H. Abrahamsen: Let Me Tell You Barbara Hannigan & Reinbert de Leeuw

• 1 Let Me Tell You How It Was 03:51
• 2 O but Memory Is Not One but Many 02:51
• 3 There Was a Time, I Remember 06:00
• 4 Let Me Tell You How It Is 02:03
• 5 Now I Do Not Mind 06:14
• 6 I Know You Are There 01:01
• 7 I Will Go out Now 10:43
• Total Runtime 32:43

Info for H. Abrahamsen: Let Me Tell You

Premiered by soprano Barbara Hannigan [with the Berlin Philharmonic] and conductor Andris Nelsons in 2013. 'Let me tell you', winner of the 2016 Gawemeyer Award, is a setting of a libretto by Paul Griffiths. The work is based on Griffiths’ 2008 novel of the same name, using the limited vocabulary which Shakespeare afforded Ophelia to create a more complex idea of the character. Comprising seven poems, the work is divided into three parts devoted to Ophelia’s past, present and future.

Danish composer Hans Abrahamsen was smitten by the idea of scoring Paul Griffiths’ novella 'let me tell you'; Barbara Hannigan, asked to sing at a surprise party for the writer and critic, dared to suggest a commission to the Berlin Philharmonic. Before she knew it, they had accepted. While many world premieres fall into oblivion, she has ensured subsequent performances with the Gothenburg Symphony, Rotterdam Philharmonic and the City of Birmingham Symphony this season; other orchestras have plans to programme the work further down the line.

The soprano, who has sung some 80 premieres, feels such a strong sense of responsibility that she compares the piece to a baby: "Don’t drop it," she wants to say, "keep it clothed and nourished."

This is the second time that a musical setting of a text by Paul Griffiths has won the Grawemeyer (Tan Dun's Marco Polo won in 1998). The piece also won the 2014 Royal Philharmonic Society award for large-scale composition, which described it as "a work of exquisite beauty whose ravishing surface belies a meticulously imagined and innovative score". Abrahamsen’s other accolades include the Carl Nielsen Prize (1989) and the Wilhelm Hansen Composer Prize (1998). Hannigan has revealed just how involved she was at the early stages of the composition process: this being the composer’s first sung work, she [Hannigan] gave him a four-hour session in vocal music from Renaissance to 12-tone. "I think that’s why the writing doesn’t feel like modern music to me," she says. "I feel like it has always been there. Even though the intervals and rhythms might be difficult, the lyricism has a timeless quality."

Barbara Hannigan, soprano
Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks
Andris Nelsons, conductor

Barbara Hannigan
is known worldwide as a soprano of vital expressive force directed by exceptional technique. She is now bringing that same high energy and expertise to her varied activities as a conductor while continuing to work, as a singer, with the most prominent maestros, including Simon Rattle, Kent Nagano, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Andris Nelsons, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Kirill Petrenko, David Zinman, Vladimir Jurowski, Antonio Pappano, Pierre Boulez, Alan Gilbert and Reinbert De Leeuw.

Blessed with a voice at once pure and hot, she has arrived, through challenging and diverse repertory choices, at a point of complete control, intensity and versatility. She also possesses an exciting stage presence, whether in opera or on the concert platform. Much sought after in contemporary music (she has given over 80 world premieres), she is no less brilliant and devoted a performer of Baroque and Classical music. Bringing freshness to older music and authority to new, she is among the very few singers whose every performance is an occasion.

She is a frequent guest of the Berliner Philharmoniker, who commissioned for her Hans Abrahamsen’s symphonic song cycle let me tell you, a work which her performances has rapidly launched around the world. In 2014 she had the rare honour of an invitation as Artiste Étoile to the Lucerne Festival, where she conducted, gave master classes, and premiered an orchestral work written for her by Unsuk Chin.

György Ligeti and Henri Dutilleux both regarded her as their soprano of choice. Her startling performances of Ligeti’s Mysteries of the Macabre has been acclaimed widely, as has her expressive fullness in Dutilleux’s Correspondances. Her recording of this work has garnered awards from Grammophone, Edison, and Victoires de la Musique. Other awards include “Sängerin des Jahres” (Opernwelt, 2013), and Personalité Musicale de l’Année (Syndicat de la Presse Francaise, 2012). She has worked extensively with Pierre Boulez, George Benjamin, Gerald Barry, Salvatore Sciarrino, Pascal Dusapin and Hans Abrahamsen, among a long list of composers.

Part of Hannigan’s outstanding quality comes from bringing to the concert platform the dramatic verve and character one might expect on the opera stage – and from retaining, as an opera performer, all the musicianship she displays as a concert artist. She is, whether in concert hall or opera house, a full being. And she has worked tirelessly with directors and conductors to achieve that fullness, and to go on expanding it.

