The guitar’s ancestors include the gittern, the vihuela, the four-course Renaissance guitar, and of course the baroque guitar, all of which contributed to the development of the modern six-string instrument. Few people in our day have mastered it with such alacrity, with such sage nobility and with such openness to the world of music around us as Sharon Isbin.

I admit to stealing the metaphor of the “small orchestra” from none other from Segovia. As a matter of fact, how ironic that one should have found it while listening to Miss Isbin’s recording of Karen LeFrak’s new works on the album entitled Romántico [Karen LeFrak Recordings, 2025]. Ironic because it is one that Miss Isbin undertook with the Orchestra of St. Luke’s conducted by Enrico Lopez-Yanez.

Segovia’s stunning metaphor for the guitar also holds equally true of Miss Isbin performer and his characterisation of her musicianship would be spot on for his actual words are “The guitar is as small orchestra. It is polyphonic. Every string is a distinct colour, a different voice.”

Indeed, Miss Isbin exploits this characteristic to its fullest in such a seductive manner that she makes this aspect of her playing a truly alluring aspect of her own virtuosity, on this particular album as well as on her other discs, which is even more challenging as we shall soon as we go a little more in depth into the recording of Ms LeFrak’s works.

Exhilarating, extrovert and virtuosic
Romántico features a world premiere recording of Ms LeFrak’s seductive Miami Concerto for Guitar and Orchestra. There is every indication that the composer had her heart set on making this record with Miss Isbin. She [the composer] has a deep understanding of the South American – Latin and Brasilian – music and selected her performers with punctilious care. It isn’t surprising that Miss Isbin would be a first choice.

Miss Isbin, in turn returns the favour. Her playing throughout the concerto is exhilarating, extrovert and virtuosic as so it should be. She is, after all, immersed in the realm of the Habanera and the Tango – music and dance forms that came to South America via the erstwhile colonisers from Europe. A deeper dive into the origins of the music lead unequivocally to the melodic, harmonic and rhythmic influences from the African continent.

The guitarist is joined, here, by the Orchestra of St. Luke’s conducted by Enrico Lopez-Yañez. Ms LeFrak’s Miami Concerto for Guitar & Orchestra pays homage to oceanic musical heritage of Miami with influences from Africa, Europe and Latin America. “Bailamos,” the first movement of the concerto draws on the guaguancó, a dialect of the Cuban rumba, followed by a tango-inspired “Romántico,” and concludes with an energetic “Festivo” in the rhythm of bembé.

The chamber works “Habanera Nights” and “Urban Tango” feature Miss Isbin with Latin percussionists led by Javier Diaz, pianist Peggy Kampmeier, and New York Philharmonic principal cellist Carter Brey. Throughout the concerto and the chamber works Miss Isbin shows immaculate poise and thoughtfulness. She cultivates a beautiful, poetic tone with an orchestral touch offering a unique palette of colour amid riveting, charges interpretation of Ms LeFrak’s music.

Miss Issbin has delicate phrasing, a colourful touch and well thought-through ideas. Her performance is often a white hot volcano of intense expression; it presents formidable challenges, all of which are surmounted with almost insolent virtuosity, the guitarist’s focus resolutely serving the score, not the mechanisms supporting it. Miss Isbin plays with a particularly rewarding sense of rhythm, high sprung, light and incisive and entirely secure, which pays its way throughout all of the works.

But hearing her navigate through the massive cadenzas – de rigeuer on in these works – as if they and their beckoning grandeur were the most natural thing in the world leaves no doubt that this is an artist of the most elite order, to be watched intently, listened to deeply and reckoned with for an exceptionally long time to come. These are qualities of a guitar playing musician who is cast in the same mould as Segovia and the rest of the renowned artists of the instrument.

Luminous tone , natural grace and authority
It is hard to put into word why this recording is so special. Perhaps the principal reason is that one of the finest guitarists has committed to disc, great works that she appears to have ostensibly lived with honing and polishing their subtle romanticism for a considerable length of time. Each movement and chamber work reveals her thoughtful artistry, exemplified by this slim volume. The five varied, but emotionally and [sort of] thematically interrelated pieces have been played with her hallmark luminous tone, natural grace and authority.

