Víkingur and Daníel

When Víkingur Heiðar Ólafsson premiered Daníel Bjarnason's piano concerto Processions at the 2009 Dark Music Days festival, it was abundantly clear that a new generation was about to make its mark on the Icelandic music scene, and concertgoers welcomed the performance with open arms. “Concertgoers floated out of the hall with a new faith in the future,” wrote Guðrún Nordal about the concert in her book Skiptidagar. Since then, Daníel has received a wide range of awards and plaudits for his music, and now he has written a new piano concerto for Víkingur Heiðar, the ISO, and the Los Angeles Philharmonic. The concerto received its world premiere in Los Angeles in February 2022, followed by its Icelandic premiere only a few weeks later.

Two other recent compositions round out the programme. Lollapalooza is a short, brisk work by John Adams, who himself will come to Iceland in May 2022, to conduct the last concert in the Víkingur Tetralogy series. A vibrant mélange of jazz, classical, and contemporary music, Lollapalooza was written as a birthday present for Sir Simon Rattle, who has conducted Adams' works all over the world. 

María Huld Markan Sigfúsdóttir originally wrote Clockworking for chamber ensemble, and the new orchestral version was premiered in the American city of Fort Worth, Texas, in 2019. It is based on old work tunes sung by American prisoners and used by María Huld to create many tiny mechanisms that fit together to form a single unit, like a large clock.  

A new piano concerto by Daníel Bjarnason, together with recent works from Iceland and the US.