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Contemporary Icelandic music recorded by accordion virtuoso

Still from Radioflakes (music video)

Contemporary Icelandic music recorded by accordion virtuoso

On 21 October, the first Dacapo Records release with a purely Icelandic repertoire will be released, that is the album Fikta recorded by accordionist Jónas Ásgeir Ásgeirsson.

New release
03 October 2022

In recent years, Iceland has produced several outstanding accordionists, including Jónas Ásgeir Ásgeirsson. This disc contains music by three generations of Icelandic composers, written between 1972 and 2020, including two works created especially for Ásgeirsson himself.

Between tradition and renewal

The new album Fikta includes innovative, expressive and fascinating world premiere recordings, which enrich the accordion repertoire and present the instrument in new contexts and soundscapes. On the album, we hear both solo works and ensemble works, of which two of them are written for Jónas Ásgeir Ásgeirsson: 

The title work Fikta is composed by Ásgeirsson's old school friend Friðrik Margrétar-Guðmundsson (b. 1993) who has become known primarily for his music for the theatre, dance, and visual media. Fikta is a solo work whose title refers to the Icelandic verb fikta which means to “toy with” and is also a nod to the medieval tradition of musica ficta.

Finnur Karlsson's Accordion Concerto is also written for Jónas Ásgeirsson and the Elja Chamber Orchestra, an ensemble made up of young Icelandic musicians. In the concerto, Karlsson employs melodies inspired by the accordion's folk music roots in mind and ingeniously quotes melodies from both an Icelandic pop song and a song from the classical children's play In the Forest of Huckybucky. The Accordion Concerto won the Icelandic Music Award for Composition of the Year in 2021.

Radioflakes

Atli Ingólfsson's Radioflakes for solo accordion is a highly demanding work, exploring the full potential of the accordion. At the very end of the work, the performer is instructed to improvise “very irregular morse-like patterns”. Ásgeirsson takes this literally, spelling out the work’s title, Radioflakes, in morse code.

Jónas Ásgeir Ásgeirsson has created a music video for Radioflakes in collaboration with the video artist Stephan Stephensen, which illustrates Ásgeirsson's contemporary take on the traditional instrument. The video will be released together with the album on 21 October.

Fikta is the first Dacapo Records release with a purely Icelandic repertoire and further presents works by two of Iceland’s leading composers in the last decades of the twentieth century, Atli Heimir Sveinsson and Þorkell Sigurbjörnsson, who both left an indelible mark on the musical scene.

Jónas Ásgeir Ásgeirsson

Jónas Ásgeir Ásgeirsson is an Icelandic classical accordionist based in Copenhagen. Ásgeirsson likes to work closely with composers to expand the accordion literature, especially in his native Iceland, and to show other artists the instrument’s potential. He has premiered pieces by numerous composers from the Nordic countries and further afield.

Besides being a virtuoso solist, Ásgeirsson is a founding member of several established ensembles, including KIMI ensemble, who released their first album Bittersweet with Dacapo Records in June. On Fikta, Ásgeirsson is joined by de two other members of KIMI, mezzo-soprano Þórgunnur Anna Örnólfsdóttir and percussionist Katerina Anagnostidou.

  • Finnur Karlsson, Atli Ingólfsson, Atli Heimir Sveinsson, Þorkell Sigurbjörnsson, Friðrik Margrétar-Guðmundsson

    Fikta