Search - Jon Leifs, Osmo Vänskä, Iceland Symphony Orchestra :: Leifs: Geysir & Other orchestra works

Vastness unfettered, Geysir. Fabulous.

basic_photomics | cambridge ma | 06/22/2000

(5 out of 5 stars)

"In Theme from Thomas Tillis, Vaughn Williams did something for vastness in form displayed by composition alone: Jon Leifs Geysir takes up this mantle to scope in and beyond, to take us *through his listner's vision of landscape. Geysir reveals much of Leifs beloved native iceland - a musical narrative in landmasses so gargantuan, of heights so home to vulcan and primorial beauty, that finally aspects of size and vituosity to a musical vision seem complete. The work is Magical and like a swoon majestic, unlike anything i've ever heard. A composition beyond performance, but this one from Leifs best interpreter, maestro Vanska, is just fabulous dead-reckoning from Leifs other orchestral works."

Jon Leifs Hot and Cold

Thomas F. Bertonneau | Oswego, NY United States | 11/01/2000

(4 out of 5 stars)

"Iceland's primary contribution to Western Civilization lies in the poems collected in the canon called "Edda" and in the many sagas, the prose narratives of Viking settlement and exploration. Both of those belong to the medieval period. For many centuries Iceland existed as a remote province of Denmark where the locals spoke an archaic form of Norwegian. Only at the end of the 19th century did Icelanders begin to resume their role as creators of art and high culture. The phenomenon remained at first a literary one, but by the 1920s, a number of Icelanders had been to Germany, to Leipzig or Dresden or Berlin, to study music. Most of these adopted a very conservative, Schumannesque rather than Brahmsian idiom; but one of them, Jón Leifs (1899-1968), stubbornly insisted on being a genuinely Icelandic composer rather than a German-trained conservatory composer who happened merely to originate in Iceland. In his lifetime, Leifs incited controversy and resistance. Like Charles Ives (his closest spiritual kin), Leifs had little patience with a polite music governed by drawing-room decorum and prudish ideas about contrapuntal or harmonic propriety. In the rugged landscapes of his native country, in the flinty sounds of his native speech, in the violence of the myth-poems and sagas, he sensed a unique and powerful music which would require extraordinary means to realize. "Geysir" (1961) comes from late in Leif's career and demonstrates the final, synthetic phase of his art. Not a music of melody, but of great gesture and of carefully articulated dynamic graduation, "Geysir" depicts the explosive hydrothermal phenomenon that attracts visitors not only to Yellowstone Park, but to the volcanic slopes that surround Reykjavik. The score calls for a large orchestra with an enormous percussion-battery. Leifs starts with low woodwinds and ends with a sustained, rhythmically punctuated, orchestral tutti as the superheated water reaches the earth's surface and burst violently in a column of roaring steam. This CD also puts on display the works that introduced Leifs in the 1920s. The main attraction, "Geysir," will thrill and astonish."

Shimmeringly beautiful music of volcanic power; an unmissabl

G.D. | Norway | 06/08/2009

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Geysir, belonging to the same group of works as Hekla and Dettifoss, is a spectacular nature picture. Evocative, atmospheric, glittering and shimmering and full of primordial power, it is not particularly strong on thematic material, but then that was hardly the point. It start ominously with rumblings and clanking in the bass, building up the tension for the explosion, a sustained climax of ear-shattering, thundering spouts in the full orchestra. A vivid, visceral and magnificent work of stormy turbulent power - and even beauty - it provides a truly enchanting musical experience.



The other works on the disc are more `conventional', but are all laden with the primeval earth-magic so typical of Leifs's music. The Trilogia Piccola is an early work but still full of those volcanic, alien musical conjurations (contrary to what the title might suggest this is no light neo-classical piece). The Praeludium is darkly smoldering and the cool, otherworldly Intermezzo launches a primitivistic fugue where the forces of nature turbulently toss around the classical form - it is a quite fascinating listen as well. The Abstract paintings evoke some of the same images (even though it was written 30 years later); quivering, flickering and sizzling with eruptive bursts of power, juxtaposed with and mixed with passages of shimmering beauty.



The Icelandic Folk Dances are perhaps more conventional, at least in the sense that they sport real tunes. But this is still granitic music evocative of the Icelandic landscape - it sounds more like trolls and fey folk trampling around underground and amidst the fizzle of geysers and hot springs than anything people would actually dance to (although they are based on real folk dances, I suspect the orchestrations have transformed them somewhat), galumphing along with iron-shoes yet displaying a weird and alien form of elegance nonetheless. The Loftr Overture is sterner and somewhat more austere, but is still an impressive and strikingly original piece while the cool Consolation provides a very satisfying close to this remarkable disc.



The performances are superb and fully able to realize the strange but beautiful colors and nuances of this music as well as its elemental power. This is, then, a superb disc of some very fascinating music and perhaps the best place to start exploring this strikingly original composer."