- Anna Thorvaldsdottir
CATAMORPHOSIS (2020)
- Chester Music Ltd (World)
Commissioned by the Stiftung Berliner Philharmoniker, New York Philharmonic, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and Iceland Symphony Orchestra. World premiere performance 29 January 2021 by Berlin Philharmonic conducted by Kirill Petrenko at the Philharmonie, Berlin.
Winner of the Ivors Composer Award for Large Scale Composition 2021
- 2+afl.2+ca.2+bcl.2+cbn/4.0.2+btbn.1+btba/4perc/hp.pf/str(16.16.12.12.8)
- 20 min
- 3rd April 2025, Casino, Bern, Switzerland
- 4th April 2025, Salon Bernois, Bern, Switzerland
Programme Note
The core inspiration behind CATAMORPHOSIS is the fragile relationship we have to our planet. The aura of the piece is characterized by the orbiting vortex of emotions and the intensity that comes with the fact that if things do not change it is going to be too late, risking utter destruction – catastrophe. The core of the work revolves around a distinct sense of urgency, driven by the shift and pull between various polar forces – power and fragility, hope and despair, preservation and destruction.
The relationship between inspiration and the pure musical feeling and methods, for me, tends to shift at a certain point in the creative process of every work. The core inspiration provides the initial energy and structural elements to a piece and then the music starts to breathe on its own and expand. In CATAMORPHOSIS this point in the process became more apparent and tangible as it aligned with an event that has had such dramatic impact on our lives and reality. The notion of emergency was already integrated into the music and to counterbalance that a sense of hope and belief. The meditative state of being needed to gain focus in order to sustain and maintain the globally important elements in life also became increasingly important and provided another layer to the inspiration.
CATAMORPHOSIS is quite a dramatic piece, but it is also full of hope – perhaps somewhere between the natural and the unnatural, between utopia and dystopia, we can gain perspective and find balance within and with the world around us.
— Anna Thorvaldsdottir
Media
Scores
Features
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- Anton Bruckner celebrates his 200th birthday in 2024. The Austrian composer, organist and teacher is one of the great mavericks of the music world. We have highlighted works that can be combined well with Bruckner's symphonies or with his vocal works for your next concert programmes.
- Icelandic Voices
- With only a population of around 350,000, Iceland punches well above its weight in so many creative and sporting fields – not least in classical music. Some of the most up-and-coming voices in the film, media and classical, names such as Anna Thorvaldsdottir, Jóhann Jóhannsson and Hildur Guðnadóttir, have come this remote corner of the north Atlantic Ocean and created a worldwide reputation of excellence. Discover the work of three such composers, from three different generations, published by Wise Music.
Reviews
These flowing, subtle movements, which never quite come to a standstill, are masterfully embedded in her orchestral piece "Catamorphosis". Beginning with a quiet murmur, she sparingly adorned the uncertainty of the next moment with tonal trace elements. Although this portrait of an enigmatic, lonely nature did not have an urgent strong pulse, delicate, massive layers shifted incessantly on top of each other. Thorvaldsdottir vividly traced the edges with chromatic streaks, letting it seethe archaically underground before laying hauntingly mournful string melodies over this wondrous plane, completely without kitsch. Here, Sibelius' tone poems were thought further and, at the same time, Ligeti's intuition for tonal colour progressions was continued within very individual handwriting.
…one of her most intensely felt scores to date. …This is the music of natural forces indifferent to human witnesses; yet in those violins and the sense of looming urgency, a doleful cry for help – from Thorvaldsdottir, from the earth itself – begins to emerge.
Among Thorvaldsdottir’s many virtues are her ability to create organic forms unique to themselves and that satisfy their own logic, and her skill at orchestration, are most prominent. Catamorphosis displays this to the fullest. ...The new work is haunting but also has seeds of hope, as with the elegant, quick-rising melody in the strings. Thorvaldsdottir’s unique way with form means the music is also constantly in a state of transition—even the slowest statement is poised to become something else.
