Iceland’s choral landscape

The unique sound of the Arctic Visitors to Reykjavík can’t exactly miss the Hallgrímskirkja, as it towers over the city. ‘It is an extraordinary building,’ says conductor Graham Ross, whose Choir of Clare College, Cambridge travelled there in September to sing a concert and a Sunday service. ‘It’s very stark in its beauty. Inside, it is extremely clean, with huge, plain white walls and thin pencil-like windows which give amazing light effects. And the acoustic is second-to-none.’

The choir’s visit followed its recording (in London, with soprano Carolyn Sampson and the Dmitri Ensemble) of Ice Land: The Eternal Music, an album of works by Icelandic composers from the mid-20th century to the present. ‘The music is incredibly beautiful and shares a soundworld that seems to connect remarkably to the amazing landscape from which it comes. A lot of it is slow moving, often underpinned by long, sustained bass notes, and you get this very sonorous effect – the music of Arvo Pärt is the closest I can compare it to, but in fact it is uniquely Icelandic. It is also very tonal and accessible.’

Ross first discovered a taste for Icelandic music when he was sent a score by Sigur ur Saevarsson, one of the composers on the album. As well performing the work, Ross invited Saevarsson over to work with the choir and to introduce them to choral music by other Icelandic composers such as Anna Thorvaldsdottir (see p12). Saevarsson, says Ross, also assisted his singers with the local language: ‘It was quite difficult learning Icelandic and we spent a lot of time on it. But then, if there was one good thing to come from the pandemic, it was that we had a lot of spare time on our hands!’

‘Ice Land: The Eternal Music’ is released this month (Harmonia Mundi)