Soprano and conductor Barbara Hannigan on her concert programme

She looks back fondly on the 2022 concerts. She had put together the programme with great care. ‘It was so special. Pierre Audi [who died on 2 May this year, ed.] had created such an atmosphere with his mise en espace, along with Jean Kalman’s lighting design. I like to experience a concert as a ritual. And the orchestra embraced the repertoire. They were extremely well prepared. It was the top of the top.’ Interviewed at the time, Hannigan indicated that there are orchestras that primarily respond to technical language, but for some, a metaphor is enough. With the Concertgebouw Orchestra, she says, ‘you can speak to them in any way, but what I loved was how they were immediately responsive to the metaphor. And that’s the way I love to work. I’m really excited to be coming back.’

Seeking connection and letting go

As she’s often done before, Hannigan’s upcoming programme has an underlying dramatic concept. ‘I think about it for a long time, and I keep changing things. I’m so happy that I had the space to do that. This programme is about seeking connection and letting go. Every single piece has elements of generosity, of possibility, as well as of the letting go. The opening with Je ne suis pas une fable à conter by Golfam Khayam is a wonderful invitation; it says “please listen, and please speak”. Not long after my debut with the Concertgebouw Orchestra, I attended an online event in support of Persian culture. Golfam, who lives in Teheran, contacted me, introduced herself to me and thanked me for what I was doing. It was right before Christmas, I had the time and I was just curious, so I looked up her music. And I thought, “Oh, she’s a really interesting composer!” We both had a strong urge to work together. I commissioned her privately to write a piece for soprano and orchestra, and together we chose a text by Ahmad Shamlou. Within three months the piece was finished, and I performed the premiere that same season. Sometimes you have to bypass the usual organizations and just do it.’ Improvisation is a significant aspect of the piece. Hannigan: ‘It requires an open mind and heart. It’s individual; it’s not like the whole violin section plays the same thing at the same time, not at all. They have to play their own ideas. They can also choose silence, which is also a metaphor as well, that they can choose to speak and they can also choose silence. Every performance is an extraordinary new experience…every orchestra offers different material and a different energy. I’m sure the Concertgebouw Orchestra will be completely on board with improvising, with taking ownership of the piece. It’s a powerful piece to open a concert and I’m looking forward to it so much.’

A poignant dialogue

In Joseph Haydn’s ‘Farewell Symphony’, the musicians leave the stage one by one as the symphony comes to an end. Although it’s often staged as a joke, for Hannigan it’s ‘an extremely poignant dialogue, very intimate. I don’t think it’s a funny piece at all, and I really take it very seriously. I think about the loss of collective rhetoric as the piece goes on. Music as dialogue, as rhetoric, is the basis of all my work, and all my perception of music. I really believe that music is functional. It may function as entertainment, but it also functions as a mirror for us and for society, and for emotions and for communication.

‘Luonnotar by Jean Sibelius is a kind of creation myth, born of a combination of loneliness and generosity. Luonnotar, a spirit of the air, descends to the water and swims for something like 800 years. She swims in all directions, but she finds no one. Then a sea bird appears in the sky, also looking all over for somewhere to lay her eggs. Luonnotar seems to realize that she needs to lift her knee to make a place for the bird.’ Hannigan (by her own admission a real ‘water creature’ who grew up at the edge of a lake) can imagine holding one knee up above the surface while treading water. ‘You can’t do that for very long. So the eggs fall and break, and the shells form the vault of heaven. The world is actually created out of destruction.’ She notes that both Luonnotar and the bird are lonely, and that ‘the music expresses this deep melancholy, a deep loneliness and sadness.’

Richard Strauss’ Tod und Verklärung also has to do with the theme of seeking connection and letting go. ‘How do we deal with our emotions, and our fear: do we fight it or accept it? How do we deal with the fact that there are things we can’t always change? It’s funny to think that Strauss was so young when he wrote this piece. The long lines and their direction of those lines are important in this music, and I pay a lot of attention to them in rehearsals. How can we express Strauss’ intentions as well as possible, in a way that takes into account the this orchestra’s singularity and the beautiful, resonant acoustics of the Main Hall?’

Breathing together

Hannigan will not only conduct this time, she’ll sing as well. ‘I’ve performed the works by Khayam and Sibelius with different orchestras and my first thought with the Sibelius was “I have to sing this with the Concertgebouw Orchestra”, with this orchestra, in this hall, with this audience.’ Asked if singing and conducting at the same time gives her a different relationship to the music, she answers, ‘If you’d asked me this question ten years ago, I might have said yes. But no, now it doesn’t. Basically, I need to be in a deep connection with the breath. I think I’m probably more courageous now to insist that that spaciousness is the right route for me. I even give breath masterclasses when the orchestra members request it. That really changes the way that we work together. Because everyone is breathing along with me, the orchestra connects with me in a different way. When I’m singing, I don’t conduct in an orthodox way. I give signals, but I have the orchestra take a lot of responsibility. The signals system is also more powerful.’

Starting a career as a conductor was never a conscious back-up plan for if she had to stop singing. ‘It never entered my mind.’ Laughing, she adds, ‘I’ll sing as long as I want to sing, and as far as singing in public goes, ones has to choose repertoire that’s suitable for the instrument. The conducting simply happened because it was a part of me that needed to be explored. And if composing needs to be explored, I probably would explore that.’