Guy Dammann

The sound of Iceland

With the opening of the country's first concert hall, the monumental music of Jon Leifs is coming back to life

The lur is a horn, modelled in bronze after a number of 3,000-year-old instruments discovered at various archaeological sites across Scandinavia. Its unrefined yet distinctive sound — penetrating, direct and rough-edged — seems to rise up through the body rather than enter through the ears, like the stirring of a long-forgotten memory.

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