Unforgettable opera appearances have included most recently an extraordinary embodying of the title role in Lulu, in Krszysztof Warlikowski’s staging at La Monnaie, and a fearless interpretation of Marie as a flame in the darkness of Zimmermann’s Die Soldaten at the Bayerische Staatsoper, a hugely acclaimed presentation directed by Andreas Kriegenberg and conducted by Kirill Petrenko. To the premiere production of George Benjamin’s Written on Skin she brought a gripping portrayal of a young woman in dawning self-realization, which she performed most recently at New York’s Mostly Mozart Festival. She also sang the role of Donna Anna in Mozart’s Don Giovanni in another Warlikowski production at La Monnaie. She has worked extensively with choreographer Sasha Waltz on productions of Hosokawa’s Matsukaze and Dusapin’s Passion, thoroughly utilizing her physical as well as vocal agility. In the 2015 – 2016 season she will sing Mélisande at Festival Aix-en-Provence and La Voix humaine at Paris Opera. Future seasons will add the world premieres of Gerald Barry’s Alice in Wonderland and Ophelia in Brett Dean’s Hamlet, to the repertory of characters she vividly inhabits.

She is steadily developing her range as a conductor. From a first and much applauded debut conducting Stravinsky’s Renard at the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris, she has gone on to work with orchestras including the Göteborgs Symfoniker, WDR Symphony Orchestra, Mahler Chamber Orchestra and l’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in Rome. As a performer herself, she enjoys a warm rapport with orchestral players, and this communicates itself in her concerts, while her programming has music old and new striking sparks off each other. Her conducting debut at the Concertgebouw with Ludwig Orchestra, won the Ovatie 2014 award for best classical concert of the year in the Netherlands.

Her 2015 – 2016 season further sees her as Artist in Residence with the Gothenburg and Bamberg Symphony Orchestras, both as soprano and conductor. She will also conduct the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, Mahler Chamber Orchestra and Münich Philharmonic. She will give the US premiere of Hans Abrahamsen’s let me tell you with the Cleveland Orchestra under Welser-Möst, both in Cleveland and at Carnegie Hall, before performing this with the Boston Symphony Orchestra and Andris Nelsons. A recording of this work with Hannigan, Nelsons and the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra will be released on the Winter & Winter label in January 2016.

Barbara Hannigan’s life as an artist has been the subject of two documentaries: Accentus Music’s awarded documentary I’m a creative animal produced at Lucerne Festival 2014 where she was Artist in Residence and the Dutch NTR Canadees Podiumdier (NTR 2014). Other projects include a filmic poem for the female voice by French filmmaker Mathieu Amalric and an exhibit of 3D photography by Philippe Cometti at the Maison Européenne de la Photographie in Paris.

Reinbert de Leeuw
born in Amsterdam, is a pianist, conductor and composer. Since 1974 he has been conductor and music director of the Schönberg Ensemble. He is also author of a book on Charles Ives and a book with musical essays and has collaborated on 8 film documentary series of twentieth-century composers such as Messiaen, Ligeti, Gubaidulina, Vivier, Górecki shown on dutch television and which have won international acclaim.

Reinbert de Leeuw regularly conducts Holland's foremost orchestras and ensembles e.g. the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra. He has toured and performed in festivals worldwide. He was guest artistic director of the Aldeburgh Festival (1992) and was artistic director of the Tanglewood Festival of Contemporary Music (1994-1998). In the 1995-96 season he was the centre point of the 'Carte Blanche' series in the Concertgebouw Amster¬dam. He is involved in the organization of the series 'Contemporaries' at the Concertgebouw Amsterdam.

He is a regular guest in most European countries, the United States, Japan and Australia where he has served as artistic advisor for the contemporary music series of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra from 2000 up to 2004. During that period he has conducted several concerts in Sydney and the Brisbane Festival. Reinbert de Leeuw has been involved in various opera productions at the Netherlands Opera in Amsterdam. His recent productions were Strawinsky (a.o. “The Rake’s progress”), Andriessen (“Rosa, a Horse drama”, “Writing to Vermeer”) Ligeti (“Le Grand Macabre”) and Vivier (“Rêves d’un Marco Polo”).

His recordings as a pianist have won many prizes, including the Dutch Edison, the Premio della critica discografica Italiana, the Grand Prix of the Hungarian Liszt Society and the Diapason D'Or. Some 30 recordings as a conductor have been brought out by Philips, teldec, DGG, Electra Nonesuch, Ovidis Montaigne and cover a wide range of repertoire by Messiaen, Strawinsky, Janacek, Liszt, Gubaidulina, Oestvolskaya, Schönberg, Webern, Vivier, Andriessen and Reich.

Reinbert de Leeuw has received the Sikkens Award (1991) and the prestigious '3M' prize (1992) and in 1994 was made Honorary Doctor at the University of Utrecht and is Professor at the University of Leiden.

Reinbert de Leeuw has been co-founder and from 2001-2010 artistic director of the Summer Academy, the international orchestra and ensemble academy of the National Youth Orchestra. For his performance of Messiaen’s “Des Canyons aux Etoiles” with the Summer Academy Orchestra in 2006, he received the ‘Angel’ for the best performance during the Edinburgh Festival.

Booklet for H. Abrahamsen: Let Me Tell You