Barbara Hannigan: NPR Music Tiny Desk Concert

Jan. 26, 2018 | Tom Huizenga -- In these days of wireless earbuds, streams and podcasts, the notion of people gathering to hear a lone classical singer (with a pianist) perform densely structured art songs in a foreign tongue seems almost laughably quaint. Yet the vocal recital, as a performance genre, is still alive. And one of the most memorable recitals I’ve witnessed in a long time sits on this page, in a condensed form, thanks to the extraordinary soprano Barbara Hannigan and her accompanist Reinbert de Leeuw. The night before this Tiny Desk concert, the two musicians gave a beautiful and intense recital at Washington’s Kennedy Center. The songs, all in German, came from a heady period in Vienna, when music was transitioning from the swells of romanticism to the uncharted waters of modernism. Four of those songs make up this Tiny Desk performance. The bonus here is that these impassioned dispatches become even more intimate. Consider the opening song, Alexander Zemlinsky’s “Empfängnis“ (Conception). T