From this exquisite recording of Ms LeFrak to works by Leo Brouwer, Tan Dun, and Richard Danielpour, on which the web of charm has been spun by Isabel Leonard’s vocals] to a waltz by Antonio Lauro [in duet with guitarist Colin Davin] – and even a poetic cycle of love be Chris Brubeck which became the title of the recording, Affinity [Zoho Music, 2020] – this American guitarist proves herself to be one of the most versatile musicians playing on stage [and in the studio] today.

This story is even more telling – and enduringly epic – because it catches something more of Miss Isbin’s genius in an incredibly unique way. Anyone who has listened to the range of her recorded performances, on her next two albums – Strings for Peace [Zoho Music, 2020] and Live In Aspen [Zoho Music, 2024] – will discover what it means for Miss Isbin to have a sense of daring and supreme confidence in her innate sense of sublime taste.

The former recording is made up of four North Indian Ragas, once again, all world premieres. Miss Isbin invites the grand sarod master Ustad Amjad Ali Khan on the apogee of the album [“Raga Pilu” alternatively entitled “Romancing Earth”]. Hi son Ameen Ali Bangash appears on “Raga Behag” or “By the Moon” while the performance of the other two ragas, “Raga Mishra Bhairav” or “Love Avalanche” and on “Raga Yaman” or Sacred Evening” are shared with the other son of the maestro, Ayaan Ali Bangash. The renowned tabla player, Amit Kavthekar, appears on all the four ragas.

We are speaking here of Miss Isbin having collaborated with musicians from the upper echelons of Hindustani music. But when it comes to a guitar being heard along with a sarod the first test is a mechanical one. There are obvious differences [between the classical guitar and the sarod] have to do with the fact that the instruments differ in pitch, and the dynamic and dramatic variance in their tonal and colour palettes. Add to that is the fact that both instruments are played pizzicato. This means that that it isn’t only the engineer who must have enormous ears.

Orchestral Gymnasium of the Guitar
The encounters between Miss Isbin and the Ustads of the sarod is quite breathtaking. And it is also here – on their studio and live recordings – that the extent of the technical mastery of each on their respective instruments is superbly demonstrated. The playing by the Ustads provides what in orchestral terms would be a shadowy kind of ground bass simply because of the tonal palette of the sarod makes this possible. And it is this effect that affords the guitarist an empty canvas on which to paint her masterpiece.

It is here that Miss Isbin exploits her guitar’s huge vocabulary of sounds and effects combinable to make it sound as big as an ensemble – but which need the player’s [in this excellent case, Miss Isbin’s] to deploy effectively. The evening ragas – Behag’s emotive aspects are daunting ass it is associated with times between 9 o’clock pm and midnight, Yaman is more crepuscular, its emotive aspects being associated with times between 6 and 9 o’clock pm, while Mishra Pilu us usually associated with between the afternoon and early evening.

On both Strings for Peace and Live in Aspen, Miss Isbin’s use of her wonderful instrument is truly eloquent and masterful. Her playing ranges from harmonics and pizzicato to technique exotica such as ‘nut-side,’ ‘nail sizzle’ and/or ‘bi-tone tapping’ [plus she also uses – even extends the battery of percussion possibilities, even entering into polyphonic and polyrhythmic dialogues with the tabla player Pandit Amit Kavthekar.

This spectacular array of harmonic pizzicato playing is also evident on Affinity where the need for the various composers to collaborate closely with Miss Isbin on each of their pieces. It’s complex for the composers to write not only for the instrument, but also for Miss Isbin. But neither of the parties are fazed. Miss Isbin is utterly amazing in this respect, as she has managed through inspiration and sheer persistence t0o wrinkle out from the composers a whole raft of adventurous works, almost independent of the ‘Sergovia tradition,’ but well within the elastic classical continuum.

