Barbara Hannigan, LSO Associate Artist, opens the 2023/24 Season at the Barbican with four electrifying concerts. Here, she introduces her concerts.
‘There is a real sense of dark and light in the two programmes that open the 2023/24 season.
The opening concert could be summed up by the title of the piece by Claude Vivier: Where Are You Light!. It’s a searching programme, with music by Ligeti, Nono, Haydn, Vivier and Strauss. It’s searching for light, it’s about understanding the repercussions of the lives that we have lived. It has hope – in Strauss’ Death and Transfiguration – but also loss – in Ligeti’s Ramifications. There is a journey: we move from dark to light.
‘There is a journey: we move from dark to light.’
After this, we have a Half Six Fix concert and a programme focused on Stravinsky, where there is a lot of material for the Orchestra to absolutely shine. The ballet Pulcinella is a wonderful, characterful piece for three soloists and orchestra, very much Neo-Classical in style. Stravinsky took old music from different operas and did his Stravinsky thing – he played with it, changed the rhythms, and displaced the bar lines. I am thrilled to bring Haydn’s Symphony No 64, ‘Tempora mutantur’, to the programme … one of my all-time favorite composers, and this particular symphony moving firmly towards the modern and strange, in a very touching way.
And then we come to the end of Stravinsky’s Neo-Classical period with the Symphony in Three Movements, a piece that I absolutely love. It’s muscular, dynamic and bombastic at times – it’s really fun to conduct, and fun for the orchestra to play.’
