This is the third outing on CD of the orchestral prelude Geysir (1961) by Jon Leifs, and the second played by the Iceland SO, who recorded it under Paul Zukofsky’s direction on the disc that did much to initiate the Leifs revival in Iceland (ITM6-04; available through Wings of Whyteleafe); Esa-Pekka Salonen also included it in his “Nordic Festival” with the Swedish RSO for Sony Classical (11/91 – nla). It is a typical product of Leifs’s mature style: rough-hewn, granitic in sound, purged of everything inessential. Salonen’s remains the most fluent account, though at the expense of the dark, brooding quality of the opening and closing sections. Vanska is two-and-a-half minutes slower (one minute more than Zukofsky) overall but accentuates the eruptive central section more tellingly.
The Trois peintures abstraites (1955) were also included on Zukofsky’s ground-breaking disc. Vanska secures tighter ensemble than his predecessor as well as a better focused performance, though the American has perhaps the edge in the tiny central scherzo, “Vixlspor” (“Zigzag”). There is much less to choose between Vanska and Petri Sakari, again with the Iceland SO, in the Galdra-Loftur Overture (1927), though here it is Vanska who is the faster; what he loses in mystery he gains in tautness, whereas his rival on Chandos, for all his poetic feeling, lacks impetus in places.
The Galdra-Loftur Overture shows that Leifs (1899-1968), not yet 30 at the time, had moved a good way towards his recognizable manner, especially when compared with the Trilogia piccola, composed in a somewhat polyglot fashion between 1919 and 1924. Here, as in the Icelandic Folk Dances of 1929 (orchestrated with Leopold Weninger in 1931), Leifs speaks with a more cosmopolitan accent (he was then working in Germany), whereas the later uncompromising pieces date from after his return home in 1945. Both works, and the elegiac Consolation for strings (1968; his last piece), are easier to handle than the bulk of his output though no less atmospheric. This disc is to my mind the best general introduction to the composer that has yet appeared, and I warmly commend it to anyone even remotely interested in out-of-the-way repertoire.'