Leifs is no wheedler or cajoler of audiences and concert promoters. He belongs
in the same select cohort as Nikos Skalkottas, Havergal Brian, Allan Pettersson
and Khaikhosru Sorabji. All to various extents affected indifference to the
neglect of their music by bureaucrats and executants and all have benefited
from the CD age.
This is not to say that Leifs wrote music without intrinsic attraction. In
fact hearing the four BIS CDs of the orchestral music I was surprised to
note so many instantly captivating works.
The Organ Concerto is not one of those works. It is sullen and Gothic
- shorn of any audience ingratiation factor. It can easily sound like music
for a dismal hopeless trek across limitless snow fields - like Vaughan Williams'
music from Sinfonia Antartica. The aural equivalent of maze-marching
can be heard in clashing hymns rather like Liszt's Hunnenschlacht and
echoing Nielsen 4 and 5 in its suggestion of chaos clashing with harmony.
Yet again the listener is struck by the extremes of dynamic range as well
as by the Stygian baritonal blare of the brass section and the howls and
squeals of the woodwind against emphatic drum punctuation. This is not
dodecaphonic but surfaces are unadorned and brutal. Some of this would make
glorious music for an adaptation of Tolkien's 'The Lord of the Rings'. It
remains to be seen how Howard Shore will fare in the film trilogy due to
appear in cinemas over the next two years - starting Christmas 2001. In any
event Leifs would have made an ideal composer for the onslaught of nightmare
Orcish armies.
A less thorny approach is encountered in the Beethoven Variations (Theme
and ten variants) which date from the same year as the Concerto. The theme
is from the LvB String Trio Op. 8. The Variations are strong and gentle music,
melodious to the point of sounding, at times, like a French operatic interlude.
At Var. 4 the serenading character begins to decay into something sallow.
Var. 6 is in the form of a jerky military march of injured automata lurching
towards negation and chaos. The quasi grave (Var 9) yet again sounds
very much like Roy Harris with its sombre brass and drums. It is worth noting
that in 1930 Roy Harris had no international reputation and a modest standing
so far as the USA is concerned so this 'echo' is purely coincidental. Var
10 and the reprise lead us back to operatic intermezzi, to Gounod and to
Bizet.
Fine II is from that cloudburst of productivity in the early
1960s. It is a work for vibraphone and string orchestra. The vibraphone is
played by Reynir Sigurdsson. The music conjures the movement of marine ice
floes, gigantic not grinding or bitter. The work has a slow drawling power
and with the striking presence of that vibraphone (try 5.40) Roy Harris seems
not far away yet again. A wonderful introduction to the music of this composer.
Intriguingly Fine I and Fine II (both subtitled 'Farewell to
Earthly Life') were written to provide a finale to any orchestral work left
incomplete at its death. They are associated with Leifs' most ambitious works:
the three Edda oratorios. These are The Creation of the World
(1936-39), The Life of the Gods (1951-66) and the incomplete Twilight
of the Gods - all unrecorded. Are they next on your list BIS?
Dettifoss (the great Icelandic waterfall) begins in and ultimately
retreats into stony Tallis-like arcana. Unlike some composers where
you are aware of the human observer in the foreground, Leifs has you believing
that the music is the scenery. In some strange way this music embodies
the objective; it is the rock and the waters itself. You are alien to it
and it is alien to you. The music is implacable, careless of you and your
troubles - outside temporal limitations. It came as a surprise, after hearing
the music, to read that this is one of Leifs' nature pieces that, in fact,
has the observer (the poet) walking towards the waterfall, observing it and
then walking away. The vehemence of the more furious music in Dettifoss
can be compared with the awesome thrashing of some fearsome engine with
con-rod buckled, crippled yet horrifically driven.
All the recordings in this orchestral series of CDs (4 to date, 2001) were
recorded in the roomy stone acoustic of Hallgrím's Church, Reykjavik.
All but Fine II are world première recordings.
There are of course some other Leifs recordings including ones from Chandos
and from the Icelandic Music Information Centre. None however competes directly
with this disc work for work. Everything here is done with burning or smouldering
conviction.
Rob Barnett
Iceland SO/En Shao
