The premiere recording of Enigma by Anna Thorvaldsdottir featuring the Grammy-nominated Spektral Quartet is released by Sono Luminus on August 27. Composed in 2019, the 28-minute string quartet explores the notion of the ‘in-between’ focussing on the relationship between what the composer describes as ‘the fundament and the fragmented shadows’.
REVIEW: Anna Thorvaldsdóttir and Spektral Upend the String Quartet
Enigma was co-commissioned by Spektral Quartet, Carnegie Hall, and Washington Performing Arts. Following its premiere at the Kennedy Center, Washington DC, the Washington Post wrote: ‘Thorvaldsdottir teases additional mystery from the strings, masking them until at times you’d swear you were hearing electronic instruments, or a wind ensemble or percussion. ...Like other pieces of Thorvaldsdottir’s I’ve heard, Enigma sits on the border between concert music and installation art; it marshals sounds in ways that have little to do with the conventional pathways of Western classical music.’
In addition to further live performances of Enigma by Spektral Quartet, all five of Thorvaldsdottir’s orchestral pieces will be heard during the 21/22 season. Among the highlights are performances of her most recent work CATAMORPHOSIS by the Iceland Symphony Orchestra and City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Dreaming with the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Basel Sinfonietta, AERIALITY in the USA, UK and Germany, AIŌN in a collaboration between Iceland Symphony Orchestra and Iceland Dance Company, and the first performances of METACOSMOS in Austria, Slovakia and Japan, as well as by the LA Phil and Royal Scottish National Orchestra.
