Composer

Icelandic Anna Thorvaldsdottir is one of classical music's brightest superstars right now, and the Odense Symphony Orchestra has made a big splash by, together with the BBC Proms, San Francisco Symphony, Helsinki Philharmonic and Iceland Symphony Orchestra, commissioning a monumental cello concerto by the uncompromising sound designer. The work was premiered last year in the US and at the BBC Proms, and the review from there reads: “Thorvaldsdottir's new cello concerto, Before we fall , is a hit, both sonically and intellectually… Her sound world, delicate and massive at the same time, is like no other. And Johannes Moser plays throughout with both nerve-wracking splendor and fierce intimacy.”

Mahlers 4.

Odense Concert Hall

EPSG:4326

Titanium

Cologne Philharmonie

Several curious anecdotes surround the renowned French philosopher Michel Foucault. His LSD trip in Death Valley, California, is legendary: one weekend in 1975, he accepted an invitation from Assistant Professor Simeon Wade. It has now been definitively established that this is no legend. Moreover, this LSD trip profoundly altered Foucault's life and thought.

Shattered Worlds / LSD

Stadtcasino Basel

Music that leaves a mark: Experience our time set to music by two of the most important composers of our time.
Experience music as it sounds right now. At this year's SPOR festival you can experience the very latest music – tones that speak directly to us.

Icelandic Anna Thorvaldsdottir is one of the most important voices in music right now. Like tectonic plates, her music moves with the slowness of a glacier – and with its power. Her music is so full of textures that you can almost touch it in the concert hall.

AION

Aarhus Music Hall

Experience music as it sounds right now. At this year's SPOR festival you can experience the very latest music – tones that speak directly to us.

Experience a captivating journey through sound and story as the acclaimed Danish String Quartet joins forces with the radiant Danish National Girls’ Choir. Blending contemporary works, reimagined classics, and Nordic folk traditions, this program explores themes of memory, identity, and our bond with the natural world.

Danish String Quartet Danish National Girls’s Choir

Church of the Epiphany

The Grammy-nominated Danish String Quartet joins the Danish National Girls’ Choir in combining old traditions and new music. They premiere the Stanford Live co-commission by composer and Stanford alumnus David Lang, titled in wildness, a work about the relationship between humans and mother earth. The first half of the program features folksongs and new music by American and Nordic women composers.

Danish String Quartet and Danish National Girls’ Choir

Stanford University

Join the Danish String Quartet and the Danish National Girls’ Choir for an extraordinary evening of music that transcends genres and generations. Featuring a stunning new work by Pulitzer Prize-winning composer David Lang, this collaboration between two of Denmark’s most celebrated ensembles promises to be a powerful celebration of artistry and innovation.

Danish String Quartet with Danish National Girls' Choir

Segerstrom Center for the Arts

An album of film music arrangements, the major cello concertos of the repertoire, chamber music with friends, and Persian music with his father: Kian Soltani is an incredibly versatile artist. At the beginning of his meteoric career, he won the highly endowed Paulo Competition in Finland with Witold Lutosławski's Cello Concerto – now he will perform the demanding work in the third of his residency concerts at the Elbphilharmonie, accompanied by the Iceland Symphony Orchestra.

Iceland Symphony Orchestra / Kian Soltani / Eva Ollikainen

Elbphilharmonie Hamburg

Undoubtedly one of the finest cellists performing today, Johannes Moser returns to the MSO stage to play composer Anna Thorvaldsdottir’s Before we fall, fresh off its world premiere with the San Francisco Symphony. "Before we fall centres around the notion of teetering on the edge," says the composer; Moser’s cello "generates the atmospheric progression of the world it inhabits." Alpesh Chauhan, “a charismatic, balletic conductor” (The Guardian), leads this energetic new work, as well as a romantic suite from Tchaikovsky’s iconic Sleeping Beauty.

