Rendering №15

The article “In Iceland, a Festival of Present andFuture” was published on April 23, 2013 in “The NY Times”. The author Steve Smith discusses how Marching members of the Icelandic National Youth Band playing in a lobby of the Harpa complex in Reykjavik. It is interesting to note that the Iceland Symphony Orchestra presented its second annual Tectonics Festival at the Harpa Concert Hall and Conference Center here on Thursday, Friday and Saturday. Approaching historic Reykjavik by the main harbor road, every traveler will encounter Harpa, a glittering iceberg of a building designed by Olafur Eliasson and built by Henning Larsen Architects. The correspondent mentions that this visionary space ideally suits Tectonics, the brainchild of Ilan Volkov, the Iceland Symphony’s 36-year-old Israeli chief conductor and music director. The orchestra played just one concert at full strength, on Friday night in Eldborg (literally, Fire Castle), the Harpa complex’s gorgeous, acoustically stunning 1,800-seat auditorium. It is necessary to point out that Ms. Gudnadottir, a cellist and vocalist best known to ambient-music devotees, was among several guests whose careers mostly lay outside of classical music circles. Others included the violist Eyvind Kang and the vocalist Jessika Kenney, American performers whose work fuses elements of early music, Asian classical styles, black metal and improvisation; Vicki Bennett, a British artist who creates media-collage art under the name People Like Us; and Eli Keszler, an American composer, percussionist and installation artist.

It is an open secret that the festival’s principal guest was the composer Christian Wolff, the last surviving member of the so-called New York School surrounding John Cage and Morton Feldman. It is necessary to note that Some of the festival’s greatest pleasures came in witnessing Mr. Wolff’s delight as he watched two of his works determinedly undertaken by youth ensembles in Harpa’s spacious lobby: Kammerkor Suderlands in “Wobbly Music,” on Friday, and the Icelandic National Youth Band in “Burdocks,” on Saturday. Those performances and others showed the extent to which Mr. Volkov meant to celebrate Harpa by using its magnificent spaces and resources to their fullest. On Friday the Icelandic Flute Ensemble and its members’ young students set the main lobby aglow with Henry Brant’s haunting “Mass for June 16.” It is signed that later that night, and again on Friday, the Icelandic ensemble Duo Harpverk played Mr. Keszler’s “Breaker — Neum” along with one of his rattling, moaning piano-wire installations. Spread over two long nights and one well-packed day, Tectonics could feel breathless, with little time to reflect between events. Intimate recitals, a solo performance by People Like Us and a closing event that included the former Sigur Ros keyboardist Kjartan Sveinsson were well filled, but audiences for the Eldborg concerts seemed woefully sparse.

The reporter makes a conclusion that any concert of modern works and premieres that draws more than a hundred listeners can’t be deemed a failure, especially in a nation whose population is a fraction of New York’s. Through it all, Mr. Volkov was tireless and omnipresent, not only conducting and performing, but also giving informal chats, moving furniture and directing traffic. I agree with the doubt which the author raises because we go not know how well the concept will travel remains to be seen. But a complex as visionary and audacious as Harpa begs for an equally bold signature event, and Tectonics fit the bill.