Stravinsky composed his Concerto in E flat for chamber orchestra in 1937-38, during what he later described as ‘perhaps the most difficult time of my life’. His wife and daughter were suffering terribly from the tubercular disease that would soon take both their lives, and early in 1938 he contracted the illness himself, which prevented him from conducting the May 8 premiere at the Dumbarton Oaks estate in Washington DC. Yet, despite these trials, Stravinsky insisted that not even the barest trace of distress had seeped into the score.

Barbara Hannigan recently recorded the Dumbarton Oaks Concerto and other Stravinsky chamber works with students from the Royal Academy of Music, London, and the Juilliard School, New York, for Linn, and I ask her what she thinks about the music’s emotional content. ‘I think Dumbarton Oaks is an extremely emotional piece.’ We open our scores and Hannigan tells me that she wrote ‘desperate for joy’ and ‘desperately seeking joy’ at various points in her copy. ‘The beginning is absolutely full of joy, for example, with all these overlapping conversations. In rehearsals, I told the players that in the first two movements everyone is like a character at a party, so every instrument has its own personality. It’s very soloistic.’

I note that she hits all of Stravinsky’s metronome marks pretty much on the nose, and ask if she studied the composer’s two studio recordings of the concerto (1947; and the better-known stereo account, 1964), where he’s often faster than his own marking. ‘I did listen to them, and I took notes on his tempos and the character of the playing, but then I tried to let all that go. I’ve worked with so many composers over the years, and all of them have told me always to go back to the score, no matter how they perform the music themselves.’

We flip ahead a page or two and come to figure 4 (around 0'42" on her recording). ‘The muttering here – I think of gossip, with those under-voices in the cellos.’ She sings the line, emphasising its breathless quality. ‘You know when you’re in the corner of a room and you think nobody can hear you, but your voice bounces off a wall? It’s that kind of hidden conversation. And, in general, there’s a lot of interrupting going on – tons of interrupting, or someone trying to interject and change the subject.’ She turns the page. ‘Oh, and look at fig 6.’ She sings one of the string parts (at 1'07"). I tell her that I remarked on this in my listening notes, writing: ‘I love the almost flirtatious chromatic curves in the strings.’ She laughs: ‘I was thinking of the Andrews Sisters here. I actually showed the players images of them on my computer, assuming most wouldn’t know who they were.’

I’m curious about Stravinsky’s use of the breath mark (in the form of a comma): these appear frequently throughout the score, starting in the second bar. Sometimes it’s obvious that he simply wants a clear separation between notes; but what about just before fig 20, where he has a breath mark at the end of an ascending phrase for the violins and violas preceding several bars’ rest. ‘First of all, we know Stravinsky loves secco; he wants everything to be super dry. And he knows that players will probably play more legato than he’d like, so the breath marks are another reminder. As for the breath mark at the end of that phrase for the violins and violas: it makes perfect sense to me as a singer, because a singer will never let a high note go – not unless you force them to,’ she laughs. ‘So I think in this case it’s there in the interests of cleanness and making sure that there’s no spillover into the subito piano that immediately follows.’

We reach the end of the first movement, the last eight bars where the music is suddenly becalmed. ‘This is where it becomes really private. We spoke before about emotion and an inner feeling; here, it’s almost a feeling of moving in slow motion. This is something I think about a lot in all music: the idea of the movement of time. Are we moving in what we think is “real time”? Is time moving faster than we are? You know how people say, “We’ve been talking for an hour, but it seems like 10 minutes”? There’s also the opposite, when everything seems to be in slow motion – that’s usually a very emotional time, and here it’s as if all the characters go into their own thoughts.

‘And then, just as suddenly, we’re in the second movement. I remember I said “smarmy” to the musicians. And because we had a lot of non-English speakers in the ensemble, we were translating smarmy into German and Chinese and other languages. The music has this,’ she sings the opening. ‘I wanted to be sure that we were very precise with the accents to make sure the weight is where Stravinsky wants it. And I wanted the kind of accent that’s like spreading butter on bread (room temperature butter, not cold!), as opposed to sharp or edgy.

‘Another favourite moment is this muttering in the violas and cellos at fig 36 [1'11"]. It reminds me of Schigolch in Berg’s Lulu – he’s always muttering and hanging around the same notes. Then we get to fig 39 [1'48"]. So far, the music has been quite subjective, but if this were a film, the camera would suddenly pan the people looking out, and then we would see what they see: the landscape, the light on the water. It becomes observational, non-human – without the projection of emotion.’ I offer that the clarinet line suggests a cat on the prowl. ‘Yes, I can see that. It’s a nature scene, and when the flute comes in after fig 40 [2'03"], that’s clearly a bird; and birds aren’t like sopranos, who are thinking about the high note or maybe extending their best note – they just sing every note. So, as I did when I conducted Messiaen’s Oiseaux exotiques, I wanted to make sure the players are trying to be the bird rather than a human playing at being a bird – no emotional involvement.’

The second-movement (Allegretto) concludes similarly to the opening movement, yet this ‘slow motion’ passage is more developed here. ‘I told the players this had to be like an inhalation. This is the heart. And while it looks easy on the page, it’s not. It’s difficult to balance the horizontal and the vertical in this section, and to find not only the sound of the chords but the feeling of each chord, because here it really is emotional. Yet if we get too involved it becomes pathetic.’

We turn to the finale, which Hannigan describes as the hunt. ‘The beginning is very toothy – fangs, aggressive, out for blood. There’s no prettying up, no finesse.’ I point out how much I like the balance she achieves starting at fig 58 [0'48"], so that the shifting primary voices lead all the way to fig 63 [1'26"]. ‘Yes. It gets more deeply emotional as we get towards 63. The lyricism becomes ever more intense and the harmonic tension becomes more plaintive leading to the frenzy at 67 [1'48"] – a kind of feeding frenzy. I think of hunting horns and dogs. It’s primal. Or, you know how piranhas get their prey and the next thing you know there are only bones left? That’s the image I have here.’

What does she make of the fact that we only briefly return to the hunt before suddenly finding ourselves at a highly stylised dance at fig 70 [2’10”]? ‘It’s a totally different scenic picture, certainly – a formal dance where the characters are unaware or wilfully ignorant of the world. It’s almost a bit mocking, too. Then starting at 75 [3’19”] it again becomes primal, though now it’s also seductive. It’s a different kind of hunt in this section, I suppose.’ She smiles. ‘I wouldn’t say it’s playful, but the intentions are more personal; it’s more of a primal need.’

I tell Hannigan how I love the long-breathed horn and flute lines starting before figure 80 [4'00"], which provide welcome contrast following all the preceding motivic play. ‘Yes, it really feels like time starts to change here. When he does something like this I think, “OK, he’s built a different connection to time.” He gives us just a little bit more room to live. But then he drives us forwards again. And towards the end it’s like you’re just gunning it. Honestly, as a player, this has maybe taken a few days off your life as far as your brain capacity is concerned because it’s really tricky, but it’s also really exciting to play – and to conduct. We’re all staying together as a team as we move towards our goal – not the goal of merely crossing the finish line, but a larger goal. I guess there aren’t really words for that; it’s kind of a feeling of: “Wow! We’ve worked since we were kids to be able to make music on this level, and now here we are.”’

This article originally appeared in the October 2024 issue of Gramophone magazine. Never miss an issue – subscribe to Gramophone today