Infinite Voyage Emerson String Quartet, Barbara Hannigan, Bertrand Chamayou

• Paul Hindemith (1895 - 1963): Melancholie, Op. 13:
• 1 Hindemith: Melancholie, Op. 13: No. 1, Die Primeln blühn und grüßen... 03:28
• 2 Hindemith: Melancholie, Op. 13: No. 2, Nebelweben 02:53
• 3 Hindemith: Melancholie, Op. 13: No. 3, Dunkler Tropfe 02:57
• 4 Hindemith: Melancholie, Op. 13: No. 4, Traumwald 04:45
• Alban Berg (1885 - 1935): String Quartet, Op. 3:
• 5 Berg: String Quartet, Op. 3: I. Langsam 10:14
• 6 Berg: String Quartet, Op. 3: II. Mäßige Viertel 11:15
• Ernest Chausson (1855 - 1899): Chanson perpétuelle, Op. 37:
• 7 Chausson: Chanson perpétuelle, Op. 37 07:28
• Arnold Schönberg (1874 - 1951): String Quartet No. 2, Op. 10:
• 8 Schönberg: String Quartet No. 2, Op. 10: I. Mäßig 06:23
• 9 Schönberg: String Quartet No. 2, Op. 10: II. Sehr rasch 06:47
• 10 Schönberg: String Quartet No. 2, Op. 10: III. Litanei. Langsam 05:47
• 11 Schönberg: String Quartet No. 2, Op. 10: IV. Entrückung. Sehr langsam 10:52
• Total Runtime 01:12:49

Info for Infinite Voyage

After 47 years of award-winning music-making, the Emerson String Quartet will disband in October 2023 and will release their final album Infinite Voyage on September 8 with soprano, Barbara Hannigan. The album evokes the lifelong journey for the four musicians and their lasting friendship with Hannigan. Joined by Bertrand Chamayou, the record features Schoenberg's Quartet No. 2 for soprano and string quartet alongside works by Hindemith, Berg, and Chausson's Chanson perpétuelle.

The title of this album evokes not only the life-long journey of all these musicians, but also a lasting friendship between soprano Barbara Hannigan and the Emerson String Quartet. One of the greatest string quartets of the last four decades, the Emersons will disband in October 2023. Barbara and the Emersons were determined to record Schoenberg's Quartet No. 2 since they started performing the work together in 2015. "The sheer sonic scope of this work takes us on a voyage into previously uncharted territory" say the Emerson musicians. "It's like a tall, gnarly tree to climb (all the way to another planet, it seems), yet one with deep and emotional roots", continues Barbara Hannigan. "The soprano’s fin-de- siècle primal scream at the end of the 3rd movement, begging to be relieved of love, is a heavy hitter". Melancholie is a rare and intimate work by the young Hindemith, "a gem of a piece" that the Canadian soprano has wanted to explore for many years. The fascinating Quartet Op. 3, composed by Berg in 1909 as he was finishing his apprenticeship with Schoenberg, features the quartet on its own. And to round out the album, pianist Bertrand Chamayou joins Barbara and the Emersons for another deeply moving encounter by way of Chausson's heartbreaking Chanson perpétuelle.

Barbara Hannigan, soprano
Bertrand Chamayou, piano
Emerson String Quartet

Barbara Hannigan
Embodying music with an unparalleled dramatic sensibility, soprano and conductor Barbara Hannigan is an artist at the forefront of creation. Her artistic colleagues include John Zorn, Krszysztof Warlikowski, Simon Rattle, Sasha Waltz, Kent Nagano, Vladimir Jurowski, Andreas Kriegenburg, Andris Nelsons, Esa Pekka Salonen, Christoph Marthaler, Antonio Pappano, Katie Mitchell, and Kirill Petrenko. The late conductor and pianist Reinbert de Leeuw has been an extraordinary influence and inspiration on her development as a musician.

The Canadian musician has shown a profound commitment to the music of our time and has given the world première performances of over 90 new creations. Hannigan has collaborated extensively with composers including Boulez, Zorn, Dutilleux, Ligeti, Stockhausen, Sciarrino, Barry, Dusapin, Dean, Benjamin and Abrahamsen.

The past few seasons have brought the premiere of a new production of Poulenc's opera La Voix Humaine, in which she both sings and conducts, interacting with live video. This new production and concept was created by Hannigan in collaboration with video artist Denis Guéguin and premiered with l’Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France. The acclaimed performance has toured to various orchestras and halls including Copenhagen, Gothenburg, London, Rotterdam, Spoleto, Ludwigsburg, Winterthur, Wroclaw and Munich. Recent world premieres include Golfam Khayam's I am not a tale to be told with Iceland Symphony Orchestra, John Zorn's Split the Lark for soprano and piano with Stephen Gosling and Star Catcher for soprano, piano, upright bass and drums with Gosling, Jorge Roeder and Ches Smith, Zosha di Castri's In the Half Light with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, and a new project with Katia et Marielle Labeque inspired by the life and music of Hildegard von Bingen. 2023/24 includes further world premieres by John Zorn, Salvatore Sciarrino, and Jan Sandström,

Last season, Barbara made her conducting debut with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, with further debuts with Montreal Symphony Orchestra and Orchestre de Chambre de Lausanne, as well as ongoing musical collaborations with Gothenburg Symphony, Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, LSO, Santa Cecilia, Danish Radio Symphony Orchestra, Munich Philharmonic, and appearances at festivals in Spoleto, Oslo, Copenhagen, Hanover, Ludwigsburg and Aix en Provence.

