Hildur Guðnadóttir – 'This Will Be Us': early cello pieces with the DSO Berlin
The Oscar winner has music spanning 20 years played by the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin. Tonight she presents the programme at the Philharmonie.
Photo: tz1_1zt / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0 (cropped and resized)
Single video: YouTube · Deutsche Grammophon - DG · youtube.com
Single: The Song That Never Was
Hildur Guðnadóttir released the album 'This Will Be Us' on Deutsche Grammophon on 23 October. The Icelandic cellist and composer has the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin under Robert Ames perform eight pieces from her early solo albums 'Mount A' (2006), 'Without Sinking' (2009) and 'Saman' (2014), plus the new works 'The Song That Never Was' and 'Blind Sarabande'. She plays solo cello and produced the album, which marks 20 years since her debut.
'When I was trying to be a one-person string orchestra, I always dreamed of having more people playing with me,' she says, according to Deutsche Grammophon. Richard Allen of A Closer Listen does not necessarily consider the new versions better than the intimate solo originals. Of the orchestral version of 'Floods', released in advance, he writes that it is fuller, the cello no longer alone, and 'the drama remains intact'. The orchestra lifts even the gloomy 'Overcast' towards hope; overall, the album tells a story of companionship.
Tonight, Sunday 25 October, at 8pm Guðnadóttir presents the programme live with the DSO and Ames in the Chamber Music Hall of the Berlin Philharmonie; De Singel in Antwerp follows on 5 February 2027. The video is 'The Song That Never Was'.