Reykjavik Chamber Orchestra - Windbells - BLU-RAY

Occurrence is the third, and at least for now the last, in a hugely illuminating series devoted to works by contemporary Icelandic composers, as performed by Iceland's 70-year-old national orchestra. Speaking for myself - and surely for many others, as well - the series has been a milestone project, one that any conscientious collector of symphonic music simply must have on the shelf. Across three albums now, Sono Luminus has capitalized shrewdly on swelling global interest in the music of Daniel Bjarnason and Anna Thorvaldsdottir, using their works as a means by which to introduce seven more composers with original, substantial voices. Three of the composers represented on Occurrence return from previous installments in the series. In addition to Bjarnson - who also has served as an insightful, sympathetic conductor throughout - we hear new works from Þuri´ður Jonsdottir, whose Flow and Fusion opened the initial disc, Recurrence, and from Haukur Tomasson, whose Piano Concerto No. 2 was a highlight of the second in the series, Concurrence. These repeat engagements prove serendipitous, showing off fresh facets of these newly familiar creators. One, Bjarnason's own Violin Concerto, scarcely requires introduction, having proved it's merits and attractions already on concert platforms around the globe since it's 2017 world premiere at the Hollywood Bowl. Pekka Kuusisto, the violinist for whom the piece was written, demonstrates his consummate skill as a technician, a melodist, a collaborator and - not least - a whistler, and the orchestral accompaniment, no surprise, is vivid and alert. 21.99 0.00 30 IN STOCK //mediacdn.aent-m/prod-img/500/83/3890483-2660847.jpg //mediacdn.aent-m/prod-img/500/83/3890483-2660847.jpg //aentmedia.blob.core.windows.net/prod-img/1500/83/3890483-2660847.jpg //aentmediacold.blob.core.windows.net/raw/83/3890483.jpg

At the risk of getting doxxed by my musician colleagues, I'm going to divulge a dark truth about classical music it's never as captivating or molecule-altering for anyone as it is for us on stage. Which is why I often find classical records, especially those of the orchestral persuasion, so underwhelming. So not... immediate. Which is why I am approaching zealot status in my admiration for Sono Luminus and the way in which it submerges listeners within reach of the Atlantis that is the on-stage experience. Which is why, save for live performance, the often inimitable new-music originating in, or in proximity to, Iceland (homeland to an unreasonable percentage of the composers living rent-free in my headphones for more than a decade) has found it's most ardent advocate and most clarion amplifier in Winchester, Virginia. Certainly it's exceptional national orchestra has. Despite a bewildering insistence by journalists to characterize music written by those with Icelandic surnames as a monolith, the entries on this tracklist are as singular as hand blown glass. The inclusion of American sonic clairvoyant Missy Mazzoli is a helpful geographic foil here, but there is one element fusing all of these inventions Your person is about to feel minuscule or massive, by contrast to - or motivated by - these sounds. Anna Thorvaldsdottir's music is often intimidatingly cyclopean, and Catamorphosis at times mimics the cosmic indifference of Lovecraft-ian deities, but it simultaneously introduces an iridescent hope I have not encountered before in her music. Mazzoli's Sinfonia (for Orbiting Spheres) catapults us from one end of a pulsing solar system to the other while Daníel Bjarnason's From Space I Saw Earth improbably stretches perspective from earth to the moon and back, seeming somehow both terrestrial and paranormal within a single phrase. Maria Huld Markan Sigfúsdóttir's Cloc

The present album is another in a series of albums featuring works by Andrzej Dziadekfor large instrumental and vocal-instrumental forces. Like the previous in the series, it demonstrates a wide range of the composer's achievements in these genres. The album includes Poem for orchestra (1987), Concerto for violin and orchestra (1992), and Symphony No. 2 'Te Deum' (2000-2002). Arranged in chronological order, they give a cross-section of the com-poser's attainments achievements over a period of fifteen years. This is how the composer describes his music InchThe style of my compositions is the consequence of my faith in the power of expression in music's fundamental elements melody, rhythm, harmony. This is not to say that the impact of the music should be easy.Inch Dziadek treats musical tradition as his source and has respect for it's refinement and identity. An ironic mix of styles and playing games with listeners are alien to him. In his distanced, intimate utterance, the composer builds a dialogue with long-gone conventions, evoking their various aspects with reverence.