Occurrence: ISO Project, Vol. 3

Album review

Occurrence is the third volume in a series of releases of contemporary Icelandic music by the Iceland Symphony Orchestra and conductor Daniel Bjarnason. The first two volumes were called Recurrence and Concurrence, and the likelihood that these titles can be connected in any way to the music on each album is low; in fact, Occurrence, where some composers from the earlier albums appear again, might easily have been given the Recurrence title. Quibbles aside, the recordings, whether together or even heard singly in this case, give a sense of the sweep of new Icelandic music. There is a broadly appealing violin concerto by Bjarnason, crisply played by the orchestra's lead violinist, Pekka Kuusisto; the short but monumental landscape-evoking Lendh, by Veronique Vaka, which suggests a contemporary Sibelius; the playful In Seventh Heaven of Haukur Tómasson; the cinematic Flutter, by Þuríður Jónsdóttir, who has worked with Björk; and the elegiac Adagio of Magnús Blöndal Jóhannsson, a work that conductors of other orchestras would do well to study. Best of all is the sound engineering from Sono Luminus, which recorded the albums in three different spaces in Reykjavik's Harpa Concert Hall and brought a truly thrilling level of detail. Recommended to anyone with the slightest curiosity about Icelandic classical music; for audiophiles, it's a must.
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