NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra: Thorvaldsdóttir & Abrahamsen
Lauren Snouffer / Alan Gilbert – Elbphilharmonie Visions
The climate catastrophe in music
Among the composers that the exciting young music nation Iceland has brought forth, Anna Thorvaldsdóttir (n. 1977) is probably the hippest. Die Zeit once wrote that her music was »as atmospheric and surreal as the northern lights«. Chief conductor Alan Gilbert now brings one of her latest compositions to the NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra, a work of urgent relevance to our times: »Catamorphosis« is a 20-minute piece highlighting what Thorvaldsdóttir calls our »fragile relationship with our planet«. First performed in Berlin in 2021, the work depicts with alternating fragile or hopeful, or brutal, even destructive sounds how drastically our world has fallen out of kilter due to the climate crisis.
Visions as a package: If you buy three or more concerts of the »Elbphilharmonie Visions« festival at the same time, you will receive a 30% discount on the ticket price. To do so, select »Visions Trio Bonus 30%« in the shopping basket.
Thorvaldsdóttir’s score garnered the utmost acclaim from the press, and from the conductor of the first performance, Kirill Petrenko, immediately after its premiere. And no less critical praise went to Hans Abrahamsen’s 2013 song cycle »Let Me Tell You«: The Guardian called this magnum opus of perhaps the most highly-regarded Scandinavian composer »the best piece of classical music written so far in the 21st century«. The Danish composer based it on the novella »Let Me Tell You« by Paul Griffith, which rearranges the 481 words of Ophelia’s monologue from Shakespeare’s »Hamlet«. The outcome was a completely new text that gives deep insights into the character of Ophelia, torn between repression, madness and liberation.
Performers
NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchester
Lauren Snouffer soprano
conductor Alan Gilbert
Programme
Talk with Anna Thorvaldsdóttir and Alan Gilbert
Anna Thorvaldsdóttir
Catamorphosis
Hans Abrahamsen
Let Me Tell You für Sopran und Orchester
Festival
Elbphilharmonie Visions