©Photo: Saga Sig

©Photo: Saga Sig

Daníel Bjarnason

Conductor / Composer

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“…coming eerily close to defining classical music’s undefinable brave new world.”
(Time Out New York)

Artist in Collaboration: Iceland Symphony Orchestra

Daníel Bjarnason is one of Iceland’s foremost musical voices today, increasingly in demand as conductor, composer and programmer. He is Artist in Collaboration with Iceland Symphony Orchestra, an appointment that follows his tenures as Principal Guest Conductor and Artist in Residence.

As guest conductor, highlights over 2022/23 and 2023/24 seasons include debuts with Lahti Symphony Orchestra, Detroit Symphony Orchestra, Philharmonisches Orchester Freiburg and Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra alongside his regular presence in Reykjavik with Iceland Symphony Orchestra throughout the season.

Keeping a busy composing schedule alongside his conducting commitments, many of his works are taken up beyond their premieres and regularly programmed around the world. This season sees performances of his Concerto for Percussion and Orchestra, Inferno written for Martin Grubinger, with Orchestre de Paris and Elim Chan at Philharmonie de Paris. Additionally, Gothenburg Symphony will premiere Bjarnason’s new work for orchestra, A Fragile Hope. Co-commissioners Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra perform the US premiere and Iceland Symphony Orchestra perform the European premiere of I Want to Be Alive – Trilogy for Orchestra First Part: Echo/Narcissus. The Trilogy was premiered in 2022/23 with co-commissioners Toronto Symphony Orchestra and Gustavo Gimeno. In 2021/22, Concerto for Piano and Orchestra, FEAST, written for Víkingur Ólafsson, performed at the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles by Ólafsson and Esa-Pekka Salonen

He has previously conducted Gothenburg Symphony, Gävle Symfoniorkester, Aalborg Symfoniorkester and Turun Filharmoninen Orkesteri in Europe, while in North America he has appeared with Los Angeles Philharmonic and Toronto Symphony orchestras, and in Japan with Tokyo Symphony Orchestra.

Bjarnason maintains a close connection with Los Angeles Philharmonic, having written From Space I Saw Earth for Gustavo Dudamel, Zubin Mehta and Esa-Pekka Salonen to conduct together at its Centennial Birthday Celebration Concert and Gala in 2019. In 2017 they premiered Bjarnason’s Violin Concerto at the Hollywood Bowl, in a co-commission with Iceland Symphony for Pekka Kuusisto, while he co-curated the orchestra’s Reykjavík Festival, an eclectic and multi-disciplinary 17-day event, in which he featured as conductor and composer.

Violin Concerto ‘Scordatura’, became a success with audiences and orchestras and remains very popular. Kuusisto has performed it with Philharmonia Orchestra, Orchestre de Paris, New York Philharmonic, Detroit Symphony, National Arts Center orchestras, Swedish Radio and Finnish Radio symphony orchestras, Göteborgs Symfoniker, MDR Sinfonieorchester and NDR Elbphilharmonie. Bjarnason conducts the recording of the work with Kuusisto, as part of the final instalment of a three-album recording project with Iceland Symphony for Sono Luminus, focussing on Icelandic music and composers.

In 2023, Bjarnason was named Guest Artist in Residence at Copenhagen Opera Festival, where a co-production of his first opera, Brothers, by Den Islandske Opera, Malmö Opera and Copenhagen Opera Festival was performed. Since its premiere in 2017, the opera for the Danish National Opera and directed by Kasper Holten, based on the Susanne Bier film of the same name, was also revived in Reykjavík by The Icelandic Opera in 2018 and opened Budapest’s 2019 Armel Opera Festival.

Bjarnason conducted the world premiere of Jóhann Jóhannsson’s Last and First Men, a multimedia work narrated by Tilda Swinton, at the 2017 Manchester International Festival with BBC Philharmonic, and subsequently at the Barbican with the London Symphony Orchestra the following year. Bjarnason has continued to collaborate with Jóhannsson, conducting Iceland Symphony Orchestra on Jóhannsson’s latest Deutsche Grammophon album release.

A recipient of numerous accolades, in 2018 he was awarded the Optimism prize by the President of Iceland, won the 8^th Harpa Nordic Film Composers Award for the feature film Under the Tree, and was nominated for the Nordic Council Music Prize. He also won Composer of the Year, Best Composer/Best Composition and Best Performer at the Icelandic Music Awards in recent years.

Bjarnason studied piano, composition and conducting in Reykjavík and pursued further studies in orchestral conducting at Hochschule für Musik Freiburg. He released several albums for the label Bedroom Community.

