ALL THE WAY TO THE CORE

Iceland’s most acclaimed contemporary composer Anna Thorvaldsdóttir has succeeded in fulfilling an artist’s dream: developing a recognisable style and having her works performed by the world’s major orchestras, from the Los Angeles Philharmonic to the BBC Symphony Orchestra. The three-movement symphony AIŌN is her most ambitious work to date – a cosmically rippling field of energy in which time, place and movement merge into an inexorable mass of sound on its journey to the listener’s consciousness.

Gustav Mahler, one of the last giants of Romanticism, began his series of symphonies with a work ‘only’ an hour long. But it still bears all his trademarks: sarcastic dances, powerful outbursts, natural landscapes whispering in the distance and the sounds of inner struggles. All this, of course, as experienced by the solitary hero, Titan.