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Alpha Classics4.5
Electric Fields
Barbara Hannigan, vocals; Katia and Marielle Labèque, pianos; David Chalmin, synths and electronics
Alpha Classics, May 2025
Electric Fields is a new recording from Barbara Hannigan, the Labèque sisters and David Chalmin and is due for release in May. It consists of music for voice, two pianos and live electronics based on, or inspired by, music from the medieval period through the Renaissance—specifically, the work of Hildegard von Bingen, Barbara Strozzi and Francesca Caccini. The music is composed or arranged by Chalmin or Bryce Dessner with texts from various sources, though one track is completely improvised.
This disc is varied on many levels. Vocal techniques, for example, include virtually vibrato-less plainchant, breathing noises and whispering. The writing for piano can be abrasive, or consist of minimalist arpeggiation and be very sparse. Electronics are also deployed in different ways. At times, they provide a simple drone; at other times, the piano and voice parts are processed in real time. The electronics make “twittering” noises but can also be quite abrasive. At one point they sound like (distorted) electro-pop. It’s fascinating!
With so much variation it would be tedious to try and describe every track, so I just want to describe a couple in more detail. The third track—Che t’ho fatt’io?—is an arrangement by Chalmin and Hannigan of fragments of Caccini’s music setting an anonymous text. It blends chaotic electronics with multi-tracked vocals and breathing noises into a kind of weird electro-pop which then transitions into a quite slow lyrical passage for (mainly) voice and piano. All this in under five minutes.
By contrast, the last piece is an arrangement of Hildegard von Bingen’s O vis aeternitatis by Chalmin. It’s almost 14 minutes long, but it’s quite restrained. The vocals are a straightforward plainchant treatment of the text and they get a very sparse piano accompaniment with restrained use of electronics. It’s beautiful in a rather conventional way.
In total, there’s more than an hour of extremely varied and accomplished music-making on this disc, recorded in 2022-23 at La Fabrique des Ondes in Saint-Pée-sur-Nivelle. Obviously the engineering is integral to the end results, and there’s some fascinating stuff going on—especially if one listens on headphones. It would have been interesting had the recording been released on SACD with a surround option. As it is, it was recorded only in stereo with the option of a physical CD or digital stereo (various formats). I listened to standard digital resolution. There’s also a booklet with useful information about the project plus texts and translations.
Recommended for Hannigan fans and those with a taste for the experimental.
This page is also available in / Cette page est également disponible en:
Francais (French)
