Sono Luminus Launches Series of ISO Recordings

from the Sono Luminus Web page for the album being discussed

At the end of last month, Sono Luminus released the first in a series of recordings of performances by the Icelandic Symphony Orchestra (ISO). The title of the album is Atmospheriques; and it provides a platform for four composers of Icelandic heritage, Anna S. Þorvaldsdóttir (Thorvaldsdottir), Daníel Bjarnason, María Huld Markan Sigfúsdóttir, and Bára Gísladóttir. There is also one track of music by American composer Missy Mazzoli. As of this writing, the album is available from Amazon.com only for download; but Sono Luminus has created its own Web page for a package that includes both a standard CD and a Blu-ray audio disc.

While neither composer nor composition work are cited in the booklet, it would not be unfair to suggest that this title was inspired by “Atmosphères,” a piece for large orchestra composed in 1961 by György Ligeti. The Wikipedia page for this work describes it as “eschewing conventional melody and metre in favor of dense sound textures.” Ligeti himself referred to those textures as “micropolyphonic.”

Each of the first three tracks tends to emerge as a “response” to Ligeti’s “call.” The first two tracks account for the only two names on the album that were previously familiar to me. The first of these is Thorvaldsdottir, whose “METACOSMOS” was given its West Coast premiere by Esa-Pekka Salonen conducting the San Francisco Symphony in January of 2019.

On this new release she is again represented by an “all-caps” title: “CATAMORPHOSIS.” In writing about “METACOSMOS” I could not avoid citing Ligeti. The booklet notes by Doyle Armbrust do not explore that influence, writing, instead, about the “iridescent hope” of “CATAMORPHOSIS,” a trait that never quite registered with my own listening experiences (note the plural).

“CATAMORPHOSIS” is followed by Mazzoli’s “Sinfonia (for Orbiting Spheres).” Some readers may recall that my past encounters with her music have not always been particularly satisfying ones. In this case, however, I came away with the impression that she knew how to transform her impression of Ligeti into both textures and rhetorical devices of her own invention. This may well be the track on the album that I shall revisit most often.

Bjarnason is also the conductor on this album. However, his composition for the third track, “From Space I Saw Earth,” requires two additional conductors: Eva Ollikainen and Kornilios Michailidis. Presumably, they account for the members of the ISO Youth Orchestra and the Bell Choir of Reykjanesbær Music School. This suggests that Bjarnason’s composition marks a departure from Ligeti in favor of Karlheinz Stockhausen. However, I have to wonder just how effectively what are likely to be significant spatial qualities emerge, even on the Blu-ray release. I would also suggest that all three of these tracks are likely to find their way, to Music From the Hearts of Space, which has become one of the few radio broadcasts to draw my attention.

The remaining two tracks on the album depart from the rhetoric that prevails over the first three. The title of the fourth track is “Clockworking for Orchestra,” composed by Sigfúsdóttir. As might be guessed, this music was inspired by the ticking of a clock or, as the booklet notes by Doyle Armbrust put it, “the immeasurable realm of what occurs as the seconds tick by.” As might be guessed, the prevailing rhetoric is ostinato. However, I found myself drawn to the opening measures of a single harp string accounting for that ticking, after which different types of clockwork emerge through the changes in instrumentation.

Following the familiarity of Sigfúsdóttir’s ticking, Gísladóttir’s “ÓS” is definitely “something completely different.” The opening sonorities suggest the stroking of wine glasses in the manner of a glass harmonica, but the stroking brings out the notes of natural harmonics going up and down the overall series. However, it does not take long for those sonorities to be overwhelmed by the most aggressive percussion work on the entire album. Armbrust’s booklet notes never explain Gísladóttir’s title, but the diversity of those sonorities leaves the attentive listener with little time to think about the overall title!