder auf einzelne Töne zurückgeworfene Gesangslinien umfangen wie Schlingpflanzen.”
– Opernwelt, April 2016
“Die Koproduktion mit dem BR beruht auf Paul Griffiths gleichnamiger Novelle, die wieder auf den Worten von Shakespeares Ophelia (aus dessen “Hamlet”) fußt und perfekt zu Abrahamsens musikalischem Konzept passt, in dem sich die Stimme in der Weite seiner kristallinen Landschaften ihren Weg sucht, den Stürmen der Welt ausgesetzt und aus dem Kontrast zwischen Melodie und symphonischer Fläche seine berührende, einsame Kraft, seine einfache Schönheit schöpft.”
(5 out of 5 stars)
– Concerto, Austria, Januar 2016
“Ce superbe travail est disponible, enregistré naturellement par Hannigan accompangnée de l’orchestre symphonique de la radio bavaroise dirigé par Andris Nelsons.”
– Deuzio (L’Avenir), Avril 2016
“Let me tell you is Abrahamsen’s first vocal composition, his music accompanies the sadness and feebleness in the text. This is partially due to Barbara Hannigan, who was present when Abrahamsen began to notate the fragile, stammering vocal lines. Her virtuosic interpretation is first class…”
–Staalkaart, March-April-May 2016
“La soprano canadienne est très ouverte à la musique d’aujourd’hui, et on la retrouve ici dans “let me tell you”, un bref cycle de mélodies écrites pour elle par le compositeur danois Hans Abrahamsen sur des textes de Paul Griffiths. La voix est superbe de précision et d’expressivité, mais on découvrira également avec plaisir l’écriture raffineé d’Abrahamsen, qui confêre a l’orchestre (celui de la Radio Bavaroise, dirigée par Andris Nelsons) le soin de créer des climats sonores poétiques et attachants.”
– La Libre Belgique, Mars 2016
“La Hannigan, che ha al suo attivo già 80 prime mondiali, affronta la parte con una voce morbida, agile, sempre molto espressiva, capace di spingersi verso l’acuto senza sforzo, incarnando un’Ofelia fragile, misteriosa, ma anche volitiva e sensuale. Una donna che descrive il suo risveglio nell’amore, come un percorso verso la luce che culmina nella parte centrale, dalla scrittura più frenetica che sembra evocare la follia, sui versi “You have sun-blasted me, and turned me into light”, accompagnati dai disegni vorticosi di archi acuti, trombe e metallofoni.
La grande orchestra non è mai usata massivamente, ma come una tavolozza ricca di colori, per creare sonorità cristalline, delicati bagliori, come un sismografo che segue da vicino tutte le inflessioni del canto. E Andris Nelsons sembra conoscere bene tutti i tesori che si celano in questa raffinata orchestrazione.”
(5 out of 5 stars)
– Classic Voice, Aprile 2016