Valgeir Sigurðsson’s Dreamland for large orchestra and electronics made its UK debut on 22 February with the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Christian Karlsen. The work appeared as part of the broadcaster’s Total Immersion focus on Icelandic composers at the Barbican, alongside music by Daníel Bjarnason, Ólafur Arnalds and Bára Gísladóttir.
Sigurðsson’s 32-minute score was created initially in an ensemble version to soundtrack the 2009 film Draumalandið (Dreamland), directed by Þorfinnur Guðnason and Andri Snær Magnason, which also included contributions from his Bedroom Community colleagues Nico Muhly, Sam Amidon, Ben Frost, and Daníel Bjarnason. The film is a protest from artists against the exploitation of natural resources in Iceland, focusing on The Kárahnjúkar Hydropower Project and its environmental impact.
The performance at the Barbican was accompanied by footage from Jökla, in memoriam, directed by Andri Snær Magnason and Þorfinnur Guðnason. The film is composed of outtakes from the original Dreamland documentary - landscapes, rivers and waterfalls in the highlands of Iceland show before many of these environments were irreversibly altered or destroyed by the hydroelectric development. These beautiful images, Sigurðsson notes, are of “deleted landscapes”.
Its soundworld suggests impending disaster, as well as Iceland’s vast, rocky landscape, through melancholic string writing and abyssal, sonorous electro-vibes. Built from traces of the Icelandic folksong Grýlukvæði, there is the sound of a solitary viola alongside shrill brass outbursts and an intense atmosphere of foreboding. Pitchfork, reviewing the album that followed the film’s release, described music of "an emotional weight that is moving, but not overstated…a keen ear for composition and flow…remarkably evocative of the film’s main themes, while still able to stand alone.”
The version for large orchestra has previously appeared with the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra and Jayce Ogren at the INfusion Music Fest in 2016; it premiered with the Iceland Symphony and Daniel Bjarnason in 2011. The original ensemble version has toured widely with Sigurðsson, viola player Nadia Sirota, and violist (and regular Sigurðsson collaborator Liam Byrne), appearing at Sónar Festival, Leuven’s Artefact Festival, and Rotterdam’s Motel Mozaïque Festival. ‘Past Tundra’ and ‘Big Reveal’ from the work have been choreographed for by Sharon Watson for Phoenix Dance Theatre – receiving a UK tour in 2015; other excerpts were mounted by Danielle Rowe for Oregon Ballet Theatre in 2022.
The BBC Symphony Orchestra previously gave the UK premiere of Sigurðsson’s Eighteen Hundred and Seventy-Five with Rumon Gamba at Maida Vale studios in 2019. The 13-minute work for orchestra and electronics is also rooted in Icelandic history commemorating the 125th anniversary of the arrival of Icelandic settlers in Manitoba, and the birth of the province's Icelandic Festival. An atmospheric, highly-textured score creates a sense of place, with muted trumpets evoking foghorns and shimmering, closely woven strings depicting the barren landscape. Horn players blowing air through their instruments effectively suggested windstorms across sea ice.