Barbara Hannigan, Katia and Marielle Labèque, David Chalmin: Electric Fields
Alpha Classics

The ever-adventurous soprano Barbara Hannigan builds on her singular discography by partnering with French multi-instrumentalist David Chalmin and pianists Katia and Marielle Labèque for a provocative new collaboration. Anyone who's followed the trajectory of Hannigan's recording career will recognize Electric Fields as one more wildly imaginative project to add to the ones before it. This is, after all, an artist whose Alpha Classics releases include ones featuring material by Berg, Mahler, Messiaen, and Schoenberg, but also Dance With Me, a song-based set extending from Glenn Miller and Kurt Weill to Xavier Cugat and even Barry Manilow. If there's a release that captures her different sides, it's probably 2017's Crazy Girl Crazy for coupling Berg and Berio with Gershwin.

Little needs to be said about the huge impact the Labèques have had as performers and recording artists since their careers began decades ago. For his part, Chalmin's collaborated with a wide range of artists and is a solo artist and a member of the bands Minimalist Dream House, Dream House Quartet, Triple Sun, and Ubunoir. While he sings and plays guitar in those contexts, on Electric Fields he's an electronic sound designer who creates arresting atmospheres and landscapes for the pieces. After the idea for the album was born in 2015, the collaborators came together over the ensuing years to craft the material until the project culminated in recordings made in December 2022 and September 2023 in France.

Introductory liner notes illuminate for acknowledging the genre-crossing nature of the project; in Hannigan's words, “We were at a loss to find a word to categorize the album from beginning to end.” There's meditative plainchant but also ambient drones and experimental soundscaping, and carefully scripted material rubs shoulders with free improvisation. In bringing together music by American composer Bryce Dessner and medieval mystic Hildegard von Bingen, the material is both new and centuries-old. Vernacular love songs by two Italian Baroque composer-performers, Barbara Strozzi and Francesca Caccini, also proved inspirational.

Lyrically, the texts, sung in Latin, French, and Italian, range from secular love songs to ones concerned with spiritual matters; the focal points for von Bingen's “O vis aeternitatis,” for example, are heavenly wisdom and divine mystery. Truth be told, you'll likely find yourself more swept away by Hannigan's vocal performances than fixate on the texts and their meanings. That possibility certainly arises when the set begins with Chalmin's arrangement of von Bingen's “O virga mediatrix,” a singlehanded reminder of Hannigan's stunning vocal gifts. With electronics and organ tones softly intoning behind, her voice first enters dreamily, wafting gently as if entranced, before swooping upwards and building to moments of controlled rapture. Pianos eventually enter six minutes into the performance to accompany the singer and guide the piece to a peaceful resolution. Chalmin's “Research #1,” a dramatic instrumental forcefield of pianos, synth textures, and electronics, follows, after which the most experimental treatment arrives. Based on fragments by Caccini and co-credited to Hannigan and Chalmin, “Che t'ho fatt'io?” sees her voice multiplied and splintered as a creeping electronic beat intones alongside and synthetic patterns entwine.

Midway through, respective settings by Dessner and Chalmin, “O orzchis Ecclesia” and “Lingua ignota,” incorporate von Bingen's customized text, Dessner's a sparkling piano-animated ode and Chalmin's a dazzling, incantatory panorama sprinkled with whispers, pianos, and ethereal choral drones. A Chalmin arrangement of Strozzi's “Che si può fare?” is preceded by a lengthy Strozzi-inspired improv treatment that gradually swells into a nightmarish, nerves-fraying exercise in macabre devilry and spirit-channeling. The original, which finds its protagonist pleading with the stars for romantic counsel, is a more straightforward affair, though it's no less affecting when it backs the desperate outpourings of the singer with an elegiac array of pianos and electronics; as transfixing is Hannigan's towering vocal delivery of von Bingen's text during Dessner's “O nobilissima viriditas.” The journey concludes with a Chalmin arrangement of von Bingen's “O vis aeternitatis” that, elevated by the soprano's intoxicating voice and dulcimer-like timbres, largely reinstates the meditative tone of the opener.

May 2025