Instrument as Orchestra – Miss Isbin’s Evolving Palimpsest
While this manipulation of the instrument is available to all masters of it, the players don’t strike pure gold as often as Miss Isbin does. Does she ‘get this’ from Heitor Villa-Lobos? One is willing to hazard a guess as it was the Brasilian composer who first started to treat the guitar as something bigger than it was supposed to be – and he was phenomenally successful as a composer to strike gold with regard to visualising and scoring for the instrument as a small orchestra.

For her part, Miss Isbin dwells constantly in that realm off possibility, continuing to extend the range and scope of the instrument with delicate albeit nervy fingers on gossamer strings. The sensuously liquid and always beckoning performance on LeFrak’s masterful works on Romántico are a cut above almost anything a guitarist has brought to life – this year at any rate.

As with her Bach – as spectacular and as mathematically and emotively as Bach intended his music to be – so also is her foray into Hindustani music [cue Strings for Peace], and contemporary classical music [cue Affinity]. Thus, having carved out a space for herself, non pareil, in the realm where composers have created a legacy for her to explore, she comes across with flying colours. One has only to dive deeply into her work on Affinity and into her Latin-American repertory.

The lyrical – often bittersweet – expressiveness that is intended by both the composers and the culture in which their music was written has enabled Miss Isbin to re-create wonderful soundworlds so big that in doing so she has embraced the richness that her instrument afforded her and [continues to] constantly work at recreating her musical palimpsest as if to say: “I hereby wish that my guitar should not simply respond to a full orchestra, but to become the full orchestra itself.

The days when pianist and pedagogue Orli Shaham “played” the proverbial younger sibling to her more famous brother, the celebrated violinist Gil Shaham are over. With her monumental box-set Mozart – The Complete Piano Sonatas now in the rearview mirror, it’s also time to survey a Mozartian road, somewhat well-travelled. Admittedly, ‘comparisons are – quite literally – odious’ albeit Ms Shaham’s Mozart sits high atop – if not at the very top – of a list of 10 superlative compendia such as this Mozart one; certainly, Mozart – The Complete Sonatas and Variations [EMI, 2000] by Daniel Barenboim comes to mind, and, of course, Glenn Gould’s…

But, Mr Barenboim’s set includes three discs containing the Variations, which leaves Gould’s by virtue of it being similar in scope to Ms Shaham’s. One comparison does beg mention for more than one reason, apart from the fact that both sets are a sort parallel-road-travelled. Both Ms Shaham and Mr Gould are prodigious pianists who penetrate the wonderful world of Mozart’s genius. Both are highly acclaimed pedagogues – Mr Gould [courtesy of two epic recordings of The Goldberg Variations [Columbia/Sony, 1955 and 1981] – more highly regarded as an interpreter of Johann Sebastian Bach, and both are [were, in the case of Mr Gould] successful broadcasters.

There is, however, one major caveat: matters inevitably and unalterably sunk Mr Gould [after he aired his views on Mozart]. His first self-inflicted wound came on April 28^th, 1968, when he produced a two-part radio broadcast, which was aired on PBS. The broadcast was entitled How Mozart Became a Bad Composer in Mr Gould went as far as to disparage the ingenious composer as a better writer of the inter-office memo than a composer. He was referring to Mozart’s late work – one sonata, to be precise – and although some have made light of the comment the pianist-turned-‘opinionated broadcaster’ was unlikely to have been joking.

The programme was never re-broadcast, and the comment remained hidden – and forgotten – until the New-York-based documentary filmmaker Laura Carra unearthed it forty-eight years later. Many [especially those from the Glenn Gould Foundation] had glossed over the comment referring to the programme and the Mozart comment as a revelation of “the comic side of his persona on television.” I’m not so sure. Moreover, Mr Gould was referring to Mozart’s Sonata No. 13 in B-flat Major, K. 333, otherwise known as The  “Linz” Sonata.