[CATAMORPHOSIS] received its first performance during lockdown last year in a streamed concert by the Berlin Philharmonic, conducted by Kirill Petrenko. Even heard in that compromised way, it seemed a remarkable achievement, a Sibelius-like evocation of the fragility of nature and its impending destruction; experienced live, with the CBSO conducted by Ludovic Morlot unfolding it so expertly, it was even more remarkable. What seemed so impressive this time around was the structural integrity of Thorvaldsdottir’s scheme across the 20-minute span. Each new section grows inevitably from what precedes it, with her technique of building upon long-held bass pedal notes producing strikingly varied results – dense string clusters, woodwind ripples or shreds of consoling melody, and, about two-thirds of the way through, a repeated falling figure that is utterly simple, yet inexpressibly sad.
[CATAMORPHOSIS] has the same existential dimension [as Strauss's Metamorphosen], a feeling of dread, destruction and lyrical fragments of grinding climate grief glimmering against a darkness as black as lava. The mass in Thorvaldsdottir's cluster chords, orchestration as heavy as lead ... wind sounds and string glissandi create the physical sensation of being crushed under a giant glacier. Strauss wrote his chamber music masterpiece Metamorphosen during the last months of World War II, as an In memoriam of the darkest chapter of our time to date: Nazism. ... Thorvaldsdottir, one of the foremost symphonists of our time, is grappling with a more elusive enemy: the climate crisis, the catastrophe that is transforming the earth and ourselves, and threatening to cut the fragile threads that hold everything together. Her aesthetic is both brutal and tender...
This is a fine orchestral work and will surely achieve many performances worldwide. […] One looks forward to hearing more from this highly talented composer from Iceland.
Thorvaldsdottir's impressive new work was detailed and powerful... lasting around 20 minutes, it’s a single movement of restrained power, a continuum of shifting, colliding layers of sound, which are minutely detailed in the score yet manage to seem simultaneously massive and delicate as they move from dense chromaticism to moments of almost lucid tonality. ...a piece that stands entirely on its own feet, creating an utterly convincing musical world.
Multi-layered music of the spheres emerged that never bored for a moment. Again and again, new, just inaudible sounds burst out of the orchestral tutti and disappeared into it again
Wonderful and seductive. One could listen to it again and again and again...
The vast and the microscopic, molten liquids, the slow tectonics of the lithosphere, harmonies and seed plains, pedal-points, cliffs and undergrowths of sound-design realised acoustically rather than electronically, the infinity of traditional and extended techniques applied to a large orchestra at the quieter end of the dynamic spectrum.
With myriad of textures and sonic colour, all clad in translucent fabric, the score was transformed into powerful sonic reality.
Both elusive and intensely communicative, Catamorphosis is a compelling work.
Discography
Atmospheriques Vol. 1
- LabelSono Luminus
- Catalogue NumberDSL92267
- ConductorDaniel Bjarnason
- EnsembleIceland Symphony Orchestra
- Released28th April 2023
More Info
- CATAMORPHOSIS returns to Berlin Philharmonie
- 14th February 2025
- Anna Thorvaldsdottir's CATAMORPHOSIS returns to the Berlin Philharmonie this weekend.
- Thorvaldsdottir, Muhly, and Bjarnason premieres at Sonic Matter Festival Zurich
- 25th November 2024
- On November 29, SONIC MATTER presents two concerts together with Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich and André de Ridder. The concerts are part of the Creative Chair Anna Thorvaldsdottir holds at the orchestra in season 2024/25.
- Anna Thorvaldsdottir - Creative Chair at Tonhalle Zürich 2024/25 season
- 10th September 2024
- Anna Thorvaldsdottir will be Creative Chair at Tonhalle Zürich for the 2024/25 season.
- Anna Thorvaldsdottir - Wayne MacGregor ballet and Aldeburgh Festival residency
- 5th June 2023
- The music of Anna Thorvaldsdottir takes centre stage in the UK this month, with performances of several of the Icelandic composer’s most recent and important works, as well at the world premiere of a new ballet to her music.