Anna Thorvaldsdottir METACOSMOS world premiere in New York
26th March 2018
© Saga Sigurdardottir
METACOSMOS, the highly-anticipated new orchestral work by Anna Thorvaldsdottir, receives its world premiere on April 4. The piece will be performed by the New York Philharmonic, conducted by Esa-Pekka Salonen and is the culmination of Thorvaldsdottir's period as Kravis Emerging Composer with the orchestra. The composer describes METACOSMOS, which has a duration of around 12 minutes, as being concerned with ‘the natural balance between beauty and chaos - how elements can come together in (seemingly) utter chaos to create a unified, structured whole’. She writes:
‘The idea and inspiration behind the piece is the speculative metaphor of falling into a black hole – the unknown – with endless constellations and layers of opposing forces connecting and communicating with each other, expanding and contracting, projecting a struggle for power as the different sources pull on you and you realize that you are being drawn into a force that is beyond your control.’
Over recent years, Thorvaldsdottir has received growing international recognition for her work, which combines sustained, almost imperceptibly evolving musical structures with a deft ear for instrumental detail and is often likened by listeners to the landscapes and extreme environment of her native Iceland. In 2012 she won the Nordic Council Music Prize for Dreaming, a second recording of which was released by the Iceland Symphony Orchestra conducted by Daníel Bjarnason on the Sono Luminus label in 2017. Her most notable success to date has come with the orchestral work AERIALITY. Since its premiere in 2011, it has been recorded by Deutsche Grammophon and performed over 25 times in eight countries, with country premieres soon to come in Austria (Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra), Portugal (Gulbenkian Orchestra) and Belgium (Belgian National Orchestra).
Earlier this year Thorvaldsdottir, who is Composer in Residence with Iceland Symphony Orchestra, was presented with the Lincoln Center’s 2018 Emerging Artist Award and 2018 Martin E. Segal Award.
Performances of METACOSMOS take place at David Geffen Hall, Lincoln Center, New York, on April 4, 5 and 6. For more information, click here.
