Kjartan Sveinsson

Der Klang der Offenbarung des Göttlichen, which translates as The Explosive Sonics of Divinity, is the first solo work by Kjartan Sveinsson, formerly of Sigur Rós. It is the score of an opera in four parts that he created with the Icelandic artist Ragnar Kjartansson, inspired by Halldór Laxness's novel World Light. The piece premiered at the Volksbühne in Berlin in February 2014 and lasts about fifty minutes. No actor ever appears on stage: each movement is set to a different painted tableau, with scene changes and light weather effects passing through the set.

Sveinsson and Kjartansson have worked together since 2011, on the durational performance Take Me Here by the Dishwasher, on S.S. Hangover for a brass sextet on a sailing boat, and on the installation The Visitors. For the Berlin production Sveinsson wrote for the Deutsches Filmorchester Babelsberg and the Filmchor Berlin, here conducted by Davíð Þór Jónsson. The German text derives from Hubert Seelow's translation of Laxness. The recording was mixed and mastered by Birgir Jón Birgisson. It appeared on Bel-Air Glamour Records, the label Kjartansson runs with the artist Ingibjörg Sigurjónsdóttir and The Vinyl Factory.

Each of the four parts takes one side of the two discs. Teil I belongs to the orchestra alone: a single theme grows in thickness and volume, bar by bar, towards a restrained close. From Teil II onwards the choir joins the orchestra and carries most of the weight, with soprano, alto and tenor soloists and a solo cello emerging from the ensemble. The writing is slow, tonal and openly romantic, closer to a late nineteenth century tone poem than to the post-rock of Sveinsson's former band.

Kjartansson called it "a banally romantic opera inspired by Halldór Laxness's cunning texts about the longing for beauty". The staging played on German romantic theatre clichés, and the music is sincere enough to stand without them. Richard Allen of A Closer Listen wrote that "listening is like enjoying an overture that never ends", and the site placed it among its ten best modern composition records of 2016.

Two 10" black vinyl discs in a heavyweight custom-made gatefold sleeve with artwork by Ragnar Kjartansson, with a download card.