Hans Abrahamsen: Schnee
Dacapo

Hans Abrahamsen: The Snow Queen
BSO Recordings

As different as these releases by Hans Abrahamsen (b. 1952) are—one a chamber work for nine instruments, the other a large-scale opera—snow is common to both. The Danish composer selected Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tale The Snow Queen as the source for his first opera, and Schnee, of course, translates into English as snow. It's wholly fitting that the natural element should be an integral part of these works when Abrahamsen's material can more seem more like natural phenomena distilled into musical form than a conventional musical product, even if melody, counterpoint, polyphony, and any other number of standard elements are nonetheless present. In that regard, his works have something in common with those created by Icelandic composers such as Hildur Gudnadóttir, Daníel Bjarnason, and others. Atmosphere, evocation, and sound design are in all such cases central elements.

No work better illustrates the idea than Schnee (2008). Some account of the work's history and structure is needed to truly appreciate what Abrahamsen has accomplished with the chamber piece. He created it after taking a break from composing in the ‘90s, which he's referred to as a ‘fermata.' During that period he wasn't idle, however; he devoted his energies to creating arrangements of other composers' music, and his study of Bach canons evolved into the writing of Schnee. The work presents ten canons in five pairings with three pulseless intermezzi interspersed; adding to the work's allure, each pair presents two treatments of the same music, the stereoscopic effect likened by the composer to “a painting in two versions with different colours.”

The work is distinguished structurally in two other senses: firstly, the five pairs gradually diminish in length, such that each in the first lasts nine minutes, each in the second seven, five in the third, three in the fourth, and finally one minute in the closing pair (each intermezzo correspondingly shortens too); secondly, the ensemble splits into halves with a percussionist at the centre. To the left are piano, violin, viola, and cello (group one), to the right flute, clarinet, oboe, and a second piano (group two). On this fifty-four-minute release, Schnee is given a magnificent reading by The Lapland Chamber Orchestra with John Storgards conducting.

The otherworldly character of the material is evident the moment “Canon 1a” ushers in with a repeating violin note whispering high above and the piano contributing a delicate percussive texture, the effect suggestive of snowflakes floating in slow motion. Violent, high-pitched violin playing pierces the stillness as the music combusts before pulling back to a ghostly hush minutes later. If the playing seems denser in “Canon 1b,” it should: the first is played by group one, the second by both. Typical of Abrahamsen is the fact that when percussion enters, it does so subtly, as a sheet of paper pushed back and forth on a table. With its faint shuffle and keening woodwinds added to strings and piano, the material takes on a haunting character, and the swirl generated by the instruments evokes the image of someone trudging through a snowstorm.

The activity level escalates for “Canon 2a” when woodwinds and percussion engage in rapid dialogue interjected suddenly by loud flute flourishes. Repeating the pattern of the first canon pair, “Canon 2b” expands on the density of its partner and is noticeably more agitated too. In one of the performance's most memorable moments, piano, strings, and woodwinds swirl like a gust of snow and wind. Whereas the tempo slows considerably for the meditative third canons, the composer likening their movements to Chinese tai chi exercises, the two in the fourth teem with activity. Sleigh-bells surface in “Canon 4a,” with Abrahamsen nodding to Mozart by using the same sleigh-bells heard in his “Die Schlittenfahrt” (The Sleigh Ride) from Three German Dances, K. 605. The crystalline closing pair resolves the work quietly, the glacial near-stillness of both in keeping with the overall concept. Schnee is many things—introspective, enigmatic, poetic, thought-provoking—but is above all else meticulously crafted and conceived.

While Abrahamsen's sensibility permeates the score of The Snow Queen, the opera is a vastly different creature than Schnee. As a stage production, the three-act work is visually opulent, and in contrast to the nonet that performs the chamber work, The Snow Queen is—par for the opera course—a large-scale production involving multiple singers and stage actors, even if it's duration of just over 100 minutes makes it modest by opera standards. Fronting the cast is Barbara Hannigan (Gerda), who helped bolster the composer's profile when his intoxicating 2013 song cycle let me tell you featuring her achieved international recognition. For this live Munich-based performance of the opera, Hannigan, Rachael Wilson (Kay), Katarina Dalayman (Grandmother, Old Lady, Finn Woman, Snow Queen), Peter Rose (Reindeer, Clock), Caroline Wettergreen (Princess), Dean Power (Prince), Kevin Conners (Forest Crow), and Owen Willetts (Castle Crow) appear with the Bayerisches Staatsorchester and musical director Cornelius Meister. Issued on DVD on the company's own Bayerische Staatsoper Recordings label, The Snow Queen is presented in the English singing version Amanda Holden created in collaboration with the composer. As much as the presentation captures the production in all its visual splendour, it's finally Abrahamsen's music that recommends the work most.

In Andersen's well-known fairy tale, a young boy and girl, Kay and Gerda, are very close and seem destined for one another. Kay is pierced in the heart and eye by a splinter from a cursed ancient mirror, which leads to estrangement between the two. Physical separation follows when Kay's kidnapped by the Snow Queen, which in turn incites Gerda to undertake a long search for him. During her journey, she encounters an old woman and her enchanted flowers, two crows, a prince and princess, and a kind reindeer. When she finally reaches Kay, he's in snow and ice. The tears she subsequently sheds extract the demonic splinters from him, and, now rescued from his plight, the two are ready to grow up together.

Abrahamsen's opera is grounded in Andersen's story-line but also builds upon it. When the opera opens, we're at a sanitarium-like facility where a distressed Gerda longs for a near-catatonic and withdrawn Kay to return to her; that image shifts to one showing an old woman telling a story to a young boy and girl, who we assume to be Kay and Gerda as children. That idea is elaborated upon further when the characters are represented in three ways, as adult singers, adult actors, and as child actors; sequences regularly arise where two Kays and two Gerdas are on stage at the same time, with matching clothing making identification easy. Snow drifts down onto an ever-accumulating base, and scene changes are effected when a scrim rolls up at the rear of the stage to reveal stage designs that are sometimes crowded with figures and at other times include two or three only. As the opera nears its end, the stage display from the opening returns, now with Kay recovered and together with Gerda, the music gently swooning, and the voices intoning celestially.

Musically, the opera begins with the same music heard in the first canon in Schnee—a high violin note and tinkling piano—until voices appear to mark the opera as its own entity. Busy onstage action is mirrored in music that's turbulent and agitated, but those moments are balanced by ones that are delicate and gentle. Compared to the somewhat hermetic world of Schnee, The Snow Queen abounds in musical colours and timbres, with the fantastical character of the story material allowing the composer to let his musical imagination flower. A couple of passages recall the John Adams-like style of The Death of Klinghoffer, but the score ultimately registers as an Abrahamsen work full stop. Like let me tell you, the opera offers Hannigan another magnificent vocal showcase. Onstage, she's a charismatic presence who gives herself fully to the role; Wilson impresses too and is nearly as dynamic. The vocal ‘stutter' that helps make let me tell you so memorable re-surfaces in a few places in the opera, during the “How this is horrible” scene in act three, for example.

March 2022