Press on Concerts, Performances & Other
"Dreaming opens the sphere of the symphony orchestra in an unusual and innovative way. … the work is perhaps particularly unique by the way it achieves to build and unfold a large form within a sound world that apparently stands still. This work comes closer with every listening, and it makes you curious for more".
Adjudicating Committee, Nordic Council Music Prize 2012
Full press statement here
"Anna Thorvaldsdottir’s “Hrim” was about dispersion — the idea of fragments and motifs traveling through the ensemble, transforming a static harmony into a shimmering, harmonically ambiguous, thoroughly enveloping texture. … The performances were consistently invigorating. … In Ms. Thorvaldsdottir’s piece, the strings and woodwinds effectively created a dark atmosphere and the impression of a distant, howling wind early on, before melting into the work’s morphing harmonic fabric."
Allan Kozinn, The New York Times
Full review here
"... the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE) played an all-Thorvaldsdottir program as part of the Mostly Mozart festival, and it was one of the most involving and affecting concerts in several years... The concert, augmented by her recent recording Rhízoma (Innova), left a strong impression that Thorvaldsdottir has a notable compositional voice: her unique ability to manipulate her material so that the passage of time is made beautiful."
George Grella, New York Classical Review
Full review here
"Ms. Thorvaldsdottir's music has a natural beauty to it in the way it reveals itself patiently, an in its unpredictable but organic-seeming instances of rhythmic quickening."
Corinna da Fonseca-Wollheim, The New York Times
Full review here
"Here is a composer with a distinctive sound world, and the ability to choose, from a wide textural palette, the most apt instrumental effect for a given moment. Yet, unlike some who toil in the au courant genre of the soundscape, she also knows how to build and sustain tension and convey emotion while evoking the vast sweep of the ages."
Barbara Jepson, Classical Voice North America
Full review here
"Thorvaldsdottir’s music itself was overwhelmingly beautiful and huge in scope. Her slow tempos draw easy comparisons to the vast sonic landscapes of John Luther Adams, and the constantly evolving cadential figures bring to mind the dense polyphony of Béla Bartók's string quartets, with their scratched notes and bows across the bridge."
Robert Leeper, Feast of Music
Full review here
Portrait Concert at the Lincoln Center's Mostly Mozart Festival at the Armory with the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE) selected among the Top Ten Performances of 2014
“Witnessing this performance … was like being caught in a slightly exciting, slightly terrifying dream that one relishes and wishes would never end. The memories are haunting.”
George Grella, New York Classical Review
Full list here
Featured at Nordic Playlist's Magma.
Full feature here
Video featured at Sinfini Music, interviewed by Kate Molleson.
Full feature here
Shorter version here
"In just eight minutes, [Hrim] perfectly encapsulates her uncanny knack for conjuring the natural world - not through quaint, picturesque mimicry, but with potent evocations of elemental power, flux and potential.
Steve Smith, The New York Times
Full review here
"in a concert of strikingly unusual and beautiful music, Ró/Serenity was the standout work. It precisely expresses all of Thorvaldsdottir's values; the dreamlike length, the imagistic colors and sensations, and the organic flow and development built around a strong tonic."
George Grella, New York Classical Review
Full review here