BBC Symphony Orchestra & Chorus 2025-26 Barbican Season Total Immersion: Icelandic Chill - Chamber and Choral Icelandic Treasures

The music of Iceland is rooted in landscape and community - an environment where even a handful of instrumentalists or singers can speak with elemental force. Sofi Jeannin conducts the BBC Singers in a selection of short 20th and 21st century Icelandic choral works: timeless harmonies, both sacred and secular.

Around these vocal miniatures, the superb young artists of the Guildhall School of Music and Drama perform chamber music by Icelandic composers. “There's a very small population in Iceland, and people tend to do everything” says composer Anna Thorvaldsdottir, whose Sequences and Transitions form the heart of this afternoon’s concert. This is music with a deeply human soul – finding beauty in isolation, and glowing with emotion in the long Northern nights.