ARCHORA

For orchestra
Duration 19 min.
Instrumentation: 2+afl.0.2+bcl.2+cbn / 4.0.1+btbn.1+btuba / 3perc / [org] / str

Please note: The organ part is optional and is intended to be played only where a grand organ is available at the venue. It is not to be substituted by chamber organ or another keyboard instrument.

Listen to ARCHORA on Bandcamp / Spotify / Apple Music

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Commissioned by the BBC Proms and co-commissioned by the LA Philharmonic, Munich Philharmonic, Orchestre de Paris, Iceland Symphony Orchestra and Klangspuren Schwaz.

“It’s a fascinating score”
Klaus Mäkelä (full Le Figaro feature here)

Premiered at the BBC Proms by the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra and Eva Ollikainen, August 11 2022 at Royal Albert Hall - the performance was among The Guardian’s “Classical Highlights of 2022”

ARCHORA is featured on Anna’s new orchestral portrait album, performed by the Iceland Symphony Orchestra and Eva Ollikainen - the album was among the year’s top classical albums at the New York Times and at the Boston Globe

Previous performances include:

Orchestras - BBC Philharmonic (multiple), LA Philharmonic, Orchestre de Paris, Boston Symphony Orchestra, Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich, Iceland Symphony Orchestra (multiple), Munich Philharmonic, Helsinki Philharmonic, Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra, Orchestre de Chambre de Lausanne, Tiroler Symphonieorchester Innsbruck, Aarhus Symphony Orchestra, Odense Symphony Orchestra

Conductors - Eva Ollikainen (multiple), Klaus Mäkelä, Paavo Järvi, Andris Nelsons, Gustavo Gimeno, Katharina Wincor

Selected reviews:

“Thorvaldsdottir’s music partakes of deep, primordial textures and a mysterious sense of structure and flow. In these two darkly spacious, beautifully played pieces, she unlocks an entirely new world of undulating sounds, as if tectonic plates of an alien planet were shifting against one another. Each work is rigorously planned, yet the structures remain elusive so that when major events unfold … the effect is almost overwhelming.” - David Weininger, Boston Globe, December 2023

“Anna Thorvaldsdottir’s music is about mass and density, how different planes of sounds collide and combine, and how intricately detailed textures evolve over time. Those qualities make the orchestra the obvious medium for her work, and it has largely been through her sequence of strikingly effective orchestral scores that the Iceland-born composer has become recognised as one of the most distinctive voices in European music today. Only eight weeks ago the CBSO introduced Thorvaldsdottir’s magnificent CATAMORPHOSIS to the UK, and the BBC Philharmonic’s Prom under Eva Ollikainen began with the world premiere of another immensely impressive study in sonority, ARCHORA, co-commissioned by the BBC with five other orchestras.” - Andrew Clements, The Guardian, August 2022

“Anna Thorvaldsdottir’s newest work, ARCHORA, was given a terrific Proms premiere... [It] is a score that will travel far, and not just because it is a co-commission by many of the world’s leading musical organizations. ... Full of surprises yet satisfyingly logical, Thorvaldsdottir’s brand of Nordic spectralism is summed up in this work.” - John Allison, The Telegraph, August 2022

"[I]t’s fascinating the way that Thorvaldsdottir – as she usually does – walks a line between evident planning and apparent spontaneity. ... ARCHORA invites one to listen in such a deep and reflective way. It pulls us in, immerses us, makes us think seriously about what’s going on, consider how the different ideas relate to one another, figure out what’s cause and what’s effect, and what each of them might mean." - Simon Cummings, 5:4, August 2022

“Following the UK premiere of METACOSMOS at the Proms in 2019, Icelandic composer Anna Thorvaldsdottir returned with a world premiere of a BBC co-commission, ARCHORA. From the former highly impressive Proms debut, one saw some similar trademarks in tonight’s equally striking work... Thorvaldsdottir uses the orchestra to create remarkably haunting atmospheres and textures.” - Nick Boston, Bachtrack, August 2022

Program notes:

The core inspiration behind ARCHORA centres around the notion of a primordial energy and the idea of an omnipresent parallel realm – a world both familiar and strange, static and transforming, nowhere and everywhere at the same time. The piece revolves around the extremes on the spectrum between the Primordia and its resulting afterglow – and the conflict between these elements that are nevertheless fundamentally one and the same. The halo emerges from the Primordia but they have both lost perspective and the connection to one another, experiencing themselves individually as opposing forces rather than one and the same.

As with my music generally, the inspiration is not something I am trying to describe through the music as such – it is a way to intuitively approach and work with the core energy, structure, atmosphere and material of the piece.

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Wise Music Classical - Q&A ahead of the world premiere