Reykjavík Grapevine - 01.06.2018, Blaðsíða 24

24 The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 09 — 2018
“There’s a ritual
to the process
of going to a
concert and
sitting silently.”
The operatic
umbilical cord
Opera is one of the few—perhaps the
only—genre that’s difficult for those
not acquainted with it to separate from
its history. They see the word ‘opera’
and immediately conjure up images
of women in horned hats, even though
modern opera is as far away from that
as modern plays are from Oscar Wilde.
Video games aren’t constantly talked
about in relation to Pong, nor paint-
ings to Caravaggio. For modern oper-
atic composers, this situation is, at
best, nonsensical.
“If you’re writing a novel today,
you’re not constantly thinking about
‘Anna Karenina’,” says Daníel. “If you’re
writing something for an orchestra,
you’re not worrying about Brahms
fourth symphony. You don’t go there.
In the same way, I don’t even think
about my opera in the same world as
‘La Traviata’.”
However, he does acknowledge
that it’s difficult for those unfamil-
iar with the art form to view it as a
contemporary form, and even harder
for old works to be experienced in new
contexts. “Opera is different,” he says.
“You can take Shakespeare and make it
modern, but you take Verdi or Puccini
and you always have that historical
umbilical cord that it’s hard to get away
from.”
Despite its difficulties, Daníel does
harbour a deep and abiding love for
that umbilical cord. “Of course, there
can be some stuffiness and perhaps it
can seem a little bit old-fashioned, but I
kind of like that old-fashionedness,” he
smiles. “I don’t think it’s all bad. There’s
a ritual about the process of going to a
concert and sitting silently. It’s one
of the few places you can go and just
listen. Most other concerts are loud
and people are talking and drinking.”
He pauses as if trying to find the right
words. “The act of focused listening
can be pretty amazing.”
A ghostly return
Modern opera is exactly that—modern.
And just as other art forms rearrange
to reflect our changing world, so has
opera. From the savage and furious
works of George Benjamin to Marc-
Anthony Turnage’s recent production
about the life of Anna-Nicole Smith,
modern opera has stayed thematically
relevant and relatable. And while opera
has always been centred around human
emotion, modern opera has turned
that into an exploration of ambiguity
and emotional complexity.
‘Brothers’ is born from this world,
but also pushes the psychological
limits of it further, bursting the dam
on the difficult discussion surround-
ing trauma and PTSD. The story
explores two brothers and their expe-
riences during and after combat in
Afghanistan. One brother, Michael, is
a prisoner of war presumed dead by
his family. In captivity, he’s tortured
and forced to kill another captive. The
other brother, Jannik, is a lost cause
vagabond fresh out of prison who vows
to take care of his brother’s wife and
children in his stead. When Michael
returns home alive, both have to recon-
cile with the choices they made during
the soldier’s absence and the conse-
quences of them.
“What drew me to ‘Brothers’ was
that it’s such a universal story,” says
Daníel. “There’s something timeless
about its core. It’s rooted in mythology,
you know, the return of the soldiers,
like ‘The Odyssey’—this person who
comes back after being lost and can’t
get back into his old life. He finds
that his world has moved on and he’s
become somewhat of a ghost.” Daníel’s
perpetual calmness makes this inter-
pretation eerie at points, but his voice
is overlaid at all times by a sense of
pure empathy. It’s clear he feels deeply
troubled by but at the same time inti-
mately connected to each character,
despite their fundamental flaws.
Apotheosis of
aggression
The opera takes nothing but the skel-
eton of the story from the film. All
the text is original, the chronology
changed, and the concept adapted to
fit the medium of opera. This primar-
ily means that, as an opera, ‘Brothers’
uses a male and female chorus—more
or less in the Greek sense of the word—
to comment on and push the drama.
Their text, written by librettist
Kerstin Perski, is bleak. For instance,
the female chorus starts off the show
with a question: “Man goes to war in a
faraway place/To fight for a cause soon
forgotten/To protect someone from
someone else/But who will protect
Man from himself?” The men answer:
“Protect yourself with forgetfulness./
For those who have seen/and those
who have yet to see,/both the past and
the future lie ahead.” It’s an ominous
prelude that nimbly sets the stage
for the stark honesty of the show. In
‘Brothers’, the abstract horrors of war
will be shown as they are.
But it is Daníel’s musical interpreta-
tion that deftly wrenches the already
troubling story to fervorous heights.
It’s unnerving throughout, managing
to walk the line between hair-rais-
ing beauty and outright discomfort.
Aggressive, tense, explosive, it brings
to mind works like Gentileschi’s ‘Judith
Slaying Holofernes’—difficult to expe-
rience, but impossible to walk away
from.
