Let me tell you is a song cycle for soprano and orchestra by the Danish composer Hans Abrahamsen. The work was commissioned by the Berlin Philharmonic with support from the Danish Arts Foundation. It is based on the eponymous 2008 novel let me tell you by the writer Paul Griffiths. Its world premiere was given by the soprano Barbara Hannigan and the Berlin Philharmonic under the direction of Andris Nelsons on December 20, 2013. [1]
Let me tell you was Abrahamsen's second commission for the Berlin Philharmonic, following his 1981 orchestral composition Nacht und Trompeten. [2] It was written at the request of the soprano Barbara Hannigan, to whom the work is also dedicated. As in Griffiths's novel, the narrative follows the character Ophelia from Shakespeare's Hamlet as she tells her tragic story from her own perspective. Both the novel and the text of the song cycle are restricted to the 480 words used by Ophelia in the play. The piece was composed between 2012 and 2013. [1]
Let me tell you has a duration of approximately 30 minutes and is composed in three parts comprising a total of seven songs:
Part I:
Part II:
Part III:
Robert Kirzinger, in his programme notes to performance by Barbara Hannigan with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, describes the three parts as being focused on time and memory (Part I), love (Part II) and Part III with what Abrahamsen calls a snow landscape – an overarching mental state of snow, as in Schubert’s Winterreise . [3]
The work is scored for soprano solo and an orchestra consisting of the following instruments.
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Let me tell you has been highly praised by music critics. Andrew Clements of The Guardian called the piece "ravishingly and astonishingly beautiful" and wrote:
Abrahamsen's vocal writing makes much use of stile concitato, the repeated-note emphases that hark back to Monteverdi, and also exploits Hannigan's ability to rise effortlessly to the limits of the soprano range. And he surrounds the voice with glistening, deliquescent textures that can seem almost weightless until a growling line in the bass brings them fluttering to earth. The music sometimes seems as much an exercise in memory as the text, touching on familiar, tonal shapes and harmonies without being explicit and embracing microtones in the final section.
He concluded, "Hannigan soared above it all with consummate grace and ease, while Nelsons and the orchestra made every corner of the score shine. It's a very special piece indeed." [4]
Reviewing the New York City premiere, Anthony Tommasini of The New York Times called it "eerily alluring" and observed, "It's not often that a performance of a challenging new piece receives the kind of ovation typically awarded star virtuosi. But that's what happened on Sunday night at Carnegie Hall when the conductor Franz Welser-Möst led the Cleveland Orchestra in the New York premiere of the Danish composer Hans Abrahamsen's let me tell you." [5] Barbara Jepson of The Wall Street Journal similarly remarked, "The abstract musical idiom is mildly dissonant with occasional lyrical moments. By holding back any sustained sense of tonality until the final song, Mr. Abrahamsen delivers a powerfully affecting denouement." [6]
Reviewing a recording of the piece, Neil Fisher of Gramophone described it as "a richly theatrical journey" and wrote, "The spare yet pregnant lines of text meet Abrahamsen's finely spun textures and each word feels felt and weighed in music. Possibly you don't even need to know that Barbara Hannigan is singing Ophelia's words any more, yet her vehemence and passion suggest she thinks justice is finally being done to a woman who never did get much chance to tell her side of the story." [7] Kate Molleson of The Guardian called it "one of the most spellbindingly beautiful vocal-orchestral works of recent years." She added, "Abrahamsen's orchestral writing is typically spare and wintry – a magical panoply of spangly microtonal sounds come from Andris Nelsons and the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, but it's also darker, more lush and more bristling than his most austere works." [8]
In a 2019 poll of seven critics by The Guardian, the piece was ranked the greatest classical composition of the 21st century. [9]
Let me tell you won the 2016 Grawemeyer Award for music. [10] [11] [12] The director of the award Marc Satterwhite said of the piece, "The vocal lines exquisitely mirror Griffiths' fragile texts of the doomed Ophelia. The orchestra is a partner rather than mere accompanist and the composer draws a huge array of colors from the orchestra, delicate and shimmering more often than not, but occasionally in fuller force." [10] Abrahamsen recalled his reaction in an interview with Tom Huizenga of NPR, saying, "I remember the first time I heard about the award and heard that Lutosławski and Ligeti and others who won. I knew it was, and still is, a very prestigious prize. So when I heard that I had received it, I became very honored and very happy." [10]
A recording of let me tell you, performed by Hannigan and the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra under Andris Nelsons, was released through Winter & Winter Records on January 8, 2016. [7] [8]
Louis Joseph Andriessen was a Dutch composer, pianist and academic teacher. Considered the most influential Dutch composer of his generation, he was a central proponent of The Hague school of composition. Although his music was initially dominated by neoclassicism and serialism, his style gradually shifted to a synthesis of American minimalism, jazz and the manner of Stravinsky.
The War Requiem, Op. 66, is a British choral and orchestral composition by Benjamin Britten, composed mostly in 1961 and completed in January 1962. The War Requiem was performed for the consecration of the new Coventry Cathedral, which was built after the original fourteenth-century structure was destroyed in a World War II bombing raid. The traditional Latin texts are interspersed, in telling juxtaposition, with extra-liturgical poems by Wilfred Owen, written during World War I.
The Boston Symphony Orchestra (BSO) is an American orchestra based in Boston. It is the second-oldest of the five major American symphony orchestras commonly referred to as the "Big Five". Founded by Henry Lee Higginson in 1881, the BSO performs most of its concerts at Boston's Symphony Hall and in the summer performs at Tanglewood.
Stuart Oliver Knussen was a British composer and conductor.
Esa-Pekka Salonen is a Finnish conductor and composer. He is the music director of the San Francisco Symphony and conductor laureate of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Philharmonia Orchestra in London and the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra.
Hans Abrahamsen is a Danish composer born in Kongens Lyngby near Copenhagen. His Let me tell you (2013), a song cycle for soprano and orchestra, was ranked by music critics at The Guardian as the finest work of the 21st-century. His opera The Snow Queen was commissioned and premiered by the Royal Danish Theatre in 2019.
The Edison Award is an annual Dutch music prize awarded for outstanding achievements in the music industry. It is comparable to the American Grammy Award. The Edison award itself is a bronze replica of a statuette of Thomas Edison, designed by the Dutch sculptor Pieter d'Hont. It is one of the oldest music awards in the world, first presented in 1960 at the inaugural Grand Gala du Disque.
The Nordic Council Music Prize is awarded annually by NOMUS, the Nordic Music Committee. Every two years it is awarded for a work by a living composer. In the intervening years it is awarded to a performing musician or ensemble.
Ophelia, a character in William Shakespeare's drama Hamlet, is often referred to in literature and the arts, often in connection to suicide, love, and/or mental instability.
Andris Nelsons is a Latvian conductor. He is currently music director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra and Gewandhauskapellmeister of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra. He was previously music director of the Latvian National Opera, chief conductor of the Nordwestdeutsche Philharmonie, and music director of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra.
Michel van der Aa is a Dutch composer of contemporary classical music.
Paul Anthony Griffiths is a British music critic, novelist and librettist. He is particularly noted for his writings on modern classical music and for having written the libretti for two 20th-century operas, Tan Dun's Marco Polo and Elliott Carter's What Next?.
Barbara Hannigan is a Canadian soprano and conductor, known for her performances of contemporary opera.
Let me tell you may refer to:
This article lists major events and other topics related to classical music in 2016.
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