Jón Leifs: Saga Symphony

Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com
Jon Leifs (1899-1968) had the unfortunate luck to be stuck living in Germany when World War II broke out. He continued to write and was, for some time after the war, branded a Nazi sympathizer because he hadn't "explained" himself well enough to the cultured public. Sinfonia 1 (Saga Symphony) of 1942 is a blistering response to that criticism. Based on medieval Icelandic sagas, the work--assertive and almost angry--pays homage to the true heroes in his life, the people who braved the North Atlantic and settled Iceland. The work sent the kind of shock waves Vaughan Williams's Symphony 4 did. Colossal work. --Paul Cook

Tracks:

Sinfonia I (Saga Symphony) Op. 26: Skarphedeinn
Sinfonia I (Saga Symphony) Op. 26: Gudrun Osvifrsdottir
Sinfonia I (Saga Symphony) Op. 26: Bjad baki Kara
Sinfonia I (Saga Symphony) Op. 26: Glamr og Grettir
Sinfonia I (Saga Symphony) Op. 26: Totmodr Kolbrunarskald

Amazon.com

Jon Leifs (1899-1968) had the unfortunate luck to be stuck living in Germany when World War II broke out. He continued to write and was, for some time after the war, branded a Nazi sympathizer because he hadn't "explained" himself well enough to the cultured public. Sinfonia 1 (Saga Symphony) of 1942 is a blistering response to that criticism. Based on medieval Icelandic sagas, the work--assertive and almost angry--pays homage to the true heroes in his life, the people who braved the North Atlantic and settled Iceland. The work sent the kind of shock waves Vaughan Williams's Symphony 4 did. Colossal work. --Paul Cook

Customer Reviews:

Seventy-Six Great Lurs Led the Big Parade.......2000-11-01

One of the great individualists among 20th century artists, the Icelander Jón Leifs (1899-1968) persevered through critical hostility and audience incomprehension until, by the end of his life, his countrymen had acknowledged him as supreme among in giving musical expression to the native soul. Leifs' music does not fall easily on the ear, nor does it fail in demanding the fortitude of its auditors. The late cycle of tone-poems - "Geysir," "Hekla," and "Dettifoss" (all from the 1960s) - make the point in terms of orchestral dynamics; the earlier "Saga Symphony" (1941), written during the Leifs' Berlin period, just after a disastrous public performance of his Organ Concerto at the Prussian Academy of the Arts. (Goebbels banned further playing of Leifs' music and made additional threats against Leifs' wife, who was Jewish, and their daughters.) In this BIS recording, with Osmo Vänskä and the Iceland Symphony Orchestra, the "Saga Symphony" requires nearly an hour. In five movements, Leifs' "Symphony" offers musical character-portraits of seven important figures from the sagas: I. Skarphéðrinn; II. Guðrún Ósvífrsdóttir; III. Björn og Kári; IV. Glámr og Grettir; and V. þormóðr Kolbrúnarskáld. Leifs places in his orchestra genuine Icelandic instruments, most prominently a group of "lúrs," a brass horn, which color the texture in the Fifth Movement. The CD is the ideal medium for auditioning this work. Leifs makes no attempt at what we usually think of as symphonic development. His insistence on the gawky rhythms of the "rimúr" cam become tedious. Taken one at a time, however, the individual movements are fascinating, especially "þormóðr Kolbrúnarskáld," with its braying "lúrs" toward the end. It's definitely in the category of "offbeat repertory," but belongs in the library of anyone interested in the larger phenomenon of Scandinavian music.

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