Like turning your soul inside out: Hannigan and Bowler on The White Book

The morning after the world premiere at Gothenburg Konserthus, soprano and conductor Barbara Hannigan and composer‑vocalist Laura Bowler met backstage. Hannigan had sung Bowler’s new work, The White Book, with the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra; both were sleepless and comparing notes, from tea preferences to rehearsal details.

Hannigan’s onstage garment — a one‑of‑a‑kind white silk and wool linen creation by Yuima Nakazato, held together with tiny magnets — will also feature in the piece’s debuts in London and Copenhagen. Bowler’s score sets five short chapters from Han Kang’s The White Book, an autobiographical meditation that begins with a litany of white objects and moves through near‑silence and blank space to an intense saturation of whiteness.

She first read the text at the Christie hospital while her mother was being treated for acute myeloid leukaemia, and after her mother later died in an accident she contacted Han Kang again to explain why the work mattered to her.

Sweden, Gothenburg

barbara hannigan, laura bowler, white book, gothenburg konserthus, gothenburg symphony, yuima nakazato, han kang, christie hospital, leukaemia, london