Iceland Symphony Orchestra - Vikingasvar - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

Album Tracks 1. I. Adagio - Allegro - Adagio - Hans Stengaard 2. II. Allegro Molto E Con Fuoco 3. Allegro Con Fuoco - 4. Intermedio I. Andantino - 5. Adagio - 6. Intermedio II. Andantino - 7. Presto - 8. Intermedio III. Andantino - 9. Coda. Andante

Album Tracks 1. Vivo-Lento 2. Vivo-Stesso Movimento 3. Vivo-Stesso Movimento 4. Vivo-Stesso Movimento 5. Adagio 6. Vivo 7. Tempo I 8. Meno Mosso 9. Vivo-Poco Ritenuto 10. Poco Lento 11. 1. La Belle-De-Nuit 12. 2. La Sauterelle 13. 3. La Veronique 14. 4. L'eglantine, L'aubepine Et la Glycine 15. 5. La Tortue 16. 6. La Rose 17. 7. L'alligator 18. 8. L'angelique 19. 9. Le Papillon

Daníel Bjarnason is a hub-like figure in the group of composers who could be said to constitute a First Icelandic School. But he also stands slightly apart from his peers. As the nation's foremost conductor, he has premiered and recorded works by it's central protagonists including Jóhann Jóhannsson, Anna Thorvaldsdottir, María Huld Markan Sigfúsdóttir and others (notably on the Sono Luminus series Emergence, Recurrence and Occurrence). But Bjarnason's own music has long sprawled beyond the borders of the school's distinct aesthetic and incorporated non-abstract forms such as opera, dance and film scores. While some Icelandic orchestral music enacts a gradual transformation on a vaporous orchestra, akin to the shifting shape and colour of a North Atlantic cloud, Bjarnason's formative orchestral works often cleave to a solid, defined musical object which might be distorted or obscured before emerging again intact. His music has never shied away from the slow, drone-lagged music of Icelandic archetype but it has also used more varied tempi and more urgent rhythmic profiles. It has also deployed different time scales in parallel - notably in works such as Emergence and From Space I Saw the Earth, in which planes of music operating at different speeds momentarily sync. This brings to his music a sense of what the late Danish composer Per Nørgård described as 'the timeless forces of existence - nature in the broadest sense.' Those works had their roots in breakthrough concertos for cello and piano, Bow to String and Processions, both of which thrive on the process of expanding strong, fertile material by zooming deep in or stretching wide out - a more thematic, less spectral approach than that of Icelandic fashion but one that still sees Bjarnason reveling in the properties of sound itself. - Andrew Mellor