On record, Barbara Hannigan’s fruitful relationship with Alpha Classics began in 2017 with the release of Crazy Girl Crazy, which won the 2018 Grammy Award for Best Classical Solo Vocal album, among other awards including an Edison (Holland) and a Juno (Canada). Five critically-acclaimed recordings followed, including Vienna: fin de siècle with pianist Reinbert de Leeuw, La Passione featuring works by Nono, Haydn and Grisey, and most recently Infinite Voyage, joining her colleagues of the Emerson String Quartet for their final album, in works of Schoenberg, Hindemith, Berg and Chausson. Spring 2024 brings the release of the ecstatic vocal works of Messiaen with pianist Bertrand Chamayou.

Barbara’s commitment to the younger generation of musicians led her to create the mentoring initiatives Equilibrium Young Artists (2017), and Momentum: our Future Now (2020), both initiatives offering both guidance and performing opportunities to young professional artists. She was recently named the Reinbert de Leeuw Professor of Music at the RAM. Her awards and honours include the Dresdener Musikfestspiele Glashütte Award (2020), Denmark’s Léonie Sonning Music Prize (2021), Canada's De Hueck and Walford Career Achievement Award (2023), the Order of Canada (2016), Germany's Faust Award (2015), Sweden's Rolf Schock Prize for Musical Arts (2018) and the 2021 Stena Foundation's Cultural Scholarship, Officier des Arts et des Lettres in France (2022), and Gramophone Magazine’s 2022 Artist of the Year.

Barbara resides in Finistère, on the northwest coast of France, directly across the Atlantic from where she grew up in Waverley, Nova Scotia.

Emerson String Quartet
For more than four decades, the Emerson String Quartet has maintained its status as one of the world’s premier chamber music ensembles. “With musicians like this,” wrote a reviewer for The Times (London), “there must be some hope for humanity.” The Quartet has made more than 30 acclaimed recordings, and has been honored with nine GRAMMYs® (including two for Best Classical Album), three Gramophone Awards, the Avery Fisher Prize, and Musical America’s “Ensemble of the Year” award. The Quartet collaborates with some of today’s most esteemed composers to premiere new works, keeping the string quartet form alive and relevant. The group has partnered in performance with such stellar soloists as Renée Fleming, Barbara Hannigan, Evgeny Kissin, Emanuel Ax, and Yefim Bronfman, to name a few.

In the 2021-2022 season, the Quartet will give the New York premiere of André Previn’s Penelope at Carnegie Hall, alongside soprano Renée Fleming, actress Uma Thurman, and pianist Simone Dinnerstein, before reprising the program in a concert at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. In addition to touring major American venues, the Quartet returned to Chamber Music Society of Louisville, where they completed a Beethoven cycle they had begun in spring 2020. Finally, the Quartet embarks on a six-city tour of Europe, with stops in Athens, Madrid, Pisa, Florence, Milan, and London’s Southbank Centre where they will present the Emerson in a complete Shostakovich cycle, one of the staples in their repertoire.

The Quartet’s extensive discography includes the complete string quartets of Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Brahms, Bartok, Webern, and Shostakovich, as well as multi-CD sets of the major works of Haydn, Mozart, Schubert, and Dvorak. In 2018, Deutsche Grammophon issued a box of the Emerson Complete Recordings on the label. In October 2020, the group released a recording of Schumann’s three string quartets for the Pentatone label. In the preceding year, the Quartet joined forces with GRAMMY®-winning pianist Evgeny Kissin to release a collaborative album for Deutsche Grammophon, recorded live at a sold-out Carnegie Hall concert in 2018.

Formed in 1976 and based in New York City, the Emerson String Quartet was one of the first quartets to have its violinists alternate in the first chair position. The Quartet, which takes its name from the American poet and philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson, balances busy performing careers with a commitment to teaching, and serves as Quartet-in-Residence at Stony Brook University. In 2013, cellist Paul Watkins—a distinguished soloist, award-wining conductor, and devoted chamber musician—joined the original members of the Quartet to form today’s group.

In the spring of 2016, the State University of New York awarded full-time Stony Brook faculty members Philip Setzer and Lawrence Dutton the status of Distinguished Professor, and conferred the title of Honorary Distinguished Professor on part-time faculty members Eugene Drucker and Paul Watkins. The Quartet’s members also hold honorary doctorates from Middlebury College, the College of Wooster, Bard College, and the University of Hartford. In January of 2015, the Quartet received the Richard J. Bogomolny National Service Award, Chamber Music America’s highest honor, in recognition of its significant and lasting contribution to the chamber music field.

Booklet for Infinite Voyage