(World Première Recording) Few composers have been as consistently preoccupied with their national origins as Jón Leifs, who only found his calling as a composer when he encountered a collection of Icelandic folk music. From the very beginning, Iceland, its music and myths, its landscape and climate furnished him with the material for almost all of his compositions. And from the very beginning Leifs knew that he wanted to create a great oratorio using texts from the Edda, Iceland's national treasure. The scoring is among Leifs' most colourful and inspired, including the composer's signature Nordic lurs and an extended percussion section. This landmark in Icelandic music is performed by the Iceland Symphony Orchestra and the Schola Cantorum choir under the baton of Hermann Bäumer - a constellation that last came together on disc on the highly acclaimed Viking's Answer, the previous Leifs' release on BIS.

It is possible that the reviewer who characterized Jón Leifs (1899-1968) as "a composer in no danger of being lost in the crowd once his music is heard" was thinking primarily of works such as Geysir (BIS-CD-830), Hekla (BIS-CD-1030) or Hafís (BIS-CD-1050) - works which contain some of the most astoundingly loud music ever recorded! If the present CD is less generous in terms of decibels or special effects such as the sound of Icelandic rock cascades, the music is still unmistakeably Jón Leifs. All but one of the works are for choir or solo voices and orchestra, and their subject matter is, as often with Leifs, either Iceland itself or the ancient myths of the country. Gróa's Spell and The Lay of Helgi the Hunding-slayer, for instance, are both based on texts from the Poetic Edda, while Landfall for male choir and orchestra was inspired by Leifs' first glimpse of land on his return to Iceland after the 2nd World War. Also included on this disc is the Iceland Cantata (from 1930), a work in seven movements for mixed choir and orchestra which Árni Heimir Ingólfsson, the expert on Jón Leifs, in his generously informative liner notes calls the composer's "first real masterpiece, and one of the high points of his entire career." A curiousity for those who follow our Leifs series is Spring Song, a short work which is strikingly - for Leifs - light-hearted and joyous. As surprising will be the orchestration in Viking's Answer (Víkingasvar).The only instrumental work on the disc, it is scored for a wind orchestra with four saxophones (the only time in Jón Leifs' music), violas and double basses! As on previous CDs in the series, it's the Iceland Symphony Orchestra which gives us this rare - three of the works are World Première Recordings - opportunity to hear the music of their great countryman. (The orchestra's latest offering, Baldr BIS-CD-1230/31, was termed an account of "enormous conviction" by the reviewer in BBC Music Magazine.)

Bára Gísladóttir (b. 1989) considers sounds, instruments, and ensembles as living organisms. In COR, Hringla, and VAPE, the Icelandic composer and double bassist engages with the largest musical organism of all: the symphony orchestra. Inspired by death metal or techno as much as by Scelsi or Penderecki, the foreboding atmosphere of her music is cut through with irony, puns, and black humor. After all, organisms themselves – especially human bodies – contain the potential for both comic excess and self-annihilation. In these three works, we follow Gísladóttir’s fascination with language and coincidence; we hear an uncompromising interrogation of the body’s excesses and ailments; and, most of all, we see life, vaporous and between states, neither dark nor light.

Páll Ísólfsson was the first director of the Reykjavík Music School, which opened in 1930. Like other musicians, he was forced by the lack of opportunity in Iceland to study abroad but, unlike others, he was able to return and work as the Organist at Reykjavík Cathedral to support his activities as a composer. His music for the early Ibsen play The Feast at Solhaug, performed in 1943 in Norwegian on Norway’s National day, was his theatrical début. This was followed in 1945 by the more ambitious score for Úr Myndabók Jónasar Hallgrímssonar. Jórunn Viðar started her advanced training at Ísólfsson’s conservatory, followed by studies in Berlin and then at the Juilliard School. In New York she met a fellow Icelander and dance student, Sigríður Ármann. The two of them collaborated on Eldur (Fire), which would be the first ballet for the new National Theatre in Reykjavík, presented in May 1950. Their second collaboration for the National Theatre, Ólafur Liljurós, opened in 1952 and is based on a traditional Nordic legend.

Jon Nordal celebrated his 90th birthday in March 2016. Nordal and the Iceland Symphony joined forces to celebrate his life and his creative works. Three pieces on this recording were written in the height of Nordal's creative years, 1973-1975. This recording is the Ondine debut for conductor Johannes Gustavsson and the Iceland Symphony Orchestra.

Hugo Alfvén’s music has always been close to the hearts of the Swedish people, and ranks among some of the most significant and representative of the spirit of the country. Alfvén is known as a cheerful entertainer in compositions such as Den forlorade sonen (‘The Prodigal Son’), but his symphonies reveal a different, more elegiac and often more dramatic side. The success of Alfvén’s symphonies fundamentally changed Sweden’s musical climate and, with a substantial collection of further orchestral music representing his gloriously rich and varied style, these recordings sweep us into the remarkable world of Scandinavian landscape and culture.

Past praise for previously released volumes included in this set:

Symphony No. 5; Andante Religioso / Willén, Norrköping Symphony

The Norrköping Symphony plays with confidence and fervor. Alfvén was nothing if not expansive, and if his formal touch was never all that deft, he did know how to fill up time with arresting ideas, glowingly scored. A serenely lovely Andante religioso makes a perfect encore, one that puts the finale of the symphony’s straining for heroic effect in its proper perspective in the gentlest and most affecting way. Naxos’ sonics for this production are also excellent. Very enjoyable indeed.