“This story is very dark,” Daníel
says. “It goes to some dark places and
it never really lets you go. There’s not a
lot of relief in it.” He pauses. “Opera is a
weird art form, of course, but it can do
something no other art form can. And
in some weird way, it suits me. There’s
something about it that feels natural.”
No labels needed
That sentiment could be used for many
genres in relation to Daníel. Though
he’s primarily a classical composer
and conductor, Daníel’s career has
broken free of all classifications. Along
with his works for classical settings,
which include pieces for orchestras,
solo ensembles, choruses, dance, and
more, he’s also released albums on the
iconic avant-garde Icelandic record
label Bedroom Community and scored
films—most recently, ‘Under The Tree’,
for which he won the Harpa Award
earlier this year. Daníel’s acclaimed
collaboration with noise musician
Ben Frost on the album ‘Sólaris’, and
the live performances that followed,
included visual manipulations by Brian
Eno and Nick Robertson.
He has been notably celebrated for his
unique approach in recording classi-
cal music in a studio setting. Time Out
New York declared that on his debut
effort ‘Processions’, Daníel, creates “a
sound that comes eerily close to defin-
ing classical music’s undefinable brave
new world.”
He laughs when the quote is brought
up, perhaps in modesty. “Jesus, I have
no idea. I guess if I could tell you
exactly what that brave new world is,
it wouldn’t be very brave or new,” he
says. “It would be defined and we would
already be moving on.” It’s clear the
unabashed flattery of the review took
him off guard.
But then he shrugs. “I suppose what
the writer meant was that there was a
different mindset on that album, that I
approached it more as studio producer
rather than a composer, but maybe
that there was also a mindset of being
at home in various styles.” He raises
his eyebrows, clearly uncomfortable
complimenting himself so audaciously.
But his assessment is correct. The
album, though a genre-bending ride
on the cusp of electronic and cham-
ber music, feels completely natural.
There’s nothing forced about it. He was
at home.
Ticking the boxes
When asked if there’s a genre he hasn’t
yet been involved with but wants to,
Daníel doesn’t miss a beat. “Country,”
he states, completely deadpan. He lets
the word sink in with complete seri-
ousness as if forcing the listener to
imagine his sound meshing with the
It’s interesting, then, how incongru-
ous his music is with his personality.
Stormy, dramatic, and emotionally
demanding, Daníel’s compositions
are the kind you have to sit down and
breathe after. He’s one of Iceland’s
rising musical stars, and for good
reason. Once you hear his work, you’ll
never forget him.
The natural
composer
Daníel started taking piano lessons
aged six, but quit only years later
in favour of sports. As a teenager,
his interest in music reignited and
he began composing. “The idea of
composing just interested me,” Daníel
says, sitting in a corner nook of Harpa’s
backstage area. Behind him, the sun
gleams on the harbour. “I found that it
suited me, and I had some talent for it.
Piano was much harder because I had
stopped when I was young, so I wasn’t
any kind of musical wunderkind there.”
He raises his eyebrows and laughs.
It’s unexpectedly tonal, especially for
someone who just described them-
selves as not innately musical. He
takes a sip of coffee and then quickly
cuts in. “I mean I can play piano,” he
says, making eye contact as if just to
confirm. “But composing played to my
strengths. It just felt natural.”
In those formative years, he was
quickly drawn to the darker side of
the Romantic period. “Mussorgsky’s
‘Pictures At An Exhibition’ really fasci-
nated me. I also remember listening to
a lot of Shostakovish,” Daníel says. “I
think that’s a really good age to get into
Shostakovish, as a teenager.” For refer-
ence, the Russian composer is known
for his dramatic, broody, and tonally
subversive works. It’s more or less the
classical music equivalent of getting
heavily into Sartre.
In the intervening decades, the
composer and conductor has gone
global, working with symphonies all
over the world. He’s made a name for
himself with his characteristically
tempestuous and emotive style, as
well as his tendency to take on wildly
disparate projects. In recent years, he’s
done everything from releasing clas-
sical electronic albums to debuting
works with the Los Angeles Philhar-
monic. If there’s one word you can use
to describe Daníel, it’s unexpected. He’s
a natural shapeshifter.
Last year, he presented his first
operatic effort, ‘Brothers’, in Copen-
hagen. The show is based on Susanne
Bier’s 2004 film of the same name. The
opera received massive acclaim, and
in honour of this years Reykjavík Arts
Festival, the composer presents its
heavily anticipated Icelandic debut.
“In ‘Brothers’,
the abstract
horrors of war
will be shown
as they are.”