Sibelius: 5. Sinfonie ∙ hr-Sinfonieorchester © hr-Sinfonieorchester – Frankfurt Radio Symphony

Daníel Bjarnason: Violin Concerto © Iceland Symphony Orchestra

The Fanfare Project - BJARNSON: Same Yet Different © CSOvideo

Iceland Symphony live at Harpa Hall © Iceland Symphony Orchestra

Ludwig van Beethoven: Symphony no. 9 (Ode to Joy) © Iceland Symphony Orchestra

Anna Þorvaldsdóttir: Metacosmos © Iceland Symphony Orchestra

Daniel Bjarnason: Emergence / André de Ridder © Toronto Symphony Orchestra

Daniel Bjarnason: Violin Concerto - Pekka Kuusisto, John Storgårds © Detroit Symphony Orchestra

Daniel Bjarnason: Pekka Kuusisto on Daníel Bjarnason's New Violin Concerto © Philharmonia Orchestra

Bjarnason: Brødre videoteaser © Musikhuset aarhus, Den Jyske Opera

Interview with Daníel Bjarnason, composer & conductor of BROTHERS – Icelandic Opera © OperaVision

Daniel Bjarnason: BEYOND © Los Angeles Percussion Quartet

Daníel Bjarnason: Bjarnason Collider © Iceland Symphony Orchestra

Daníel Bjarnason: Debussy - La Mer © Iceland Symphony Orchestra

Daníel Bjarnason: Debussy - Prélude á l’après-midi d’un faune / Ligeti - Lontano © Iceland Symphony Orchestra

Daniel Bjarnason: Conductor © Iceland Symphony Orchestra

“Three composers return from previous volumes – including the brilliant series conductor, Daníel Bjarnason. His 2017 Violin Concerto opens the album with a spectacular performance by soloist Pekka Kuusisto. Intensely virtuosic, the violin is nonetheless always part of a greater whole: from folky, whistled tunes to roaring and growling on the detuned bottom string, storms of colour are unleashed for the orchestra to absorb and rework in surging textures.”

(BBC Music Magazine, March 2021)

“Bjarnason is an eloquent conductor with a bent, you might say, for [composer Bent] Sorensen’s sensitivity. It would be hard to imagine a performance as lovely of a 6‑year-old piece that seems destined for far wider exposure.”

(LA Times, February 2020)

“The most satisfying work on the program, for its tonal dimensionality and individual instrumental expression was Bjarnason’s Five Possibilities, in a superbly crafted and nuanced performance. From fast and fuzzy to spacious and luxurious, it’s a hare and hound race that eventually settles on its signature key. The composer also has the good sense to leave its audience wanting more rather than less. (…) More than half the audience had left Disney Hall by the time [the performers] took the stage. It was their loss. Qui Tollis by Bjarnason proved to be a panoramic tour de force.”

(San Francisco Classical Voice, February 2020)

“[Re.Concurrence] No praise can be too high for the outstanding musicianship of all involved in this priceless album which may well end up being my disc of the year.”

(Richard Hanlon, MusicWeb International, February 2020)

“The star performers, however, are the Iceland Symphony Orchestra, well directed by Daniel Bjarnason, whose understanding of the various styles, the underlying expressivity and sheer virtuosity of interpretation are wholly involving.”

(Re.Concurrence, Gramophone, March 2020)

“Concurrence [CD] reminds us of Daniel Bjarnason’s consummate skill as a conductor. In his capable hands, the Icelandic Symphony Orchestra triggers its own tectonic shift. This album is where to turn to hear tomorrow’s music today.”

(A Closer Listen, November 2019)

“[Re. Processions] In short, masterful.”

(Arbetarbladet, March 2019)

“The Icelanders in Gävle Concert Hall lived up to the high expectations. (…) [Re. Processions] A modern masterpiece, performed with all the required feeling and sharpness. It’s just surrendering.”

(Gefle Dagblad, March 2019)

“Collider is one of the best orchestral albums of the year, by one of the world’s finest composers.”

(acloserlisten, October 2018)

“Daníel Bjarnason (…) scored a hit with his first opera, Brothers. Unlike many first operas, this modern-day version of the return of Ulysses, based on the film Brothers by Susanne Bier, is a genuinely gripping theatrical and musical experience, and it deserves a wider staging. Bjarnason’s score is remarkable in its invention and sophistication, blending influences from Tippett to Arvo Pärt, as well as the cadences of Icelandic folk music and the staccato beats of a Reykjavik club night.”

(Opera Magazine, September 2018)

“[Processions] is a thoroughly satisfying concerto bristling with virtuoso passages for the soloist (…) as well as some very imaginative orchestration. It was elegantly conducted by Bjarnason and smartly interpreted by Olafsson. (…) It would be wonderful if the Toronto Symphony Orchestra invited back both Bjarnason and Olafsson to show off more of their considerable talents.”

(The Star, March 2018)

“…expect to hear much more of Bjarnason’s music over the years ahead.”

(Gramophone)

“…coming eerily close to defining classical music’s undefinable brave new world.”

(Time Out New York)

“[H]is colorful, restless score drew me in, with its passages of overlapping cyclic riffs, slowly heaving instrumental expanses and episodes of darting fragments, like some mystical dance.”

(New York Times)

“With fierce intelligence confirmed, Bjarnason now seems primed for a romp through the rest of the 21^st century.”

(A Closer Listen)

“The program opened with Mr. Bjarnason’s “Bow to String,” a 2009 work originally written for solo cello with multilayered electronic elements. The version played here, by members of the Philharmonic with a few guest artists, is for solo cello and nine instrumentalists. The first movement is pulsing, thick and frenetic, with aggressive, Bartok-like chords, given extra punch by a thumping piano. The second movement is like a fractured, jittery dance, at once cosmic and sensual. In the slow, subdued final movement, the elegiac solo cello is comforted by hazy, plush, pungent chords.”

(New York Times)