Mr Gould had a reputation for being a naysayer. Remember his famous public ‘quarrel’ with Leonard Bernstein over the interpretation of Johannes Brahms‘ First Piano Concerto at a New York Philharmonic concert on April 6, 1962? At any rate he may have inadvertently shot himself in the foot again when he released Mozart: The Complete Piano Sonatas, Volumes I and II [Columbia Masterworks, 1979]. There were, of course, no liner noted disparaging comments this time. He just played that fine sonata quite superbly. And it certainly was no inter-office memo…

Back to Ms Shaham’s Mozart: The Complete Piano Sonatas, which is certainly more beckoning than Mr Gould’s – more, that is, in the masterly realm of the interpretations recorded by Mr Barenboim…

The quality of her playing throughout her epic survey of Mozart’s sonatas. Ms Shaham takes nothing for granted in these works – indeed, in music as a whole. Nor should we in listening to her. If you know how your Mozart goes, certainly in his eternal penchant for lyricism goes, or his genius for the greater harmonic ingenuity and melodic richness displayed in his later sonatas, for that matter. Which is not to say that she does anything wildly idiosyncratic, let alone provocatively iconoclastic, a la Glenn Gould. At the same time, she digs deeper into each miniature, the very minutiae of everyday life, so to speak – especially Mozart’s relationship to each character and story evoked therein.

Nor does the pianist, blessed with prodigious musicianship, show any signs of being a budding [Mozartian] prophet. Rather, she plainly understands that every interpretation is just one possibility, and she offers us a very enticing opportunity to open our minds, especially in familiar works burdened by tradition – in this case the interpretations which, in the wrong hands, have tended to sound uninteresting, even formulaic. Perhaps this is what Mr Gould ought to have looked at rather Mozart’s playful and quick-witted compositional approach, both of which Ms Shaham brings out in masterly fashion.

Her delicate phrasing creates a feeling of innocent melodiousness, yet each movement is intelligently worked out, and her subtle manipulation of timing conveys a keen sense of that playfulness and quick-witted character that Mozart always exudes. In each case, across the grandeur of the 6-discc set, Ms Shaham’s reading are fresh and spacious – and in the case of Sonata No. 11, the A-major, “Alla turca” K. 331 [disc 3], Ms Shaham shows off Mozart’s true genius not simply for the form, but his puckish sense of surprise right from the first movement onwards.

It begins, not with the customary fast movement but with a gentle, almost folk-song like lullaby which goes through a series of sprightly, if conventional variations. The ensuing Minuet and Trio leads without a break into the infectiously animated Rondo “Alla turca” – a whirling dance which, like the fifth violin concerto, reflects the fashion for all things all  things Turkish. And then there is the Sonata No. 14 in C-minor K. 457 [disc 6], written in 1784, which could hardly be more different than anything he’d written hitherto.

This is Mozart’s  grandest solo work: terse, pithy and inward-looking in a way that seems to anticipate Beethoven. [Seven moths after completing it, Mozart wrote an introduction to the sonata in the form of a Fantasia. The sonata – with or without it – remains a studious and intense work, with a startling range of moods, and in Ms Shaham’s delicate hands it provides a most vivid portrait of Mozart the brilliant keyboard player.

In a quote from the liner notes Ms Shaham tells us: “It was the one sonata of the eighteen I needed to think about more… {I was] eager to put all of the emotional content out there to be judged. I’m all about vulnerability,” she concluded. All of this shows immediately. Ms Shaham takes us into another world. It is a world full of glinting lights, mysterious depths, expectations, frustrations, doubts and hopes, like a late-quasi Mozartian scherzo, glimpsed by moonlight in a forest.

Even if she recorded nothing but the No 14, Ms Shaham’s genius for Mozart would have been reflected through her interpretation of this sonata alone. In sheer colour and variety, in the depth of characterisation and the exceptional range and refinement of its pianism, Ms Shaham here imparts a power and stature to this sonata, which no amount of ‘bigness’ [the usual route taken by pianists] can achieve. Her delicate lyrical, and intent to ‘let it all hang out’ is perfectly suited to the work.

