Anna and Elgar

Edward Elgar's Cello Concerto is unique in the history of music: a passionate and intimate profession of faith in art, composed in the wake of the horrors of the First World War.

The soloist is Austria's Kian Soltani, one of the foremost cellists of his generation. Soltani, an Austrian of Persian decent, is known for his inventive combinations of music from the East and the West, which he has recorded for German recording giant Deutsche Grammophon. He is renowned for his technical perfection as well as his emotional connection to the audience, as Icelandic concertgoers experienced first-hand in 2022 when Soltani performed Schumann's Cello Concerto to thundering applause.

Anna Þorvaldsdóttir is among the many who have been captivated by Elgar's Cello Concerto. She was first introduced to the pieces as a young cello student in Borgarnes. Anna would, of course, go on to make a brilliant career in music. Her compositions are now regularly featured on programmes with the world's finest orchestras. Elgar's Cello Concerto is paired with Anna's AIŌN Symphony, a work based on the piece AIŌN, which the ISO performed in 2021with the Icelandic Dance Company. That performance interwove choreography by Erna Ómarsdóttir with the music of the orchestra. The piece won two Gríma Awards, in both music and dance categories. The concert opens with the sublimely beautiful Overture to Parsifal by Richard Wagner, which tells of the eponymous knight of King Arthur's Round Table and his search for the Holy Grail.

Anna Þorvaldsdóttir has been composer-in-residence at the ISO since the start of 2018. This concert, along with a performance in Hallgrímskirkja the following day, celebrates their fruitful partnership with performances of her music alongside other masterworks of the classical canon.