Cookies on Silboo.com

Particularly noteworthy within the OFGC season is the presence of Barbara Hannigan, an artist of multiple registers who has achieved international acclaim as both a soprano and a conductor, combined in this debut programme, which builds bridges between different eras and styles. Hannigan will lend her voice and talent to the dramatic characterisation of the fascinating images in Britten’s song cycle Illuminations based on texts by Rimbaud, and, without leaving the 20th century, she will offer her reading of Stravinsky’s Symphonies for Wind Instruments, a piece written in homage to Debussy that takes the meaning of the term symphony as “sounding together”, based on motifs rooted in folklore. In a nod to the world of Classicism, Hannigan contrasts the evocation of classical symphonism that Prokofiev captured in his Symphony No. 1 "Classical" at the opening and closing of the program with one of the finest examples by a composer who epitomizes the broad strokes of this style, Haydn's Symphony No. 104 "London."