Nordic noir on screen is all very fine (see Saga and Sofia!); but on Thursday I went to hear an inspiring (rather than bleak) wintry concert at the Barbican, with the spellbinding combo of Barbara Hannigan (see also here) and S-S-Simon Rattle programme notes here).

At the heart of the concert was Hans Abrahamsen’s magical let me tell you (2013), with lyrics by Paul Griffiths. It has already become a classic among orchestral song cycles—to follow Nuits d’été and Shéhérazade, the Wesendonck and Altenberg lieder, the Rückert lieder, and the Four last songs.

I don’t need to add to all the praise (reviews here), but as well as the three creators discussing the piece, do also watch Hannigan’s own reflections:

As she suggests, this re-imagining of Ophelia’s monologue is enriched by the following 500 years of female experience. With her utterance at once fragile and resolute, the result is not bleak but luminous. And Hannigan is just mesmerizing on stage, embodying the role—one of the great singers (see also my Playlist of songs).

The cycle was also part of the CBSO Prom in 2016 (from 11.00), with the excellent Mirga Grazinyte-Tyla conducting:

At the Barbican the other day Let me tell you was sandwiched [Aww, no smorgasbord?—Ed.]* between two challenging symphonies, which S-Simon conducted from memory. He describes Sibelius 7 (1924, one of his last works before he devoted himself more single-mindedly to the bottle) as “almost like a scream” (cf. Mahler 10). (Sibelius makes a flimsy pretext to remind you of this post on Finno–Ugric musicking).

Nielsen aged about 14.

Carl Nielsen’s 4th symphony (“The inextinguishable”, or even Det uudslukkelige) (1916), like his 5th (for whose snare-drum part I hereby nominate Li Manshan), is a battle with chaos. Though Denmark wasn’t directly touched by the war, its echoes are clear. But again, with its incandescent ending in E major (cf. Bruckner 7 and the home key of Chinese ritual wind ensembles!), the overall mood is far from bleak.

To harp (nyckelharpa? Another world fiddle for our list) on the folk angle, whereas other composers like Bartók approached their local traditions as outsiders, Nielsen came from a poor peasant background as a brass player and traditional fiddler on the island of Funen.

Getting to know both the music of Sibelius and Nielsen in my teens thanks to enterprising amateur orchestras, I must have been vaguely aware of Nordic gloom, but in my callow youth I suspect I heard “classical music” as a monolith, hardly discerning regional, temporal, or personal diversity.

The concert made an evening that was both disorienting and inspiring. Live performances by Barbara Hannigan are not to be missed.

* SJ: Not today, but I can offer you “pining for the Fjordiligis”.