Hans Abrahamsen, let me tell you, Barbara Hanningan Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks/Andris Nelsons (Winter & Winter).By some distance, the highlight of the Proms I heard on the radio or saw on the telly this year was this piece, yet another work generated by Hamlet on a day when the arrival of Ian McEwan's Nutshell is imminent.
I hadn't been interested in the idea of a David Bowie Prom but was glad to admit how wrong I was when I heard the later stages on the radio as it happened and so made sure of seeing the recording on BBC4. Barenboim is, of course, doing his marvellous stuff still and there have been equally great things not only in the Albert Hall but in the Cadogan, too. But those are somehow to be taken for granted, however spoilt we may be, whereas a piece by a contemporary composer that quite shocks one into such spellbound submission is an entirely different thing.
I don't want to believe we live in an impoverished age of art where so many poets are effectively state-sponsored by the proliferation of creative writing professorships, visual art is abused as an offshoot of the financial markets and contemporary composers still seem to think that a shrill blast on the trumpet will shock us. Oh, come on. These fractured outbursts of brass and percussion are as commonplace as the same concerto that Vivaldi (quite gorgeously) is said to have written 500 times.
But I do want to believe that the period I've lived through has produced at least some music that can be put alongside the most memorable of other periods. In James MacMillan's Seven Last Words from the Cross and Veni, Veni, Emannuel, Gorecki's Symphony of Sorrowful Songs or Tavener's Protecting Veil, just as the examples that first come to mind, I'm sure there are such things and hearing this piece and being immediately compelled to order the disc, I think there might be another to add to the list.
I thought at first it was not a new release but it says here © 2016 so it's going to be quite some debate about what was the best disc of the year this time. Hans Abrahamsen is Danish and his discography goes back to 1973 so he has not become an overnight sensation overnight.
The work is based on words spoken by Ophelia from a novella by Paul Griffiths but they are words chosen from the part to say as much about music as about a young girl driven mad or anything else Shakespeare had in mind,
a long music we have made
and will make again
over and over.
It is compelling enough on disc with Barbara Hanningan lingering in those registers explored by The Queen of the Night, but rather than giving a pyrotechnic display of bravura, it is still, contemplative and other-worldly but nonetheless one of those occasions on which even though the recording is immaculate and captures the piece better than I thought it might, it can be no substitute for being there, or the remote second-best of hearing it on the radio, being stopped in one's tracks and then catching the performance on telly in all its intensity.
We seem to like our art to be the product of one artist as if it only really counts if Rembrandt or James Joyce did all the work themselves but you can't realize Shakespeare without actors or producers, it's no good staring at a score by Mozart or Bach wityhout hearing it played and the greatness of Tamla Motown was a factory effort and Diana Ross did not do I'm Still Waiting on her own. In let me tell you, it is Barbara Hannigan that we are appreciating first, the singing more than the song, but it's an Abrahamsen composition and other singers will sing it. One thing I did enjoy when all those responsible for a genuine team effort came on to take the applause at the end of the Prom was the author Paul Griffiths, looking not unlike Jeremy Corbyn after a long session pondering his chances of becoming Prime Minister. Not everybody is a natural on stage but it was great to see who he is because without his reworking of Shakespeare none of the rest would have followed.
Yes, it definitely says 2016 on the disc. I desperately need to find some good books of poetry that have appeared this year or the assessments of what has been best this year are going to be dominated by music.