Encore Artists

BARBARA HANNIGAN La Passione

Luigi Nono; Franz Joseph Haydn; Gérard Grisey

New album out 20 March 2020 (Alpha Classics)

Barbara Hannigan releases her second album as soprano and conductor with Dutch orchestra LUDWIG, following on from Crazy Girl Crazy which won the 2018 GRAMMY Award for Best Classical Solo Vocal album.

La Passione juxtaposes works by (1924-1990), Franz Joseph Haydn (1732-1809) and Gérard Grisey (1946-1998), offering a triptych of perspectives on death and transfiguration. The album opens with Nono’s powerful Djamila Boupacha for solo soprano, inspired by the young Algerian woman who became a symbol of the injustice leading to the French-Algerian war. Hannigan calls the work: “an homage to the courage of a voice. Since I began singing this aria over 10 years ago, it has become part of my exploration of the modern bel canto.”

The album continues with Haydn’s Symphony no. 49, with Hannigan conducting LUDWIG orchestra. The evocative work - later given the epithet La Passione, recalling the universal experience of loss and grieving - is tragic and theatrical in its very nature and considered by the Canadian artist as a journey of souls: the ones enduring on earth and the ones who have departed.

The recording concludes with Gérard Grisey’s striking meditation on death and the afterlife, Quatre chants pour franchir le seuil [Four Songs to Cross the Threshold], which Hannigan sings and conducts. She comments “Confused, tender, angry and curious, full of breath and rhythm, at the edge of technical virtuosity and discipline: these Four Songs for 15 instruments and soprano (let us say, 16 voices) demand everything of us.”

Barbara Hannigan continues: “I have been performing and exploring these works for many years and they have left deep imprints. The vocal writing of Luigi Nono’s Djamila Boupacha echoes the characteristically ‘sturm und drang’ Haydn Symphony no. 49, as well as the peaceful and lyrical moments within the Grisey.”

Encore Artists

This season Barbara Hannigan will perform works from the album throughout various concerts across Europe, notably with Orchestre philharmonique de Radio with whom she begins her three-year artist in residence tenure from spring 2020, as well as with Danish National Symphony Orchestra and Munich Philharmonic. She also continues her tenure with Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra, with whom she is Principal Guest Conductor, and will conduct Orchestre philharmonique de Radio France and Munich Philharmonic with singers from her Equilibrium Young Artists mentoring initiative, which she founded in 2017 to support and develop young professional musicians in the first substantial phase of their careers. Works include Mozart Requiem and Stravinsky’s complete Pulcinella.

The release of the new album in spring 2020 coincides with a concentration of major events in Barbara Hannigan’s calendar. In April 2020 she will receive ’s highest musical honour, the Leonie Sonning prize, in recognition of her ground-breaking excellence in music. Previous winners include , , and . In May 2020 Hannigan conducts and takes on the role of vocal soloist in Mahler Symphony No.4 with Munich Philharmonic, who originally premiered the work in 1901. She also sings her seminal role of Berg’s Lulu in concert with , conducted by Franz Welser-Möst.

LA PASSIONE CONTACT LUIGO NONO Djamila Boupacha (1962) Encore Artists JOSEPH HAYDN Symphony no. 49 La Passione (1768) Samantha Holderness GERARD GRISEY Quatre chants pour franchir le seuil (1998) www.encore-artists.com Tel: +44 7816 893189 BARBARA HANNIGAN, soprano and conductor [email protected] LUDWIG Orchestra

CD ALPHA586 // GLOBAL RELEASE DATE: 20 MARCH 2020

Barbara Hannigan / album-related performances in 2020 24 March Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France / Aix en Provence / Nono; Haydn; Schoenberg; Mozart 27 March Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France / Paris / Nono; Haydn; Schoenberg; Mozart 28 March: Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France / Soissons / Nono; Haydn; Schoenberg; Mozart 23 April: Danish National Symphony Orchestra / / Haydn 27 May: Munich Philharmonic / Munich / Nono; Haydn 28 May: Munich Philharmonic / Dresden / Nono; Haydn 24 June: Festival de St. Denis / Paris / Grisey

For full concert dates please visit: www.barbarahannigan.com/schedule/

About Barbara Hannigan Embodying music with an unparalleled dramatic sensibility, soprano and conductor Barbara Hannigan is an artist at the forefront of creation. Her artistic colleagues include Christoph Marthaler, , Sasha Waltz, Kent Nagano, Vladimir Jurowski, John Zorn, Andreas Kriegenburg, , Reinbert de Leeuw, David Zinman, Antonio Pappano, Katie Mitchell, Kirill Petrenko, and Krszysztof Warlikowski. As a singer, conductor the Canadian musician has shown a profound commitment to the music of our time and has given the world première performances of over 85 new creations. Hannigan has collaborated extensively with composers including Boulez, Zorn, Dutilleux, Ligeti, Stockhausen, Sciarrino, Barry, Dusapin, Dean, Benjamin and Abrahamsen. Barbara Hannigan’s 2019/20 season marks the beginning of her Principal Guest Conductor role at Gothenburg Symphony. She also has engagements with London Symphony Orchestra, Toronto Symphony Orchestra, Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra, Münchner Philharmoniker, Danish National Symphony Orchestra and the Cleveland Orchestra, and will be artist in residence at Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France. Hannigan performed the role of Gerda in Bayerische Staatsoper’s production of Hans Abrahamsen’s . She also continues her acclaimed work with Equilibrium Young Artists mentoring initiative, which she launched in 2017. April 2020 will see Hannigan awarded the prestigious Léonie Sonning Music Prize. www.barbarahannigan.com

Encore Artists

About LUDWIG Orchestra In 2011 a group of inspired Dutch musicians created a new collective of top players and creative thinkers; an ensemble to distinguish itself artistically by way of its programming range and flexibility. They named it LUDWIG, after Beethoven, the first cultural entrepreneur of classical music. LUDWIG varies in size, appearing as a single soloist, and expanding to small ensemble, chamber orchestra, or full size symphony orchestra. With their insistence on high quality performance, fearless élan and contemporary vision in new and established repertoire, LUDWIG shot to prominence in the and abroad in a short time, winning the 2014 ovation prize from the concert halls of The Netherlands for their Concertgebouw debut with Barbara Hannigan. While they perform in traditional concert halls and festivals, they also initiate out-of-the-ordinary art and music collaborations. They recently worked with neuroscientists, care workers and technologists in creating "music and the brain", an ongoing project illuminating the role of music in mental and physical behavioural disorders. Their programme "the dancing brain" combined ballroom dance music and neuropsychology. In 2018 LUDWIG created a pop-up museum "drowned land" presenting a wide variety of climate change-related artworks and installations. LUDWIG has maintained an ongoing collaboration with Barbara Hannigan since 2012, and together recorded their first album in 2017, “Crazy Girl Crazy", which went on to win numerous international awards including the 2018 Grammy. In spring 2019 Hannigan and LUDWIG toured to Europe's major halls as well as to the Ojai and Aldeburgh festivals, with a total of nine different programmes, with repertoire including Stravinsky's The Rake's Progress and Pulcinella, Schoenberg's Verklaerte Nacht, Vivier's Lonely Child, Grisey's Quatre Chants pour Franchir le Seuil, and Haydn Symphony no. 49. LUDWIG is financially supported by Amerborgh and the City of Amsterdam's art fund. www.ludwig-orchestra.com/