-- ClassicsToday.com (David Hurwitz)

The Prodigal Son, Symphony No. 2 in D major, Op. 11 / Willén, Ireland NSO

Listen as Niklas Willén teases the skittish polka from “The Prodigal Son” ballet suite, or steers his players through the vehement fugue that rounds out his Symphony No. 2, and you’ll appreciate why this release commands unreserved praise. These works come to life in Willén’s hands.

Willén’s reading of the Symphony's Andante conjures a huge range of textures and sonorities, with the dark-hued horns and sombre lower winds particularly impressive. The players give all they have in music that’s probably new to them, and that extra effort is just one of the factors that makes these performances so compelling.

-- ClassicsToday.com (10/10; David Hurwitz)

Symphony No. 3; Skerries; Dalecarlien Rhapsody / Willén, RNSO

If you haven’t heard these charming, folk-music-inspired gems of late Romantic music, then here’s an excellent place to start. The Symphony also sounds consistently fresh and lively, though it’s hard to shake the impression that the composer was happier writing programmatic works in free form than in indulging the more intellectual rigors of symphonic development. In Willén’s sympathetic hands, however, none of its four movements outstays its welcome. In any event, the Royal Scottish National Orchestra plays with confidence and evident enjoyment, and the recorded sound is very good.

-- ClassicsToday.com

Rumon Gamba and the Iceland Symphony Orchestra follow their Grammy-nominated volume 1 and Editor's Choice winning Volume 2 with four rare orchestral works from Vincent D'Indy's legacy. The previous volumes have obtained such comments as '...superbly realised by the excellent Iceland Symphony Orchestra under Rumon Gamba and the state-of-the-art Chandos recording; definitely a key record of d'Indy's orchestra output' (Gramophone) and 'this series is going to be virtually definitive' Musical Opinion Composed in 1916-18 at the climax of the Great War, d'Indy's last symphony is a valid reflection of his intense patriotism. In its dramatic theatric and tonal conflicts it well portrays the heightened emotions of exaltation and terror experienced by the French nation. D'Indy's seven-variation programmatic work, Istar, Op.42 is a beautiful, flowing work set in the underworld and inspired by the sixth canto of an ancient Assyrian epic poem called Izdubar that was probably written around 2000 B.C. The unconventionally conceived yet well integrated work Choral Varie for Saxophone Solo ans orchestra, Op.55 employs an eclectic variety of styles. Like certain other French composers such as Bizet, D'Indy well understood the saxophone's expressive potential. The solo role is taken by one of Iceland's most prominent musicians, Sigurður Flosason, who has twice been nominated for the Nordic Music Prize, and four time winner of the Icelandic Music Awards. Volume 3 is completed by D'Indy's last orchestral work, Diptyque Mediterraneen, Op.87. It reflects the Indian summer which his happy second marriage brought him in his final decade. There is a certain similarity with the earlier Ardeche-inspired Jour d'ete a la montagne in its illustration of the sacred rhythms of nature during the course of the day, but here the influence of Debussy is clearly apparent in its superb Mediterranean-like clarity of texture.

D'Indy was a contemporary of Debussy and Ravel, and a pupil of César Franck. Fauré described him as 'The Samson of Music' for his multifarious and generous-minded work as a composer, conductor, educator, and propagandist who greatly strengthened French musical culture. With a style essentially eclectic and strongly influenced above all by Beethoven and Wagner, d'Indy particularly excelled in orchestral composition. He drew particular inspiration from his native region in southern France, and formed a body of post-romantic works richly orchestrated, often inflected with folk-like melodies, and employing Franck's well-known 'cyclic method'. The exclusive Chandos artist Rumon Gamba and the Iceland Symphony Orchestra here return with Volume 4 of Chandos' highly acclaimed series devoted to these unjustly neglected orchestral works. Of Symphony No. 3 on Volume 3, released in 2010, Classic FM said: 'Following their first two much-praised discs, Rumon Gamba and the Iceland Symphony further champion the lushly colourful and impressionistic orchestral music of Vincent d'Indy. It's a fascinating work that mixes straightforward militaristic passages with a high-Romantic, 20th-century language that's part Expressionist, part Impressionist'. Symphonie italienne was written when d'Indy was in his late teens. It was strongly inspired by his travels in Italy, and the four movements bear the respective titles 'Rome', 'Florence', 'Venice', and 'Naples'. Heavily indebted in style to Mendelsohn, Schumann, and Berlioz, this tuneful work was a tremendous if ambitious undertaking for the comparative novice, and shows early signs of the composer's strong intellectual musical mind. D'Indy composed the Symphonie Suite Poème des Rivages, his late orchestral masterpiece, in 1919 - 21. It is a work of outstanding technical accomplishment and poetic inspiration, which succeeds in combining the solid post-Franckian structures with the textual and colouristic fluidity of Debussy. The orchestral forces, including four saxophones, create an almost visual impression of light and atmosphere, in the manner of Claude Monet. Its well-received premiere took place in New York on 1 December 1921 under d'Indy's direction.