Tchaikovsky’s Sleeping Beauty

Warner Grand Theater

Anna Thorvaldsdottir’s ARCHORA hums with a tension that builds to a haunting ethereal calm, creating an atmospheric soundscape where swirling textures and deep resonances evoke the primal forces of nature. Then, Mahler's Rückert-Lieder soars with profound lyricism, transporting you through fragile, introspective moments of beauty and sorrow. Finally, Mahler’s Symphony No. 4 unfurls in radiant orchestral color, its playful, soaring melodies eventually giving way to a serene, celestial finale.

Mahler Symphony No. 4

Cincinnati Music Hall

This season, the hr-Symphony Orchestra, together with Norwegian conductor Tabita Berglund and renowned German cellist Julian Steckel, presents a program rich in myth and utterly captivating in Fulda. Myths fascinate people because they transcend us. This is true of the music Richard Wagner created for Tristan and Isolde, as well as the music with which Icelandic composer Anna Thorvaldsdottir captures the idea of ​​a "primal energy" in sound. Jean Sibelius, the great symphonist of the North, proved with his Seventh Symphony that one can express the ultimate in just 20 minutes. His last symphony is like an essence, pure and intense. Dmitri Shostakovich contributes his Cello Concerto No. 1, a work full of masks, facades, and ambiguities—both whimsical and serious.

Concerts at Fulda Castle Theatre

Fulda City Palace Theatre

Myths fascinate people because they transcend us. This is also true of the music Wagner created for "Tristan und Isolde," which sounds incredibly grand. Equally impressive is the music with which Anna Thorvaldsdottir captures the idea of ​​a "primal energy" in sound. These are sounds of singular tension and power. But one myth needs to be dispelled: that symphonies must be long to be significant. Sibelius, the great symphonist of the North, proved with his "Seventh" that the ultimate can be expressed in barely 20 minutes. His last symphony is like an essence, pure and intense, getting straight to the point without any embellishment. For all its significance, grandeur, and depth, this program also offers Shostakovich's Cello Concerto No. 1: a work full of masks, facades, and ambiguities, whimsical yet also serious. The contrasts could hardly be sharper between broad Moderato and frantic Allegretto, between light and dark, machine-like music and grace. Alongside this, one hears and sees a soloist who is almost comically busy – Julian Steckel takes on this hyperactive role, a cellist who says of himself: "I can play Shostakovich at 3 a.m." On the podium of the hr Symphony Orchestra is the Norwegian Tabita Berglund, also a trained cellist, who for some years now has concentrated on conducting – particularly on music from the Nordic regions, on these special powerhouses that transcend the ordinary.

Archora

Hessischer Rundfunk

Feel the beat. From the primal, hypnotic dances of Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring to the sensual throb of Ravel’s Boléro and the edgy thrum and twitch of Varèse’s Intégrales, the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Eva Ollikainen get the musical pulse racing. They’re joined by ‘stupendous’ German-Canadian cellist Johannes Moser for the UK premiere of Anna Thorvaldsdottir’s Before we fall – a work that teeters on the edge of ‘a multitude of opposites’, torn between lyricism and distorted energy.

Boléro and The Rite of Spring

Royal Albert Hall

Conductor Dalia Stasevska leads the Symphony in the world premiere of Anna Thorvaldsdottir’s Cello Concerto, performed by German-Canadian virtuoso Johannes Moser. Thorvaldsdottir, a former cellist, knows every nuance of the featured instrument and supports its rich contralto voice in her singular sound world. Rachmaninoff’s Symphonic Dances, his final score, represents his late period at its opulent best. It’s an intensely autobiographical work: a summary of his achievements, if not a map of his psyche.

Stasevska Conducts Rachmaninoff

Davies Symphony Hall

There is something otherworldly beautiful about Bent Sørensen's music. As if it comes from a distant, almost non-existent, yet familiar place.

A Little Piece Of Heaven

Southern Danish Conservatory of Music

Biennale »Paradise Lost?« Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin with Nicholas Collon and Pekka Kuusisto

Berliner Philharmonie

Dalia Stasveska reunites with the OSM to conduct Dvořák’s Symphony no. 8 and Bruch’s magnificent Violin Concerto, featuring prodigious young soloist Randall Goosby.

