Gérard Grisey's Quatre chants pour franchir le seuil ("Four Songs for Crossing the Threshold," 1999) was one of the last things he composed before his sudden death from a brain aneurysm. To call it a foreshadowing is on the mystical side, but it's quite a haunting work, comprising four separate "deaths" (of the Angel, of Civilization, of the Voice, and of Humanity), followed by a tender Berceuse that will touch even those not attuned to the work's sparse modernist language. Remarkably, Hannigan both sings and conducts the ...
Read More
Gérard Grisey's Quatre chants pour franchir le seuil ("Four Songs for Crossing the Threshold," 1999) was one of the last things he composed before his sudden death from a brain aneurysm. To call it a foreshadowing is on the mystical side, but it's quite a haunting work, comprising four separate "deaths" (of the Angel, of Civilization, of the Voice, and of Humanity), followed by a tender Berceuse that will touch even those not attuned to the work's sparse modernist language. Remarkably, Hannigan both sings and conducts the Ludwig Orchestra in this work for soprano and 15 musicians; apparently, no videos of how she accomplished this have surfaced, but it would be fascinating to see how she did it. Hannigan joins the Grisey to two other works, possibly concerned with death: Luigi Nono's "Djamila Boupacha" for solo soprano, about the death of an Algerian revolutionary, and Haydn's Symphony No. 49 in F minor, H. 1/499, subtitled "La Passione." The subtitle was not Haydn's, and there is some question as to...
Read Less
Portions of content provided by Rovi Corporation. © 2024 Rovi Corporation.