Quake by Páll Ragnar Pálsson

"Quake" by Icelandic composer Páll Ragnar Pálsson is a 15-minute cello concerto written for me in 2016 that has been gaining attention since its debut at the Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg, and in 2018, was selected as the most outstanding work at the International Rostrum of Composers.  A true feast for the ears and wonderfully moving, it is inspired by the following excerpt:

“For a thousand years, tension amassed in the lava, only to break apart in the blink of an eye during a great quake when the rock under my feet ruptured and fossils and silvery crystals broke through the surface, events long past entombed in age-old laws of minerals before unknown geysers erupted and everything that had been became something new—the landscape would never be the same. I stare into the abyss, into the chasm in my own life, and hear it shattering all around me.”    Auður Jónsdóttir “The Big Quake” 2015.

A co-commission with the NDR Symphony and the LA Phil, I have also performed it in Harpa, the gorgeous concert hall in Reykjavík with the Iceland Symphony and it was incredibly well received at each performance. Mark Swed from the LA Times wrote in his review:

“Quake,” is pretty much what its title suggests, the music of the ground not being steady under your feet. Nothing is settled, everything is in trills and tremolos and glissandi. The solo cello, excellently played by Saeunn Thorsteinsdóttir, creaks and moans. But the most effective musical quaking feels interior, evoking the quaking you feel in those first seconds when an earthquake begins, when you first sense the Earth may be moving but have no idea yet how much.