Bruch’s Unforgettable Violin Concerto

Place des Arts

Experience the Orchestra perform Ravel’s Boléro, a masterpiece of orchestration and evolving textures.

The National Youth Orchestra: Illuminate

Warwick Arts Centre

Join City of London Sinfonia and science communicator, atmospheric physicist, and author Dr Simon Clark on a journey across the globe from pole to pole, taking in the freezing desolation of the tundra, the vast expanse of the oceans, and the humid claustrophobia of the tropics. The soundtrack to your adventure will be a selection of classical pieces representing the cloud formations we encounter as we make our way from the Antarctica to the Arctic.

Music from Pole to Pole: Cloud Formations from Antarctica to the Arctic

Smith Square Hall

Join City of London Sinfonia and science communicator, climate physicist, and author Dr Simon Clark on a journey across the globe from pole to pole, taking in the freezing desolation of the tundra, the scorching heat of the desert, and the humid claustrophobia of the tropics. The soundtrack to your adventure will be a selection of classical pieces representing the cloud formations we encounter as we make our way from the Antarctica to the Arctic. Revisit old favourites such as Vivaldi’s Summer invoking the altocumulus castellanus – small individual fluffy clouds home in the tropics, which look cute but can warn of thunderstorms, with dynamic lightning.

Music From Pole To Pole

Open, icy expanses, deep, dark forests and conflict. Welcome to a Nordic concert with the Odense Symphony Orchestra! This concert's program is composed of three masterpieces composed by three strong Nordic voices: Carl Nielsen from Denmark, Jean Sibelius from Finland and Anna Thorvaldsdóttir from Iceland. Sibelius' En Saga is a tone poem that does not have an actual story as its foundation, but describes a dark mood . The result is like a somewhat disturbing trip in a dark forest - with great and at the same time subtle music by the Finnish master. Archora by Anna Thorvaldsdottir is from 1922, and has almost immediately become a classic for orchestra. Like a glacier, the music rushes forward and along the way gives the audience a sense of infinity in space and time. As if everything that keeps us tied to the earth is cut away, leaving us floating in space. So does the beginning of Nielsen's 5th Symphony, but so much happens after the quietly swaying theme at the beginning that the ground connection is quickly found again. The 5th Symphony has a famous snare drum solo, where the percussionist in the score is almost asked to fight the rest of the orchestra, and even though the symphony was written against the background of war and conflict, there is, as always, indomitable energy and exuberant life with Carl Nielsen.

Ollikainen & Nielsen's 5.

New Music Ensemble

The University of Texas at Austin

Opening the program is Wolfgang Mozart’s charming Symphony No. 33, followed by Anna Thorvaldsdottir’s orchestrally imaginative Archora, inspired by the “primordial energy” of her homeland, Iceland. Closing the program, international star Hilary Hahn is soloist in one of the greatest works in the repertoire: Brahms’s Violin Concerto. Brahms composed this rich, lyrical work in 1878 for, and with the advice of, his friend Joseph Joachim, a towering virtuoso of the age.

Andris Nelsons conducts Mozart, Thorvaldsdottir, and Brahms with Hilary Hahn, violin

Boston Symphony Hall

The frosty magic of the Russian winter inspired Tchaikovsky’s First Symphony: music so tuneful, and so fresh, that you can almost see your breath in the air! Anna Thorvaldsdottir dreams of the vast stillness of Icelandic nature. And the great Ian Bostridge – possibly Britain’s finest living tenor – leads a wild parade through Britten’s shimmering, magical musical dreamscape. This promises to be a truly gripping evening…

Britten & Tchaikovsky

The International Convention Centre

Philharmonic Orchestra – Jeffery Meyer, conductor

Musical Arts Center

AXIOM

Lincoln Center

A Far Cry beckons you on a sonic journey to Stonehenge. The early light of the emerging dawn pulses and shimmers on granite, awakening the bucolic English countryside. This concert is crafted to evoke and transport you to the enigmatic, pre-historic monument by way of musical selections which draw inspiration from the rising sunlight, the sculptures of Isamu Noguchi, and nature itself.

