Abrahamsen: Let Me Tell You

Hans Abrahamsen’s Let Me Tell You is an orchestral song cycle to texts by—well, not Shakespeare exactly, though all the words come from Shakespeare. Paul Griffiths’ poems use only words spoken by Ophelia in Hamlet. But a mere description can give no idea of how compelling, how moving and how ravishingly, piercingly beautiful this music is, especially when sung with the combination of melting sweetness and fearless insight that soprano Barbara Hannigan supplies in this recording with Andris Nelsons and the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra. Garlanded with awards and hailed as an instant classic after its release in 2016, there’s an aura about this performance that makes it linger in the memory long after the final, magical sounds have dissolved into silence.