Ávarp - Icelandic Chamber Music
Jón NORDAL (b.1926)
Fairy-tale Sisters for violin and piano (1944) [10.39]
Panel Pictures for cello and piano (1992) [10.17]
Jórunn VIDAR (1918-2917)
Icelandic Suite for Violin and Piano (1974) [16.25]
Sveinbjörn SVEINBJÖRNSSON (1847-1927)
Piano Trio in A minor (1926) [21.03]
Agnieszka Panasiuk (piano); Anna Wandtke (violin); Pawel Panasiuk (cello)
rec. 15-18 July 2018, the Concert Hall of the Warmia & Mazury Philharmonic, Olsztyme, Poland
DUX 1675 [58.15]
Ávarp, means Prologue and is the title given to the first of the five movements of Jórunn Vidar’s cheerful Icelandic Suite. It might have a secondary explanation in that the three sensitive and technically outstanding performers, if Adam Rosinski’s brief opening essay is correct, want this disc to be a prelude or prologue to a greater understanding of Icelandic music in Poland. He writes that “it fills a huge gap in the Polish music market.”
I therefore think that it makes sense to start with Jórunn Vidar’s Icelandic Suite. Commissioned by Icelandic Radio for 1100th anniversary of the arrival of the first settlers in Iceland, she derives the material entirely from Icelandic tradition, the sagas and culture - as she does, we are told, in most of her work. She uses a number of folk melodies throughout, including a dance in the finale and allows the violin to sing out the folk song alone at times in the middle movement. She describes the work as ‘Scenes from the life of a Nation’. When I visited Iceland in 1992, I heard her give a recital in her home city of Reykjavik and can attest to her pianistic virtuosity. Her writing for the piano is more than supportive and has much character of its own to create consistent interest.
I have always considered Jón Nordal to be a very fine composer indeed, ever since first encountering some of his music some forty years ago. In 1991, ITM brought out a disc of his orchestral works (ITM 7-04) in their ‘Portrait’ series. All of those works post-dated 1965 but the Fairy-tale Sisters Suite for violin and piano is effectively his Opus 1 and a student work, composed when he was eighteen. It is imaginative, witty and original. The three sisters feature in Icelandic folklore and so the composer utilises Icelandic songs and rhythms. The last one of the three for example, is ‘Helga’ and the music moves between an exhilarating dance and a soaring Romantic melody accompanied by arpeggiated chords. Helga is said to epitomise diligence, wisdom and nobleness.
Nordal’s other work dates form many years later; it is for cello and piano and entitled Panel Pictures. The panels are drawn from the poetry of three native poets whose inspiration was the natural world. The first three panels are ‘Cracked Eyes of Water’, secondly ‘When Icy Heart Beats’, then ‘Written in the Wind’ and these are harmonically freewheeling, capturing the cold northern landscape convincingly, and use the full technical range of the two instruments. The last, ‘Everything with Sugar and Cream’ comes as a shock with its Gershwinesque harmony and soupy melody, befitting the title. I have to say however, that I am not convinced that this piece as a whole really hangs together satisfactorily.
Most Icelanders will know Sveinbjörn Sveinbjörnsson well, as he is the composer of what amounts to their national anthem, (O God of our Land). He was of the generation, which looked to Germany, or, at least, central Europe, for inspiration and acceptance and his Piano Trio in A minor betrays the strong influence of Mendelssohn and Schumann – indeed, it could easily have been composed some seventy years earlier. I suspect that he also knew the music of the Dane Niels Gade very well. Sveinbjörnsson’s Piano Trio falls into four, equal-length movements. The first, in Sonata form, has a second subject of great elegance in the relative major. The second movement is a generously lyrical Andante, the third, a genteel scherzo in ternary form, and the finale, which reverts in a serious mood to the original A minor, is also in sonata form and ends firmly in the home key. This piece will not scare the horses but does represent the sort of chamber music popular, outside of its time, in a country that was still searching for its own musical identity.
This is an enterprising release, accompanied by two essays, the second one by pianist Agnieszka Panasiuk, usefully filling in the details of the music and introducing us to this unique repertoire, which, although based on an ancient heritage, is practically unknown, and from an island still establishing its musical credentials.
Gary Higginson