A Far Cry | Stonehenge

Longy School of Music of Bard College

Boston Conservatory Choirs, directed by Dr. Stephen Spinelli and featuring graduate conducting candidates Naomi Bennett and Edith Hernandez, present A Light in the Dark—Winter Landscapes from Around the World. This performance will provide a respite from the cold of winter, featuring repertoire by Icelandic composer Ana Þorvaldsdóttir and Latvian composer Eriks Esenvalds, as well as some beloved seasonal classics.

Boston Conservatory Choirs: A Light in the Darkness—Winter Landscapes from Around the World

Saint Clements Eucharistic Shrine

The SF Symphony Youth Orchestra opens its season with a program featuring Anna Thorvaldsdottir’s Metacosmos.

San Francisco Symphony Youth Orchestra

Discover the jaw-dropping artistry of next-gen talents as the 100 musicians of the SF Symphony Youth Orchestra come together to explore repertoire standards and new works alike

Youth Orchestra

Re-emerging after its hugely successful world premiere at the 2022 BBC Proms with Eva Ollikainen, Icelandic composer Anna Thorvaldsdottir’s ARCHORA portrays abstractions – musical spectra and clashing extremes drawn out through her focus on primordial energy and parallel realms. Its broad, gestural nature contradicts and complements the sweeping symphonic intricacies of Debussy’s La mer. Prefacing such powerfully dramatic pieces, a traditional bout of Haydn’s Sturm und Drang-driven drama in the overture to ‘L’isola disabitata’ (The Deserted Island) and a pre-emptive respite as Richard Goode treats us to one of Mozart’s most imaginative concertos, his Eighteenth.

BBC Philharmonic | 14 October | Anna Thorvaldsdottir’s ARCHORA

The Bridgewater Hall

Anna Thorvaldsdottir’s acclaimed new orchestral work ARCHORA and Hans Abrahamsen’s horn concerto are both performed here for the first time in Sweden, the latter featuring the orchestra’s principal hornist Chris Parkes. Acclaimed Finnish conductor Eva Ollikainen concludes the concert with Jean Sibelius’ beloved fifth symphony.

Nordic Weeks: Sibelius’ Fifth Symphony

SR Berwaldhallen

In this epic programme, the BBC Symphony Orchestra returns to Snape Maltings Concert Hall to perform Mahler’s Symphony No.1 and the UK premiere of Anna Thorvaldsdottir’s AIŌN, an electrifying exploration of time.

BBC SO at Aldeburgh Festival

Snape Maltings

Be swept up by a stirring trio of powerful orchestral works by Britten, Tchaikovsky and Aldeburgh Festival featured composer, Anna Thorvaldsdottir.

BBC Philharmonic II at Aldeburgh Festival

“A brilliant musician and an extraordinary visionary” (Wall Street Journal), Pierre-Laurent Aimard has built his reputation as a go-to of contemporary music and collaborator for composers but is celebrated for his interpretation of historic repertoire as well. Aimard joins the LA Phil for Beethoven’s wonder-filled Fourth Piano Concerto, with the unusual quiet drama of its second movement. Eva Ollikainen is the chief conductor of several orchestras in Europe and leads the U.S. premiere of a new work by Icelandic composer Anna Thorvaldsdottir and the gorgeous Suite from Richard Strauss’ Der Rosenkavalier.

