New Music Albums: THE GROTESQUE & THE SUBLIME (Daníel Bjarnason, Iceland Symphony Orchestra)

Artist:
Daníel Bjarnason
Iceland Symphony Orchestra

Genre:
Classical

Total Time:
70:41

Record Label:
Sono Luminus

Purchase Album:
CD, Amazon Music,
Apple Music, Spotify

Release Date
January 23, 2026

Find out more about this album release after the jump.

Purchasing Links

Buy the CD from Amazon

Buy the MP3 from Amazon

Buy the Album from Apple Music

Listen on Spotify

Product Description: "Daníel Bjarnason is a hub-like figure in the group of composers who could be said to constitute a First Icelandic School. But he also stands slightly apart from his peers. As the nation's foremost conductor, he has premiered and recorded works by it's central protagonists including Jóhann Jóhannsson, Anna Thorvaldsdottir, María Huld Markan Sigfúsdóttir and others (notably on the Sono Luminus series Emergence, Recurrence and Occurrence). But Bjarnason's own music has long sprawled beyond the borders of the school's distinct aesthetic and incorporated non-abstract forms such as opera, dance and film scores. While some Icelandic orchestral music enacts a gradual transformation on a vaporous orchestra, akin to the shifting shape and colour of a North Atlantic cloud, Bjarnason's formative orchestral works often cleave to a solid, defined musical object which might be distorted or obscured before emerging again intact. His music has never shied away from the slow, drone-lagged music of Icelandic archetype but it has also used more varied tempi and more urgent rhythmic profiles. It has also deployed different time scales in parallel - notably in works such as Emergence and From Space I Saw the Earth, in which planes of music operating at different speeds momentarily sync. This brings to his music a sense of what the late Danish composer Per Nørgård described as 'the timeless forces of existence - nature in the broadest sense.' Those works had their roots in breakthrough concertos for cello and piano, Bow to String and Processions, both of which thrive on the process of expanding strong, fertile material by zooming deep in or stretching wide out - a more thematic, less spectral approach than that of Icelandic fashion but one that still sees Bjarnason reveling in the properties of sound itself." - Andrew Mellor

TRACK LIST:

1 . FEAST: I. a voluptuous scene that masquerade Iceland Symphony Orchestra, Daníel Bjarnason & Frank Dupree (04:36)

2 . FEAST: II. the presence of a masked figure Iceland Symphony Orchestra, Daníel Bjarnason & Frank Dupree (04:15)

3 . FEAST: III. the brazen lungs of the clock Iceland Symphony Orchestra, Daníel Bjarnason & Frank Dupree (02:19)

4 . FEAST: IV. dance of the mummer Iceland Symphony Orchestra, Daníel Bjarnason & Frank Dupree (03:23)

5 . FEAST: V. the revelation Iceland Symphony Orchestra, Daníel Bjarnason & Frank Dupree (03:18)

6 . FEAST: VI. one by one dropped the revellers (danse macabre) Iceland Symphony Orchestra, Daníel Bjarnason & Frank Dupree (06:07)

7 . FEAST: VII. dominion over all (skeleton procession) Iceland Symphony Orchestra, Daníel Bjarnason & Frank Dupree (01:36)

8 . Fragile Hope Iceland Symphony Orchestra & Daníel Bjarnason (14:18)

9 . Inferno: I. The Bells Iceland Symphony Orchestra, Daníel Bjarnason & Vivi Vassileva (13:53)

10 . Inferno: II. A Passage Iceland Symphony Orchestra, Daníel Bjarnason & Vivi Vassileva (06:08)

11 .Inferno: III. Dark Shores Iceland Symphony Orchestra, Daníel Bjarnason & Vivi Vassileva (10:54)

The Grotesque And The Sublime Daniel Bjarnason Iceland Symphony Orchestra

OTHER ALBUM RELEASES:

Wednesday, May 6, 2026

New Music Albums: THE GROTESQUE & THE SUBLIME (Daníel Bjarnason, Iceland Symphony Orchestra)

Purchasing Links

TRACK LIST:

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