Valgeir Sigurðsson’s No Nights Dark Enough and For Love of Her (do but kill me) – will be performed by the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra at the Concertgebouw on 5 October, conducted by Dima Slobodeniouk; Jodie Landau is soloist For Love of Her¸ which makes is Netherlands debut, while Sigurðsson joins conductor and orchestra for the electronics employed in both works.
No Nights Dark Enough is inspired by the music of John Dowland, with Sigurðsson originally asked to write a work in response to the song Flow My Tears. The 16-minute piece is scored for chamber orchestra and electronics and is cast in four parts: ‘I. flow , ‘II. infamy sings’, ‘III. fear and grief and pain’, and ‘IV. learn to contemn light’. Its melancholy character is manifested by jerky, agitated rhythmic figures, abrupt changes of texture and dynamic, and a restless solo viola, redolent of Downland’s viol music, in the second section. Electronics provide a watery, translucent additional layer; brass players create quasi-mechanical sounds with pitchless blowing and whispering into their instruments.
It was premiered by the composer himself (on electronics) and the City of London Sinfonia under Hugh Brunt on 17 June 2014 at Village Underground, London, as part of the Spitalfields Festival. It received its Dutch premiere in 2014 from Philharmonie Zuidnederland and Bas Wiegers at November Music and made its debut in the composer’s homeland with the Iceland Symphony Orchestra and André de Ridder at the Iceland Airwaves Festival; it has also appeared at Spain’s Sónar Festival and the 2017 Scopitone Festival in Nantes. It features on the composer’s 2017 album Dissonance.
For Love of Her (do but kill me) (2015) also draws on the music of the Renaissance, setting words by Carlo Gesualdo. The mysterious, lamenting work is by turns sumptuous and austere, the body of strings darkened by the middle and lower registers of clarinet, trombone, piano and harp. Harmonies emerge from the pitch clouds left behind by Sigurðsson’s plaintive, restrained vocal writing, and the boundaries between recorded and live sounds blur, as the space is filled by musical ghosts; it closes with ethereal string harmonics, which swell and recede across the ensemble.
The 6-minute piece was first conceived for voice, chamber ensemble of 10 players and electronics in 2015 – watch the Bedroom Community performance of the piece here. The chamber orchestra version premiered in November 2016 at Harpa, Reykjavik with Jodie Landau, the Iceland Symphony Orchestra and André de Ridder, as part of Iceland Airwaves.