Barbara Hannigan: Lonely Child by Berg, Haydn, Vivier, Bach, J. S., Alates (2023/2023), Dirigent Barbara Hannigan, Barbican Centre, London, United Kingdom

Berg, Bach, Haydn and Claude Vivier – Barbara Hannigan brings four maverick masterworks into a very personal kind of conversation. Across three centuries, a grief-stricken Alban Berg reaches out to the spirit of Bach. Far from civilisation, Haydn channels dark emotions into a new kind of music. And a Canadian outsider, alone with his imagination, takes a solitary singer and a small orchestra and thinks his way back into a tragic childhood. Claude Vivier’s Lonely Child might just be the single most poignant modern masterpiece that you’ve never heard. But that’s what Barbara Hannigan does – she gathers up unexpected musical threads, and weaves them into something revelatory. Today she conducts two equally committed soloists: violinist Veronika Eberle (‘a spotlessly pure and serene tone’ – The Strad) and the ‘fearless’ Greek soprano Aphrodite Patoulidou.