Hekla, Iceland Monumental soundscapes – the volcanoes and geysers of Iceland - are brought to London this week by Ilan Volkov and the Iceland Symphony Orchestra. On Friday Geysir by Jón Leifs (1899-1968) will erupt into the Albert Hall, following Haukur Tómasson’s Magma which receives it UK premiere.
Leifs studied and worked in central Europe but on returning to Iceland in the 1940s he set about creating a new Icelandic sound – based, inevitably, on the unique folk music and tectonic geology of his country. He started to concentrate on orchestral works, the better to portray the monumental landscapes and forces of nature that were to be his main subjects. Geysir, from 1962, epitomises this style. Other works include Hekla which depicts the eruption of the volcano (pictured) which he witnessed in 1947, and Dettifoss was inspired by Europe’s most powerful waterfall.
Volkov brings Geysir together with Tómasson’s (b.1960) Magma and two other works that are tectonic in scale: Beethoven’s 5th Symphony and Schumann’s A minor piano concerto, in what seems to be an inspired piece of programming, unlike the awkward juxtaposing of contemporary and familiar works that we often expect from the Proms. Hence the title of Thursday’s Prom: Classical Tectonics. I’m not familiar with Tómasson but the Iceland Musical Exchange says that “Tomasson has a keen ear for sonority and can evoke the gargantuan in music just as easily as he can the ice-delicate”. If that’s a fair description, he will be a perfect successor to Leifs.
This morning on Radio 3 CD Review includes (about 30 minutes into the programme) a portrait of Leifs. The programme is available for the next 7 days, and the Proms composer portraits are also available as podcasts. The Prom is broadcast live at 7.30 on Friday, and can be heard for 30 days on iPlayer.
Leifs studied and worked in central Europe but on returning to Iceland in the 1940s he set about creating a new Icelandic sound – based, inevitably, on the unique folk music and tectonic geology of his country. He started to concentrate on orchestral works, the better to portray the monumental landscapes and forces of nature that were to be his main subjects. Geysir, from 1962, epitomises this style. Other works include Hekla which depicts the eruption of the volcano (pictured) which he witnessed in 1947, and Dettifoss was inspired by Europe’s most powerful waterfall.
Volkov brings Geysir together with Tómasson’s (b.1960) Magma and two other works that are tectonic in scale: Beethoven’s 5th Symphony and Schumann’s A minor piano concerto, in what seems to be an inspired piece of programming, unlike the awkward juxtaposing of contemporary and familiar works that we often expect from the Proms. Hence the title of Thursday’s Prom: Classical Tectonics. I’m not familiar with Tómasson but the Iceland Musical Exchange says that “Tomasson has a keen ear for sonority and can evoke the gargantuan in music just as easily as he can the ice-delicate”. If that’s a fair description, he will be a perfect successor to Leifs.
This morning on Radio 3 CD Review includes (about 30 minutes into the programme) a portrait of Leifs. The programme is available for the next 7 days, and the Proms composer portraits are also available as podcasts. The Prom is broadcast live at 7.30 on Friday, and can be heard for 30 days on iPlayer.
And all next week, Composer of the Week will be a repeat of the series first broadcast last year, which covers some of Europe's most innovative voices, from Bjork to, well, Leifs. As the programme website puts it: For more than a millennium, Iceland's composers have drawn upon the sounds of its unique geology: sounds created in a glacial, geothermal landscape like nowhere else on earth. Searing water explodes from fissures; the earth steams spongily underfoot; vast, electric-blue hunks of solid ice crack and collide as they bob down otherwise silent fjords.
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