Jón Leifs - Edda, Part 2. The Lives of the Gods (Hermann Bäumer)

Information

Composer: Jón Leifs

• Edda, Part 2: The Lives of the Gods

Hanna Dóra Sturludóttir, mezzo-soprano

Elmar Gilbertsson, tenor

Kristinn Sigmundsson, bass

Schola Cantorum

Iceland Symphony Orchestra

Hermann Bäumer, conductor

Date: 2019

Label: BIS

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Review

If Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen is the glossed-up, ‘Hollywood’ version of Wotan’s shenanigans, this is the urtext. Eleven years on from Herman Bäumer’s Reykjavík recording of Edda I (2/08) – the first chapter in Jón Leifs’s gargantuan oratorio that deals with the creation of the world as told in the 1270 Codex Regius and other sources – here we have Edda II, telling of Wotan (OK, Odin), his sons, the goddesses (Frigg, Freyka, Sigyn, etc) and the Valkyries, Norns and Warriors. (Edda III, the saga’s Götterdämmerung, known in the Nordic countries as Ragnarök, which recounts the submersion of the world in water and the demise of the gods, was never completed.)

This is Leifs in concept mode, reacting against Wagner’s ‘terrible misunderstanding of the Nordic character and artistic heritage’ by going in the other direction. The first movement, ‘Odin’, opens with horn calls that could almost be Wagner minus the sheen; but fundamentally the musical language, like the narrative, is one of recitation. Leifs sweetens little and makes no concessions to comfort for performer or listener. It’s part of the thrill, even if the language is both richer and rawer than that in Edda I.

The gait and texture change across the six movements but what we hear is hewn from the same rock: short-breathed, angular, riven with modulations and rhythmic displacements, utterly physical, curiously invigorating and wholly primitive (sung, spoken, shouted), even with its passing subtleties. We are listening to the earth here, much as we are in comparable passages from Adès’s America, of which, uncannily, there are a few. As Guy Rickards observed with reference to the work’s predecessor, the texts read like compendiums of information, full of runic repetitions.

In trying to put the work in context, I am reminded of AA Gill’s words on barbecuing: ‘It is to cuisine what Stonehenge is to architecture – a start.’ Vegetarians beware, but there is meat aplenty here, even if some of it is on the raw side. Questions remain over Leifs’s return to primitivism, which was undeniably connected to his fascination with medieval Norse literature but can feel too obviously linked to the fact that the composer was in a hurry to finish the score before he died in 1968. Leifs could be very sophisticated, let’s not forget, even if he was consciously trying to avoid metropolitan, European sheen here.

Speaking of which, the Iceland Symphony Orchestra (augmented by plenty of natural percussion) channel the earthiness and edginess that used to be a more central element of its sound before the opening of the Harpa Concert Hall (which the previous instalment pre-dates), while the Schola Cantorum and soloists let you hear what a struggle this constantly angular writing is, but to thrilling effect: they are evocative when singing, speaking, shouting and yodelling. Like a barbecue, you’re missing out if you’ve never experienced this, even if it turns out not to be your particular flagon of mead.

— Andrew Mellor

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Jón Leifs (1 May 1899 – 30 July 1968) was an Icelandic composer, pianist and conductor. Born in Iceland, he left for Germany in 1916 to study at the Leipzig Conservatory, graduating in 1921. During this period he also encountered Ferruccio Busoni, who urged him to "follow his own path in composition". Beginning with piano arrangements of Icelandic folk songs, Leifs started an active career as a composer in the 1920s. In 1945 he moved back to Iceland, and became a fierce proponent of music education and of artists' rights. Most of his works is inspired by Icelandic natural phenomena and classic Icelandic sagas.

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Hermann Bäumer (born 28 January 1965 in Bielefeld) is a German trombonist and conductor. He received his degree in trombone from the Hochschule für Musik Detmold, and studied conducting at the Hochschule "Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy" Leipzig while being a member of the Berlin Philharmonic. From 2004 to 2011 he was General Music Director of the Osnabrück Symphony Orchestra and received an ECHO Klassik for his recording of Josef Bohuslav Foerster's Symphonies. Since 2011 Bäumer has been Chief Conductor of the Mainz Philharmonic State Orchestra and General Music Director of the Mainz State Theater.

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