In a conventional contemporary classical release, you’ve got two special entities to focus on in music. There’s the composer behind the piece, and then there is the performer. Sometimes they may be one and the same, but when the two combine to form a single, there is a new unique that’s born within.
And there is nothing ‘conventional’ about the music of Anna Thorvaldsdottir, who, when I met her in her hometown of Reykjavik, told me that she oft composes with a pen and paper, without ever hearing the result until it is performed. This is a staggering achievement, especially when one considers the complexity and span of textural direction on Enigma, her very first string quartet performed by three-time Grammy-nominated Chicago’s forward-thinking Spektral Quartet.
The voices on the three-movement piece sigh and howl, caress and gash, cry out and whisper. Some scratching sounds inevitably give me goosebumps on the skin, the way the human nails kiss the chalkboard (I wonder what the articulation for those “notes” looks like on a sheet), as I imagine phantoms in the dark, their shadows on the walls and in between my bedsheets. There is a movement in the corner of my room, but when I look it’s gone, and only curtains slowly sway with their disdain and laughter. This music is unnerving, ominous and raw, and, once again, I wonder how these sounds can convey a real feeling. “Moving between heart-wrenching chord progressions and the scrapes and clicks of extended string techniques, Enima is a piece of profound emotional magnitude, provoking considerations of our relationship to the vast cosmos that surrounds us, and the infinite universe within.”
Released on the always boundary-pushing beacon of the neoclassical acoustic music, Sono Luminus, on August 27th, 2021 I recommend you play this in HD.