Beethoven and Strauss

Walt Disney Concert Hall

The sensational Danish String Quartet returns to perform the third concert in its ongoing Doppelgänger Project, pairing Schubert’s Rosamunde Quartet with a newly commissioned work by Icelandic composer Anna Thorvaldsdottir. Schubert’s serene and solemn quartet bears the weight of the composer’s declining health and heavy heart during the period of its composition—when he died a few years after its premiere, Rosamunde was his only quartet to have been performed publicly in its entirety; it was also his only chamber work published in his lifetime. Thorvaldsdottir is widely admired as one of the most original voices of her generation, praised for creating vast, visceral, and ravishing musical landscapes that conjure at once a sense of “immensity and intimacy” (Gramophone).

Danish String Quartet

First Congregational Church

The Rhythm Method presents a concert of contemporary works for string quartet, joined by contemporary performance students. Works by George Lewis, Shelley Washington, and members of the Rhythm Method will be performed.

Guest Artist: The Rhythm Method

Boston Conservatory at Berklee

Icelandic composer Anna Thorvaldsdottir curates an evening of Nightcap, our cabaret-style series of music and conversation in the new Kenneth C. Griffin Sidewalk Studio.

Nightcap: Anna Thorvaldsdottir

Ludovic Morlot leads one of Shostakovich’s greatest symphonies, depicting the despair of the Stalin regime but ending in a musical triumph. Formidable pianist Sergio Tiempo takes on the striking concerto Prokofiev composed for himself to play in the conservatory’s competition—which he won. Opening the program, Anna Thorvaldsdottir explores the natural balance between beauty and chaos in her piece Metacosmos, which led the Boston Globe to declare, “There is possibly no other composer working today who is so adept at channeling the massive forces of nature.”

Shostakovich and Prokofiev with Ludovic Morlot

Taking its title from the famous African American Spiritual, this eclectic concert explores themes of homecoming and aspiring towards paradise. Earlier this year, we premiered a short film of Derrick Skye’s, a piece which, in the artist's words, "sonically and visually interprets the process of gaining release from restraint using the mind, body, soul, and voice". After being postponed from our 2019–20 season, this breathtaking new commission will finally receive its live debut. We're also thrilled to present world premieres by two brilliant composers— Saunder Choi and Dale Trumbore.

City Called Heaven

Phaedra Ensemble launches our Northern Lights weekend with a dazzling portrait of contemporary Icelandic music ranging from celebrated glacial works by Anna Thorvaldsdóttir and Oscar-winning Hildur Guðnadóttir, to new arrangements of the ever-inventive Björk and Ólafur Arnalds’ haunting original music for Broadchurch.

Northern Lights: Music from Iceland

Sheffield Theatres

Guest conductor David Afkham returns to the podium with Mozart, Shostakovich and a cello concerto that’s centered around the notion of teetering on the edge. Thorvaldsdottir’s Before we fall was composed for the remarkable cellist Johannes Moser, an artist who she knew could take her concerto to the highest level.

Afkham, Moser and Shostakovich

Orchestra Hall Minneapolis

Concert for the Senses

Koningin Elisabethzaal

The curious ensemble Gageego! take us on a winding journey through poetry and science. Discover new music by Britta Byström, Jesper Nordin and Anna Thorvaldsdottir that breaks down all barriers.

No limits with Gageego!

Stenhammarsalen

Icelandic composer Anna Thorvaldsdottir's ground-breaking chamber opera comes to the Linbury Theatre in a dynamic new staging by Netia Jones.

Composer

Anna Thorvaldsdottir

Events

Upcoming events

Nov 27, 2026

Northern Lights: Music from Iceland · Sheffield Theatres

8 - 9 Jan, 2027

Afkham, Moser and Shostakovich · Minnesota Orchestra

Feb 20, 2027

Concert for the Senses · Antwerp Symphony Orchestra

Mar 14, 2027

No limits with Gageego! · Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra

27 - 31 May, 2027

UR_ · Royal Opera House

Past events

Oct 8, 2026

Mahlers 4. · Odense Symphony Orchestra

10 - 12 May, 2026

Titanium · Gürzenich-Orchester Köln

Future and recently performed repertoire

Cello in Before we fall by Thorvaldsdottir

Odense Symphony Orchestra

About

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