ANNA THORVALDSDOTTIR (b.1977): Into - Second Self, Ró, Aeriality, Tactility III-I-II,Trajectories, Shades of Silence, Aura.

Description: Another hugely welcome opportunity to sample Þorvaldsdóttir's extraordinarily powerful brand of sonorism in music that sounds almost literally like natural phenomena observed on a grand scale, rather than what we normally think of as "music". What we said previously about Þorvaldsdóttir's strange, unique, elemental music bears repeating: " … music concerned with 'natural phenomena and structures ... [these elements are] often structural, like proportion and flow' ... 'nature music' consisting of slabs or floes of slow-moving material ..." (01U063, 12V064, 09X060). Sonically, nothing is quite what it seems; the unearthly magmatic percussion textures of Into - Second Self could easily be electronic in origin; the strings in Rò never sound like a string ensemble, but more like some ancient instrument in the bagpipe family; and the piano in Trajectories is largely indistinguishable from the electronic sounds for much of the piece. Tactility was created as an installation soundscape, not for concert performance, and its richly textural quality blurs the boundaries between music and object, as title suggests. Trajectories is also a study in textures, this time intended for concert performance. Beginning gradually the caliginous textures come into focus, as floating, unattached piano gestures slowly appear through the mists; the effect suggests gliding over a limitless cimmerian landscape of basalt, pranked with efflorescences of glowing crystals by the crepitation of direct contact on the piano strings. Shades of Silence has a more prominent melodic component than the other works here, suggesting an ancient folk music, heard echoing through a landscape of memory, obscured by æons and great distances. Like the monumental Metacosmos (12V064), Aeriality employs the full resources of the orchestra to produce a fluid, evolving soundscape of awesome power. The composer speaks of the work in terms of the sensation of being untethered to solid reality, as though floating; whether this is heard as sped-up film of gathering and dissipating masses of storm clouds or as oceanic currents or the magma flows underpinning the geological origins of the unearthly landscapes of her native Iceland, the fluctuating density of the textures, transitioning between translucency and quarter-tone enhanced massiveness and opacity, create a powerful, unsettling experience. Toward the end, a sinuous melody, like a primitive precursor of a Sibelian theme, appears, and the piece ends against the stable background of a long-sustained chord. This release is a remastered reissue of a 2014 Deutsche Grammophon recording, with the addition of the sonically inventive Aura, receiving its premiere recording.