In conclusion one might add the following observation after surveying each of the sonatas as they were releases on one or two discs at a time, over a period of time, [and now as a comely box-set]: Ms Shaham brings out all of these sonatas myriad delights… always with a degree of grit beneath the filigree surface, perhaps, yet overall they are everything you expect from both the genius who is Mozart as well as everything that the definition of a sonata was meant to be: To hark back to the works of Arcangelo Corelli and his contemporaries, a form first described by Sébastien de Brossard in his Dictionaire de musique [Amsterdam, ca. 1710]? literally, a piece played as opposed to a cantata [in Latin cantare, ‘to sing’]; a piece sung.

In these Mozart sonatas are indeed – to coin a new compound epithet that describes them perfectly both sonate-cantare. Orli Shaham brings effortless Mozartian urbanity and lyricism to all  the items, which are as seductive as they are persuasive, an object lesson in the very essence of style. Each is played with buoyant, aristocratic grace and psychological ambiguity. And she is [rightly] almost insolently effortless in bringing debonnaire virtuosity, even sassy swagger to each of the pieces. A fitting tribute to the icon who is Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. All in all, a dazzling world of Mozartian sonatas evoked as few would even dare to try.

Barbara Hannigan is at Koerner Hall at the The Royal Conservatory. She enters, stage left, gliding her way to centre-stage like a Gaelic sprite, stops and twirls to face us in the audience… gently reaching out to the side of the sleeping Steinway concert grand. The rustle of black silk evening dress hisses softly… melodiously as her accompanist Bertrand Chamayou settles himself at the piano bench. She is embraced by the warmth of the stage lights, their soft glow illuminating her slender frame.

Barbara Hannigan is a riveting sight… an epitome of balletic elegance even before she has sung a single note, which she is about to… There is breathtaking drama even in this act. Her body seems to curl into itself as she tilts back her head with its tresses of flowing blond hair… And then she seems to unfurl like petals of a morning glory, gently swilling in the air around herself, raising her body to its fullest extent, filling her lungs with air…

The air she propels arrive in streams of slender showers of warm breath…air…breath…warm, warmer, then incandescent… When air becomes breath, breath becomes melody, uncoiling itself in the rarefied air that she has stirred gently… melody becomes song… And Miss Hannigan has reached deep into the recesses of her luminous being to conjure the love story between Olivier Messiaen and hid beloved wife, the violinist and composer Claire Delbos.

The programme, like a call to spiritual – and secular – worship with Chants de terre et de ciel, sparkles to life… ignited by Miss Hannigan’s aerations, her breath of life…

“Toi oeil de terre, mon oeil de terre, nos mains de terre
Pour tisser l’atmosphère, la montagne de l’atmosphère
Étoile de silence à mon coeur de terre à mes lèvres de terre,
Petite boule de soleil complémentaire à ma terre.
La bail doux Compagnon de mon épaule a mère…”

[from Bail avec Mi (pour ma femme) parte I]

You know, at once, that you are in the presence of an artist of a supernatural order. More by magic than by design she shapeshifts into Olivier Messiaen, and with words – shapeshifting again – she caresses M. Delbos again and again; her arms seem to sculpt the air as she sculps Messiaen’s long inventions.

“Ange silencieux, écris du silence dans mes mains, alléluia.
Que j’aspire le silence du ciel alléluia…”

[from Antienne du silence (pour le jour des Anges gardiens) parte II]

Her instrument is gorgeous: lustrous, precise and feather-light. Her musicianship is fierce as she digs into the expression of each word, brings ceaseless variety dynamics to soft dynamics and gives every phrase a special grace. Her range – in a short span of a chorus – extends from celestial luminosity in the upper register, to sensual and viscous chocolatey plunge into an almost – challenger deep – contralto.

There is something else about Miss Hannigan’s prodigious artistry that sets her apart from any – and probably all – operatic sopranos and that is her natural abilities for sublime lyricism. Moreover, she has an elysian ability to sink her proverbial teeth into the guts of the roles she plays. The latter skill – combined with a kind of true Gaelic shapeshifting – has enabled her, in this instance, to ‘become Messiaen’ and to also ‘become Madam Delbos.’

