Canadian soprano and conductor Barbara Hannigan is acclaimed for her prodigious vocal range, dramatic intensity, and the adventurous approach that she brings to both conducting and singing. A champion of contemporary music, Hannigan has collaborated with leading composers and conductors: she has had works dedicated to her by the likes of George Benjamin, Hans Abrahamsen and Unsuk Chin. It’s this willingness to take risks, along with an ability to breathe life into some of the most challenging and avant-garde works in the repertoire, that has set Hannigan apart as a unique and fearless artist.
For our July 2024 issue, Barbara Hannigan spoke to BBC Music Magazine about three memorable recordings: a finest moment, a fondest memory, and a work she’d like to revisit.
Barbara Hannigan on her finest moment
La Passione
LUDWIG Orchestra/Barbara Hannigan (soprano) Alpha Classics ALPHA586 (2020)
La Passione was truly a collaborative effort and is particularly special to me. I chose three works which were linked by themes of loss, grief and rebirth: Luigi Nono’s Djamila Boupacha for solo voice, Haydn’s Symphony No. 49 and Gérard Grisey’s Quatre chants pour franchir le seuil.
Each work makes intense demands both technically and emotionally; everyone has to dig deep. The Grisey is perhaps one of the most heartbreaking and powerful works I have ever encountered, a journey through death and beyond. And the Nono stretches the soaring vocal line from oppression towards hope.
I was surrounded by a trusted team with whom I had worked for years, beginning with the musicians of the Dutch collective LUDWIG. We recorded the album in Holland at the end of several months of intense touring – we were a tight-knit group by then and working together was joyful. This was my third album with Alpha Classics, who have supported and understood my repertoire combinations and choices.
Recording engineer Guido Tichelman was at my side not only for the recording, but also travelled to my home, where we spent days editing and mixing the album. We’ve been friends and colleagues for over two decades and the ease and joy with which we work is precious to me. The cover image was from an unforgettable underwater photo shoot I did with Elmer de Haas.
Her fondest memory
Satie Socrate
Barbara Hannigan (soprano), Reinbert de Leeuw (piano) Winter & Winter 9102342 (2015)
Whenever I think of Reinbert de Leeuw, the pianist, conductor, composer and champion of contemporary music, I think of space and time, because his feeling for both is unlike anything I’ve ever encountered. He has been a mentor and friend to me, and I still feel his presence strongly. This recording created a beautiful, delicate world and I think it helped me to find a very delicate vocal sound in the recording studio which I had not explored before.
I had been working with Reinbert since 1999, but finally in 2015 we recorded our first album together for voice and piano. We combined some very early songs of Erik Satie with his last major work, Socrate. The album was planned quickly, at the moment when Reinbert’s health began to fail (he passed away in early 2020), and we knew we only had limited years left to work together.
Sometimes during the sessions I had to pinch myself, flooded with memories of listening to Reinbert’s famous Satie records when I was a student in Canada, with no clue that he and I would become such close musical partners. Photographer Elmer de Haas captured probably my all-time favourite album cover with this shot through a window during a break – of Reinbert smoking his usual hand-rolled shag cigarette, with me in the background.
Barbara Hannigan: ‘I’d like another go at…’
Berg Lulu
Barbara Hannigan (soprano) et al; Orchestre symphonique de la Monnaie/Paul Daniel Bel Air Classiques BAC109 (2014)
Don’t get me wrong, I have a lot of wonderful memories of this recording. It was the first time I’d worked with director Krzysztof Warlikowski, and more than ten years later my feet are still recovering from being on pointe shoes for more than half the opera (but would I do it again? Oh, yeah.) He and I have gone on to do another three operas together, plus two stagings of Socrate with Reinbert de Leeuw.
My first Lulu happened during a decade when I had the fortune to be a part of several powerful operatic productions (Benjamin’s Written on Skin, Brett Dean’s Hamlet, Bernd Alois Zimmermann’s Die Soldaten, Toshio Hosokawa’s Matsukaze, and Debussy‘s Pelléas et Mélisande). I was on a constant learning curve and every director I was working with opened up new possibilities.
As everyone who has sung Lulu knows, she does not let you go easily. I sang my most recent performances in 2021, and I don’t expect to sing her again (never say never). The next time I will rekindle this love affair will be from the podium in the pit. I can’t wait.
Four works composed for Barbara Hannigan
Gerald Barry La plus forte (2007)
Based on Strindberg’s play The Stronger, Barry’s 20-minute opera has a cast of one. ‘Hannigan rattles off the machine-gun word-setting with aplomb,’ enthused The Guardian about her mastery of Barry’s hugely testing monologue.
George Benjamin Written on skin (2012)
Benjamin’s darkly disturbing opera won the BBC Music Magazine Premiere Award back in 2014. Reviewing the work’s UK premiere, our critic Helen Wallace described Hannigan, playing Agnès, as ‘mesmerising’, adding that the soprano ‘generates, controls and luxuriates in her own eroticism’.
- Written on Skin featured in our poll of the six greatest contemporary operas
Hans Abrahamsen Let me tell you (2013)
The Danish composer made full use of Hannigan’s extraordinary range in writing this song cycle, which tells the story of Shakespeare’s Ophelia from the character’s own perspective.
‘Hannigan embodies Ophelia with unconditional claim and leads her soprano effortlessly from deep depths to the highest heights,’ wrote the Neue Zürcher Zeitung of a performance last year.
Unsuk Chin Le Silence de Sirènes (2014)
‘She could easily wreck a fleet of ships if she so desired,’ wrote the Financial Times about Hannigan’s alluring performance in Unsuk Chin‘s Homer/Joyce-inspired work for soprano and orchestra. ‘Her theatrical energy, her effortless heights and unearthly precision all become part of a seductive whole.’