(from a press release)
When Barbara Hannigan was asked to sing at a surprise birthday party for her friend, writer and critic Paul Griffiths, the simple request turned into an extensive collaboration with composer Hans Abrahamsen on a Berlin Philharmonic commission let me tell you, a song cycle based on text from Griffiths's experimental novella, narrated by Hamlet's Ophelia. The resulting 30-minute composition, divided into past, present, and future, is Abrahamsen's first major vocal work. It was recently awarded the prestigious 2016 Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition. Paul Griffiths also collaborated on a previous Grawemeyer Award-winning work, Tan Dun's Marco Polo. Hannigan, who has given more than 80 world premieres, sang the premiere with the Berlin Philharmonic under the direction of Andris Nelsons. A recording with Hannigan, Nelsons, and the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, will be released on January 8, 2016 on the Winter & Winter label.
Hannigan also gives the U.S. premiere of let me tell you with The Cleveland Orchestra and Music Director Franz Welser-Möst, first in Cleveland, January 14-15, and then at Carnegie Hall on January 17, 2016. She then performs the song-cycle in February with the Boston Symphony Orchestra and Andris Nelsons. In addition to the world premiere, Hannigan has sung every subsequent performance, and the U.S. is the tenth country to which she brings this “virtuosic, unconventional, enigmatic, and beautiful piece,” as the Berliner Zeitung said of the premiere.
let me tell you gives Ophelia the opportunity to retell her own story, using only the 481-word vocabulary given to her in Shakespeare‘s Hamlet. Griffiths says, “Ophelia is one of those imaginary figures whose existence goes on beyond the work that gave them birth. She has appeared in paintings and in novels, including the one that was the source for this piece. Now her words come back to her transformed, and she has gained, as she herself might say: The powers of music.” The piece uses microtonal tuning, rhythm that plays trick with time, and an adaptation of a technique used by Monteverdi to create, again in the words of Griffiths, music “at once familiar and strange.” It won the 2014 Royal Philharmonic Society Award for Large-Scale Composition.
In addition to the recording, there will be three American performances of the work, as follows:
January 14-15, 2016
Severance Hall, Cleveland
The Cleveland Orchestra
Franz Welser-Möst, conductor
Barbara Hannigan, soprano
Shostakovich: Symphony No. 4
Abrahamsen: let me tell you (U.S. Premiere)
January 17, 2016
Carnegie Hall, New York
The Cleveland Orchestra
Franz Welser-Möst, conductor
Barbara Hannigan, soprano
Shostakovich: Symphony No. 4
Abrahamsen: let me tell you (New York Premiere)
February 4-6, 2016
Boston Symphony Hall, Boston
Boston Symphony Orchestra
Andris Nelsons, conductor
Barbara Hannigan, soprano
Shostakovich: Suite from the incidental music to Hamlet
Abrahamsen: let me tell you (Boston Premiere)
Prokofiev: Suite from Romeo and Juliet
When Barbara Hannigan was asked to sing at a surprise birthday party for her friend, writer and critic Paul Griffiths, the simple request turned into an extensive collaboration with composer Hans Abrahamsen on a Berlin Philharmonic commission let me tell you, a song cycle based on text from Griffiths's experimental novella, narrated by Hamlet's Ophelia. The resulting 30-minute composition, divided into past, present, and future, is Abrahamsen's first major vocal work. It was recently awarded the prestigious 2016 Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition. Paul Griffiths also collaborated on a previous Grawemeyer Award-winning work, Tan Dun's Marco Polo. Hannigan, who has given more than 80 world premieres, sang the premiere with the Berlin Philharmonic under the direction of Andris Nelsons. A recording with Hannigan, Nelsons, and the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, will be released on January 8, 2016 on the Winter & Winter label.
Hannigan also gives the U.S. premiere of let me tell you with The Cleveland Orchestra and Music Director Franz Welser-Möst, first in Cleveland, January 14-15, and then at Carnegie Hall on January 17, 2016. She then performs the song-cycle in February with the Boston Symphony Orchestra and Andris Nelsons. In addition to the world premiere, Hannigan has sung every subsequent performance, and the U.S. is the tenth country to which she brings this “virtuosic, unconventional, enigmatic, and beautiful piece,” as the Berliner Zeitung said of the premiere.
let me tell you gives Ophelia the opportunity to retell her own story, using only the 481-word vocabulary given to her in Shakespeare‘s Hamlet. Griffiths says, “Ophelia is one of those imaginary figures whose existence goes on beyond the work that gave them birth. She has appeared in paintings and in novels, including the one that was the source for this piece. Now her words come back to her transformed, and she has gained, as she herself might say: The powers of music.” The piece uses microtonal tuning, rhythm that plays trick with time, and an adaptation of a technique used by Monteverdi to create, again in the words of Griffiths, music “at once familiar and strange.” It won the 2014 Royal Philharmonic Society Award for Large-Scale Composition.
In addition to the recording, there will be three American performances of the work, as follows:
January 14-15, 2016
Severance Hall, Cleveland
The Cleveland Orchestra
Franz Welser-Möst, conductor
Barbara Hannigan, soprano
Shostakovich: Symphony No. 4
Abrahamsen: let me tell you (U.S. Premiere)
January 17, 2016
Carnegie Hall, New York
The Cleveland Orchestra
Franz Welser-Möst, conductor
Barbara Hannigan, soprano
Shostakovich: Symphony No. 4
Abrahamsen: let me tell you (New York Premiere)
February 4-6, 2016
Boston Symphony Hall, Boston
Boston Symphony Orchestra
Andris Nelsons, conductor
Barbara Hannigan, soprano
Shostakovich: Suite from the incidental music to Hamlet
Abrahamsen: let me tell you (Boston Premiere)
Prokofiev: Suite from Romeo and Juliet
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