Thus, there is a real sense that she seemingly glides between embodying the idiomatic expressions of Messiaen’s love for his wife, and Madame Delbos who glories in Messiaen’s mystical, spiritual and secular love for her and their newborn child. There is probably no other operatic soprano who has the ability to perform both artistic roles in the same time and space.

Miss Hannigan has studied these songs with the kind of pedagogical depth and fastidious detail and when she signs this cycle it’s clear that there’s not a single demi-semiquaver that has not been fastidiously considered. She understands not only the characters she plays, but also the intriguing mixture of the ascetic and the hedonistic character in Messiaen’s oeuvre.

In this short cycle Chants de terre et de ciel, Miss Hannigan’s ‘Messiaen’ reflects, with uncommon brightness, his music’s ecstatic celebration of earthly life, that derives his material from the natural world. The work – from the later part of his oeuvre – highlights Messiaen, the greatest 20^th century composer after Debussy and Ravel, as the inventor of a thrillingly sensuous music of bright acoustic colours and resonant fades.

Here is a glorious example, enunciated in celestial fashion by Miss Hannigan:

Douceur des escaliers, surprise au coin des portes,
Tous les oiseaux légers s’envolaient de tes mains.
Oiseaux légers, calloux, refrains, crème légère.
En poisons bleus, en lunes, bleues
Les auréoles de la terre et de l’eau,
Unseul poumon dans un seul roseau.
Io, io, malonlaine, ma, malonlaine, etc.

[from Dance de bébé-Pilule (pour mon petit Pascal) parte III]

And so on, until Miss Hannigan comes to the dénouement of Messiaen’s song-cycle, where he reveals the depth of his spirituality and Catholicism:

“Je suis ressuscité, je suis ressuscité.
Je monte: vers Toi, mon Père, vers Toi, mon Dieu, alléluia.
De terre à ciel je passe!’
Du pain.
Il le rompt et leurs yeux sont dessillés.
Parfum, porte, perle, laves-vous dans la Verité.”

[from Résurrection (pour le jour de Pâques) parte VI]

It is time for Monsieur Chamayou to step out of the proverbial shadows, in the performance of lieder, and bask in the limelight of two pieces that he brings to the programme. There are two diabolically challenging works by Alexander Scriabin.

The Russian lived out the transition from Romanticism and modernism, initiating a musical language that moved decisively towards dramatic atonality. Only slightly less radical than Schoenberg and Debussy [composers right up Monsieur’s street], he [Scriabin] could have become one of the major  figures on 20^th century music had he not died so young. Eschewing Scriabin’s melodic, harmonic and rhythmic grandiloquence, Monsieur Chamayou – with the two pieces he played – shone a spotlight on Scriabin’s shimmering exoticism, cataclysmic ideas and opulent creations.

Few composers make such demands on the ability of the performer. Monsieur Chamayou dug deep and performed both pieces with an almost insolent virtuosity. The choice of Poeme-nocturne op. 61 and Vers la flamme, op. 72 also dovetailed nicely into the concert’s overall theme [which put spirituality and secular proclivities on an elegant collision course.

The Vers la flamme is a hedonistic fusion of the arts into a sensory experience. Monsieur Chamayou performed this powerful and progressive music with inspired theosophy and mysticism, pushing Scriabin’s piece to the outer limits of tonality, where deliberate harmonic irresolution opened up audacious and visionary possibilities. Scriabin’s brooding mysticism has never been animated as brilliantly as Monsieur Chamayou demonstrated in the performance.

The final part of the recital featured one of the most dramatic repertoire that Miss Hannigan and Monsieur may have attempted in their relatively young careers. Without much ado the brilliant soprano and her pianist-accompanist launched into the nine-movement work – Jumalattaret, by the intrepid composer John Zorn.

The Scriabin pieces were roses among hothouse plants compared to Mr Zorn’s mystical and alchemical walk on the wild side of Finnish mythology. By Miss Hannigan’s own admission, the repertoire proved diabolically difficult for her to sink her teeth into. Knowing how much of a perfectionist she is, though, hers was one of the most polished performances of Mr Zorn’s challenging work.

