Dennehy: The Hunger review – compelling operatic song cycle of Irish famine

(Nonesuch)Manley/Ó Lionáird/Alarm Will Sound/PiersonDonnacha Dennehy’s ‘docu-cantata’ fuses his minimalist style with traditional Irish singing and a soprano voice Eight years ago, Nonesuch released a disc of Donnacha Dennehy’s music that included the remarkable Grá agus Bás, from 2007, in which the highly decorated, unaccompanied vocal lines of the Gaelic seán nos song tradition were fused with Dennehy’s own musical language, rooted in minimalism and spectralism. That integration of two utterly distinct musical worlds seemed to unlock a new directness in the composer’s work, as if the Irish element was the missing piece in his musical armoury, and though there are not many traces of it in the two more conventional operas that Dennehy went on to compose with playwright Enda Walsh, The Last Hotel and The Second Violinist, it’s to the fore again in The Hunger. Continue reading…
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