Orchestral Works, Gisladottir / Iceland Symphony Orchestra, CD

Bara Gisladottir (b. 1989) considers sounds, instruments and ensembles as living organisms. In COR, Hringla and VAPE, the Icelandic composer and double bassist engages with the largest musical organism of all: the symphony orchestra. Inspired by death metal or techno as much as by Scelsi or Penderecki, the foreboding atmosphere of her music is cut through with irony, puns and black humour. After all, organisms themselves - especially human bodies - contain the potential for both comic excess and self-annihilation. In these three works we follow Gisladottir's fascination with language and coincidence; we hear an uncompromising interrogation of the body's excesses and ailments; and, most of all, we see life, vaporous and between states, neither dark nor light.