As this sequence of nine songs stems from an ancient tradition of the Finno-Ugric peoples, a brief explanation will be attempted here: Mr Zorn’s cycle digs deep into the pagan nature of gods and goddesses of nature and death, animals, creatures and monsters of the otherworld, shamans, wizards and witches with their magic.

The artistry ensconced within these songs is based on the spells and poems collected from historical Finnish shamans and rune singers as well as from the Finnish national epic Kalevala. Jumala, is a generic name for a major deity, originally the name given by the Finns to the sky, the supreme, sky-god.

Once again, filling her powerful lungs with a mouthful of air, Miss Hannigan expels her hot breath upward as she [paradoxically] sinks into the otherworld of Jumalattaret. She launches melodic lines that carve the air in great arcs and ellipses invoking the spirit of Jumalattaret.

She sings in the language of Finno-Ugric, propelling herself – first into the stratosphere, before invoking gods and goddesses, commanding her blithe spirit in Proem, the opening invocation:

“…by a mighty inward urging…” [declaring herself to be] “…ready for singing, ready to begin the chanting in praise of the goddesses!”

Summoning the inner workings of her soul, she encounters them – first Akka, queen of the ancient magic and she sings:

“Viel’ on muitaki sanoja, ongelmoita oppimia…” [“There are other words of magic, incantations I have learned…” Miss Hannigan persuades Akka, before descending into the underworld to a magical audience hosted by Louhi whose magic she seeks – successfully:

“…sitti siivet sulkinensa kuuhuen käsin tavoitti…” [“(I)… made a pair of feathered wings , with bare hands by her magic…”]

Monsieur Chamayou plays the strings, plucking, grinding and issuing a sort of whinny as Miss Hannigan expels her breath in a kind of fluttering vocalise… sending shivers down our collective spines.

Now she flies in the face of convention – propelled by Mr Zorn’s creations – and takes us on a journey of a lifetime. I have long been an admirer of Miss Hannigan’s ability to provide intimations of otherworldly and vivid intensity. Now she heads into the underworld, introducing us to Mielikki, the huntress, Kuu, the moon goddess before rising and darting into the forest of shadows and light:

We meet Tellervo, the forest spirit… you can hear the mystical sense of freedom in her voice again as she engages Tellervo in brief conversation:

“Keksi piirtämän kivessä, valeviivan kal…” [(a)… secret sign drawn on the rock]

All the while the elegance of Monsieur Chamayou’s playing – for which he is renowned – becomes part of the natural landscape as he and Miss Hannigan mix beauty and danger with the fluttering sounds of birds and animals, with breathtaking majesty…

Such is the brilliance of Miss Hannigan’s astral travelling – in and out of the celestial and the nether world… before she floats upwards and away to engage Ilmatar, the air spirit…

“…Parempi olisi ollut ilman impenä elää…” she sings, suddenly becoming Ilmatar’s doppelgänger as she pronounces the inevitable. [“better had it been for me to have the airy virgin…]

Released by her brilliant travelling companions from the celestial and the nether-world, Miss Hannigan bids them farewell, with words evocative of freezing nights and long rainy days bringing us back from the wild adventure that she has seduced us into:

“Ellös täälta ilman pääskö, nousko, kuu, kumottamahan, pääskö, päivä, paistamahan, kun en käyne päastamähän, itse tulle noutamahan yheksän orihin kanssa, yhen tammam kantamalla!” she exhorts us to partake of her wild adventure.

“Moon of gold and sun of silver / Hide your faces in the caverns of Pohyola’s dismal mountain / shine no more to gladden Northland / Till I come to give ye freedom / Drawn by coursers nine in number / sable coursers of one mother!”

We leap to our feet, released from an eloquent stupor… released by Miss Hannigan and Monsieur Chamayou to applaud rapturously… and perhaps to never be the same again.

^{Deo gratis…}