Bára Gísladóttir is emerging as a major figure on the contemporary music scenes in Denmark (where she lives) and Iceland (where she’s from). VÍDDIR is as hard to describe as that word itself – an Icelandic noun that suggests ‘dimensions’ but resonates far beyond. It is scored for nine flutes, three percussionists (also playing chamber organs), bass guitar and double bass, the latter thus far played by the composer.

The piece is approaching something like cult status, ratcheting up performances around Europe and beyond (most recently in Brazil). The premiere in a Copenhagen suburb in February 2020 was one of those ‘I was there’ events (and I was), in which an unexpectedly huge audience sensed they’d been warned about something. Not even Gísladóttir could have known that a global pandemic was around the corner.

There’s plenty to talk about in VÍDDIR: Gísladóttir’s striking writing for her gutsy ensemble, and even more so for the acoustic she sought to ‘play’ (that of Grundtvig’s Church, Denmark’s most spectacular ecclesiastical building). The more I listen, the more I am struck by how she releases animalistic qualities in her instruments with deep consideration of the artistry of those who play them.

That’s detail. More broadly, wave upon wave of mustering and carefully controlled sound appears to wash over listeners to VÍDDIR, but some moments ping out, not least the flute ‘screams’ that mark one obvious point of crisis. I noted at the premiere that the work’s primeval rumbles and judders appeared as snapshots of a bigger process that doesn’t (or shouldn’t) begin or end. I took that as a prophecy: rationally Scandinavian in its assertion that the demise of humanity was a done deal; darkly Icelandic in its willingness to examine, in sound, precisely what that might entail.

Listening again, and to a better live recording than that of the premiere (from the Icelandic church architecturally modelled on the Danish one), I am aware that the ‘dimensions’ of the piece perhaps occupy a less definable space, interpretative or otherwise. Just as significant, it strikes me now, is the pure musicality of the piece: its ear on pitch and timbre and on musical architecture. Tim Rutherford-Johnson’s booklet note is eloquent on this.

Hard on the heels of Dacapo’s release of VÍDDIR came Sono Luminus’s of SILVA, another piece on a monumental scale (an hour long) but this one driven by Gísladóttir’s double bass alone, albeit with plenteous processing. If VÍDDIR is a more impressive achievement, SILVA is arguably a more engrossing sit-down listen and a more consistent and carefully built work.

It is underpinned by a deep, almost hollow reverberation – an abyss the composer holds no fear of plunging into and then working her way out of towards a sort of aerated plateau (or, at least, a horizon) that proves the work’s destination. Again, we hear the animal inside Gísladóttir’s growling double bass – always a meeting of the analogue and digital rather than the latter’s obliterating of the former – and there are elements of metal and noise music present in a monolith whose throbbing is (almost) consistently rooted by a pedal of sorts, which the music bends tonally on and off. Whatever this brutalist monologue is, it’s intensely focused, structured with compositional discipline and a musical soul.