ARCHORA / AIŌN

Album review

This release pairs a rising young conductor, Eva Ollikainen, with one of the hot composers of the day, Anna Thorvaldsdottir. A third partner is the audiophile Sono Luminus label; producer Ragnheidur Jónsdóttir, working in Reykjavik's Harpa Concert Hall, achieves awesome depth and transparency that will reassure high-end stereo buyers about the value of their investments. (A Pure Audio Blu-ray disc is also included with physical album purchases.) Thorvaldsdottir's music is sometimes held to be allied to the Scandinavian nature-inspired school stretching back to Sibelius, but it is a bit more abstract. A better comparison might be the orchestral music of Ives (who was, of course, also deeply inspired by nature). She offers large, slow-moving masses of sound, with frequent use of drones, punctuated by decisive events that set her firmly apart from the minimalists. The opening ARCHORA, just shy of 21 minutes long, involves two metaphysical realms; one is called "Primordia," and if that is not a good name for a Star Trek world, it is not clear what might be. AION is in three movements, and, Thorvaldsdottir writes, "is inspired by the abstract metaphor of being able to move freely in time, of being able to explore time as a space that you inhabit rather than experiencing it as a one-directional journey through a single dimension." This music is quite compelling when played as cleanly as it is here by what might be called the home team, the Iceland Symphony Orchestra, and the performances here bode well for Ollikainen's young tenure there; she has the group punching a bit above its weight. This is a good introduction to the work of this increasingly popular orchestral composer.
© James Manheim /TiVo