Alarm Will Sound - Donnacha Dennehy: The Hunger (2019) [Hi-Res]

Donnacha Dennehy's The Hunger—out August 23, 2019 on Nonesuch Records—explores Ireland's Great Famine. Performed by Alarm Will Sound led by Alan Pierson, soprano Katherine Manley, and sean nós singer Iarla Ó Lionáird, the libretto draws from first-hand accounts by American humanitarian Asenath Nicholson. The Hunger "bears hearing and rehearing," said the Washington Post. "It is powerful, and it makes a statement."

As Dennehy explains, "The Famine was a topic I had wanted to address in my music for a long time. Only when I discovered Asenath Nicholson's Annals of the Famine in Ireland, published in 1851, was a route unlocked for me. Her astonishing first-hand accounts became the piece's main narrative thread. She made the arduous journey from the U.S. to Ireland, when countless others were going in the opposite direction, and traversed the entire country, often on foot, and often staying in the homes of the suffering, in order to chronicle the conditions of starving Irish people."

He continues, "To counterpoint Nicholson's perspective, I invented an elderly Irish character, written for Iarla Ó Lionáird. The sense of how incapable bureaucracy is at dealing with a quickly transforming crisis, and how that bureaucracy can be used as a screen for being unfeeling, is implied by the narrative that Asenath tells of the old man's dealings with the hunger relief station, and the way the music surges and fades, embodying the old man's Sisyphean task." The Hunger has been performed as a staged "docu-cantata" in venues including BAM and the Kennedy Center. Alan Pierson leads Crash Ensemble, Manley, and Ó Lionáird in a performance at Abbey Theatre in Dublin, August 19–24. In September, Alarm Will Sound performs a concert version of the piece at Princeton University, where Dennehy is on faculty; Kaufman Music Center's Merkin Hall in collaboration with Irish Arts Center NYC, as part of Ecstatic Music's tenth anniversary season; and at Boston's Jordan Hall at the New England Conservatory for a performance in partnership with Oxfam America.

"The Irish potato famine of the late 1840s was a critical event in the history of both Ireland and the U.S., and it is surprising how few works of art have engaged with it. This work by composer Donnacha Dennehy helps address the lack. It is billed as an opera but lies somewhere between opera and cantata: there is no chorus, but no dramatic action, either. The Hunger features two voice parts: an American woman named Asenath Nicholson, who was an actual historical figure who traveled to Ireland and documented what she saw, and a nameless Man who embodies the sufferings of the Irish people. Nicholson is sung by an operatic soprano, Katherine Manley, and the Man by a sean-nós singer, Iarla Ó Lionáird. In Dennehy's hands, this is a powerful and flexible concept. Nicholson's lines are in prose, but as the piece develops and her understanding deepens, her musical idiom begins to take on Irish characteristics. (Sample the short but intense fourth section, "The Keening.") The accompaniment is by the 20-piece ensemble Alarm Will Sound, which has generally specialized in multimedia productions. Indeed, The Hunger started life as one of these, with the music presented concurrently with lectures by the likes of Noam Chomsky shown on screens. It is likely that many listeners will prefer the non-academic version here, created by the composer himself. The sound, from a New Jersey university auditorium, is surprisingly good, and the booklet includes a complete libretto. The piece runs for under an hour and may easily find applications in teaching students about the great famine." (James Manheim, AMG)