Jón Leifs - Songs (Finnur Bjarnason; Örn Magnússon)

Information

Composer: Jón Leifs

• Memorial Songs on the Death of Jónas Hallgrímsson, Op. 45
• Songs of the Saga Symphony, Op. 25
• Two Icelandic Folksongs, Op. 19b
• Two Songs, Op. 18a
• Three Verses from Hávamál, Op. 4
• Stand, House of Stone, Op. 47a
• Two Songs, Op. 14a
• Three Songs from Icelandic Sagas, Op. 24
• Three Songs, Op. 23
• Memory-Land, Op. 27 No. 3
• Love Verses from the Edda, Op. 18b
• Old Scaldic Verses from Iceland, Op. 31
• Three Icelandic Hymns, Op. 12a
• Torrek, Op. 33a

Finnur Bjarnason, tenor

Örn Magnússon, piano

Date: 2015

Label: BIS

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Review

Jón Leifs wrote songs throughout his career, works which ‘give unusually clear insights into the composer’, according to Árni Heimir Ingólfsson’s booklet-notes, and which were shaped by the composer’s interest in Icelandic literature and folksong pretty much from the start.

Despite that breadth, Leifs has a consistent modus operandi. The voice is most often enveloped by a rich piano sound that cascades steadily through huge tectonic chords like flowing lava. Those chords are often shape-shifting, modal entities subjected to sudden unprepared modulations. Sometimes the progression of chords explodes into something more motoric or recedes into something more reflective. Sometimes, as in the first of the Two Songs, Op 18a, and the second of the Love Verses from the Edda, Op 18b, the piano’s steamroller underlay reaches a level of crushing intensity that flings the voice into soaring lyricism. Almost always, the vocal progression is shaped by the distinctive metre of the Icelandic verse (hymns, Romantic poetry and excerpts from the sagas).

This entire collection is dark, thrilling and terrifying. Leifs has a direct way with melody, which despite its irregularities often has a pleasing, Reger-like geometry. His short, heroic ‘character sketches’ for the Saga Symphony are distinctive even within the consistency of approach described above. Perhaps the ‘Dance of the Spectres’ from Three Songs, Op 23, is a little hackneyed in its pianistic description of the macabre; elsewhere Leif’s freshness and individuality is present from his lullabies and simple hymn settings to the thrusting grief of a piece such as ‘Torrek’, a response to the drowning of his daughter Líf off the coast of Sweden.

At his best, Finnur Bjarnason is magnificent. He has the breakaway lyricism of a verismo character and the in-your-ear intimacy of a Lieder singer. He offers pride, anger, isolation, hesitance, doubt and despair across a huge volume range; the voice has a consistently free, open sound despite its grain and useful (in this repertoire) edge. Örn Magnússon, strident at the piano, pushes Bjarnason to further and further despair in these 2000/01 recordings initially made for Smekkleysa. Anyone who has been fascinated or troubled by the stark black rock on which Iceland is built – literally and literarily – should find plenty to reflect on here.

— 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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Finnur Bjarnason was born in Reykjavík, Iceland, and studied singing at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama. His operatic experience includes roles at Glyndebourne, English National Opera, The Netherlands Opera, the Komische and Staatsoper in Berlin, and the Châtelet and Champs-Elysées in Paris. As a recitalist he has appeared at Wigmore Hall with Graham Johnson, and at St George’s Brandon Hill with Eugene Asti. In concert Finnur’s appearances include Handel’s Messiah in Boston, Alexander’s Feast with Marcus Creed and the Bayerischer Rundfunk, and Monteverdi Madrigals with Le Concert d’Astrée.

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Örn Magnússon (born 15 January 1959) is an Icelandic pianist, organist and choirmaster. He graduated from the Akureyri Music College in the north of Iceland and then went on to further studies in Manchester, Berlin and London. Magnússon is a highly active musician, participating in a rich variety of concerts and recordings, both as a soloist and a chamber musician, having performed in Scandinavia, the United Kingdom and many other European countries as well as Japan. He is particularly known for his interest and devotion to Icelandic music, especially the music of the towering figure amongst Icelandic composers, Jón Leifs.

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