Anna Thorvaldsdottir: þann heilaga kross // DR Pigekoret (LIVE)
Composed in 2009 on an old Icelandic hymn attributed to Martin Hegelund, «Þann heilaga kross» brings together many of the traits that define Anna Thorvaldsdottir's language. The text evokes the sacrifice of Christ, his wounds, the price of redemption, yet the composer renounces any triumphant or consoling tone. From the opening bars, the voices seem to rise out of a dark sonic matter, working their way through fragile consonances and sustained dissonances, with a gravity that is also a kind of inward stillness.
The work is built from held notes and suspensions, from dense harmonic clusters out of which brief melodic glints emerge. Critics have noted the way Thorvaldsdottir joins the solemnity of early sacred music to a contemporary sensibility. The voices approach moments of repose slowly, but stability never quite arrives: each chord holds an inner tension, as if the pain of the text remained lodged within the harmony itself. The crucifixion does not appear in grand dramatic gestures. It is there in the restrained pressure, in the shared breaths, in transformations that are barely perceptible.
In the DR Pigekoret's account, conducted by Charlotte Rowan, the transparency of the young voices stands in contrast to the images of suffering and death. The precision of the entries, the clarity of tone, the balance between the lines let you hear how the texture opens and closes without haste. The closing «Amen» offers no wholly reassuring resolution either: it lingers and hangs suspended, like a prayer that goes on beyond the silence. In this way, «Þann heilaga kross» turns an old hymn into a meditation on faith, sacrifice and human frailty.
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