Works from Iceland performed by the BBC Symphony Orchestra

Contemporary music from Iceland.
Tom Service presents the UK premieres of four orchestral works from Iceland, especially recorded by the BBC Symphony Orchestra. Haukur Tómasson writes a work of brooding intensity for orchestra without brass, inspired by the repetitive sounds of the weaver's loom. A solo cello and chamber orchestra provides the pallet for Páll Ragnar Pálsson's Quake. But are his eruptions those of the physical world or some sort of emotional torment? Meanwhile, Valgeir Sigurdsson addresses not the elemental force of one of Iceland's most dramatic volcanic eruptions but its aftermath as, in 1875, hundreds of Icelanders emigrate to Canada. In Anna Thorvaldsdóttir's Dream, a quiet sound world is born from silence. As she writes: "In each chord there is a world of collective sounds where the small particles dissolve and create their own world." Also on the programme, Sæunn Thorsteinsdóttir plays some works for solo cello and movements from a new album from Bára Gísladóttir.

Haukur Tómasson: From Darkness Woven
Páll Ragnar Pálsson: Quake
Valgeir Sigurdsson: Eighteen Hundred & Seventy-Five
Anna Thorvaldsdóttir: Dreaming

Sæunn Thorsteinsdóttir (cello)
BBC Symphony Orchestra, Rumon Gamba (conductor)

Also tonight, some Icelandic works for solo cello and movements from Bára Gísladóttir's Mass for double bass, voice and electronics, a work which, she says, she had to write 'to save my sanity.'

Þuríður Jónsdóttir: 48 Images of the Moon
Halldór Smárason: 3 movements from ☉
Sæunn Thorsteinsdóttir (cello)

Bára Gísladóttir: Mass for some
Bára Gísladóttir (voice, double bass and electronics)