Vital reinventions of early music

Electric Fields: Music by Hildegarde von Bingen, Barbara Strozzi, Francesca Caccini, Bryce Dessner & David Chalmin

The Audio CD and streaming versions of this Alpha disc are now available. I'm reviewing the 180 gram double-LP version of this release, which is due to be released on June 6, 2025.

Photo by Umberto Nicoletti

Electric Fields is a project of this good-looking crew: soprano Barbara Hannigan, composer and electronics performer David Chalmin, and the duo-pianists Katia and Marielle Labèque. It's based on the music and texts of the remarkable medieval polymath Hildegarde von Bingen, as well as music by two women composers of the early Baroque: Barbara Strozzi and Francesca Caccini. This music becomes the raw material for improvisations of the team, as well as original compositions by Chalmin and Bryce Dessner.

These are more than mere pastiches; they're serious 21st century reinterpretations of early music. Though there's an immersive feel to all the music here, especially with the warm sound of vinyl, this project is not built in the studio, but rather through live performances. That gives a vital pulse to the music, with even a hint of swing in the improvised pieces. Of course Barbara Hannigan is thoroughly familiar with Historically Informed Practice when it comes to the music of Strozzi and Caccini, so we're on solid ground when it comes to reinterpretation in a new idiom.

Hildegard of Bingen, Symphonia Harmonie Celestium Revelationum", published in modern facsimile by Alamire

You have to be of a certain age to look at this score of Hildegarde von Bingen and think immediately of IBM punch cards, but that was my first response. Hildegarde wrote this music some 850 years ago, so there's an element of translation involved in any performance. With the lack of any performance tradition in the intervening centuries, Hildegarde is a strong candidate for a true reinvention in modern times. Besides her skills as a musician, she had an interest in scientific analysis and even cryptography. There are two pieces on this album - by Bryce Dessner and David Chalmin - that use Hildegarde's "Lingua ignota", her invented language. The intellectual curiosity of this one-of-a-kind 12th century woman lives on in these two tracks, but one can also say that something of her spirit has also survived.

It's Heitor Villa-Lobos's modern reinvention of Bach in the mid-20th century that I kept coming back to when I listened to this music. Villa's Bachianas Brasileiras reinvents Bach's music in the light of Brazil's popular music traditions, of the Amerindians of the Amazon and the urban choros musicians of Rio de Janeiro. Like the Bachianas, Electric Fields is a vital hybrid of old and new, erudite and popular.

It's all grist for the mill:

• The Labeque sisters' recordings of Mozart, Schubert, Gershwin, Philip Glass, Moondog and many others;
• Bryce Dessner's contemporary classical compositions and collaborations with people like Sufjan Stevens and Nico Muhly, as well as his experience in the rock group The National; 
• Barbara Hannigan's operatic singing, especially in the Baroque repertoire, and her move to become an important conductor, with wonderful recordings of Nono, Messiaen, Berg, Ligeti and others;
• David Chalmin's production work in jazz and classical music, his electronic composition and live electronic performance, as well as his collaborations with the Labeque sisters.

There seem to be no barriers for these wonderful musicians. They've produced an album that will reward multiple listens and close study, but which is also just there in its particular groove, inspiring wonder.