Iceland's institutions of concert music are on a par with Finland's, but recordings of new music from that island country are decidedly harder to come by. Icelandic-Slovenian violist
Svava Bernharðsdóttir tries to address that lack with this disc of pieces for viola and piano or solo viola, stretching from just after World War II until the end of the twentieth century. The composers represented studied mostly in the U.S. or Britain rather than in Scandinavia; two of them are
Bernharðsdóttir's relatives. Much of the music takes off from internationally popular styles of the last century, styles that young Icelanders coming to the U.S. would have encountered in abundance. The 1969 Six Icelandic Folk Songs for viola and piano of Þorkell Sigurbjörnsson, for example, are not nationalist pieces, but fall into a Bartókian line of thought. The concluding Sonata for viola and piano of Jón Þórarinsson was written during the composer's studies with
Paul Hindemith and clearly shows his formal and harmonic influence. By contrast,
Kjartan Ólafsson, whose training was Dutch and Finnish, stands apart from the rest of the group; his edgy, motive-based Dusk for viola and piano is not quite the impressionist piece the title would lead one to suggest (unless the title brings dive-bombing mosquitoes to mind). Of the four short pieces for solo viola, Hilmar Þorðarsson's Elegy for solo viola, also written at Yale, is the most accessible and heartfelt.
Bernharðsdóttir is a superb, sensuous player attuned to the efforts of several of these composers to exploit the sounds of the viola to the maximum without resorting to extended techniques. A disc of Icelandic viola music may not displace
Andrea Bocelli from the top of the classical charts, but this one is recommended to anyone interested in contemporary national scenes.