Jóhannsson: A Prayer to the Dynamo; plus suites from Sicario and The Theory of Everything (compiled and arranged by Jóhannsson)
Iceland Symphony Orchestra/Daníel Bjarnason
DG 486 4870 58:06 mins
Film music is led – and limited – by on-screen action; it’s curious, then, to see what composers do with the same material considered on its own merits. The two suites compiled from the scores to Sicario and The Theory of Everything by the late Jóhann Jóhannsson both significantly change the order of the original music. Moving the minimalistic piano-led piece that introduces Eddie Redmayne’s Stephen Hawking as he navigates 1960s Cambridge University from the beginning to the end gives the biopic’s suite a fitting finale finish. More interesting is A Prayer to the Dynamo, a four-movement orchestral piece that features sounds recorded at an Icelandic powerplant. The music whirrs creakily into life through extended notes, never fully forming a clearly defined shape (reminiscent of Jóhannsson’s 2015 Drone Mass). It shifts into a chorale-like expansion, enhanced by slow-moving brass and bell sounds from a prepared piano. Conductor Daníel Bjarnason and the brass section of the Iceland Symphony Orchestra achieve a Goldilocks balance; the horns, while prominent throughout, are never overpowering. Surprisingly, neither is the hydro-electric hum of Elliðaárstöð, the Reykjavik site whose sounds so fascinated Jóhannsson (although the plant has long been closed, the composer was permitted access to record during an equipment test). Bird-like winds (think Messiaen rather than Mozart) add to the overall sense of man versus nature. Or, in Jóhannsson’s case, man versus time – sadly the Icelandic composer died in 2018 before he could complete a planned film about the power station. Claire Jackson