Ahead of her Barbican performance in March, Hildur Guðnadóttir talks to Alan Pedder about returning to the stage after 10 years away and the music that's soundtracked her life.
Some people move through the world with a silent running commentary that annotates their every interaction, while others go about their days with an internal soundtrack, streaming and looping over and over.
Swells and modulations, harmonies and bars, fragmentary rhythms and words – the music “never really leaves,” says Icelandic cellist and composer Hildur Guðnadóttir.
Speaking to BEST FIT from her home in Berlin, where she’s lived for the past 20 years or so, she explains how her most recent album, Where to From, was formed from parts and wholes of music that revealed themselves to her almost unannounced.
Sometimes in the shower, sometimes in the middle of the night, sometimes while walking the dog; they just kept coming and staying, hanging out in her subconscious until she wrote them down. “Most musicians probably experience that in some shape or form,” she says. “Because it’s not just when you’re at your instrument that music is created. It’s a very present thing.”
Released last October, Where to From is Guðnadóttir’s first album of music since 2014’s Saman to come without a visual component attached. She has been composing for film and television since the early 2010s, but it was the double whammy of her work on HBO’s Chernobyl and the score for Todd Philipps’ Joker, both released in 2019, that really pushed her into the A list.
Wins at the Oscars, Golden Globes, BAFTAs, Emmys, and the Grammys followed, while her soundtrack for the Cate Blanchett-starring Tár, though excluded from the Oscars on a technicality, won her a second Best Score trophy at the Critics’ Choice Music Awards.
Most recently, she's ventured into horror with her score for 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple, and you can also hear her work on Maggie Gyllenhaal’s Frankenstein-inspired The Bride!, which premiered just yesterday in London.
It has, to say the least, been a very busy time, but the stage has a way of calling everybody back. When Guðnadóttir debuted Where to From live at Berlin’s Volksbühne last November, it was her first full live performance with cello in roughly a decade.
Gathering her friends, including two sopranos and three other string musicians, she says the Berlin shows fulfilled a wish she’d held since the very beginning of her solo career.
“Before, when I performed my solo work, I always played alone, supported by a computer, pedals, and electronics in order to realise the music,” she explains. “But I’d always dreamed of having singers and string players so the music could really breathe and be alive, and that dream finally came true, two decades after my first record, so it was a long time coming.”
"Music really is a time machine."
Her face lights up when she talks about doing it all over again in just a few weeks when Where to From arrives at The Barbican in London (“one of my favourite rooms to play in”) as the closing performance of the centre’s Ice & Fire concert season with Icelandic musicians.
She’ll be joined there by the same ensemble of friends for she what promises will be a “very intimate” experience of new and old music amplified by lighting designer Teresa Baumgartner’s “magical world” of mystery, smoke, and soft illumination.
Perhaps it’s the 20th anniversary of her solo debut Mount A, perhaps it’s the fact that her son is growing up fast, but lately Guðnadóttir has been more preoccupied than usual with time.
“It never ceases to fascinate me, how we perceive time through music and how music can manipulate time,” she says. And, on a more practical level, there just never seems to be enough time anymore.
As an analogue person in a terminally online world, she’s cautious about where the music world is heading. The increasing need for – and expectation of – speed over the past decade sits awkwardly at odds with the rigour required of classical musicians, and she’s trying to figure out how to deal with it in a way that doesn’t break her brain.
“If you play a classical instrument, it’s very unforgiving,” she says. “The cello is unforgiving, the voice is unforgiving. You have to practise or it disappears quickly, but it’s a slow process. Often you only see development over a long time.”
Still, as the rest of our conversation reveals, walking through the pieces she’s chosen for her Nine Songs, it’s the practice that remains the lifeblood of Guðnadóttir’s art. From her shaky beginnings on the cello as a willing but easily distracted student through to now, where an ideal life for her would be sitting alone in her music room bowing all day long, that’s the unified message that shines brightly through: to practise, practise, practise, and always be ready for when inspiration strikes.
“I was writing something new a few weeks ago and one piece just came to me all at once, with modulations and everything, which was really interesting,” she says, happily. “I love it when that happens because then somehow I am just as surprised as anyone else. I love the writing more when things are just spontaneous and exciting and fun, where I can just be like, ‘Oh, what’s going on here?’ That’s the dream, actually.”
“Flight of the Bumblebee” by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov
HILDUR GUÐNADÓTTIR: The first music I vividly remember hearing is “Flight of the Bumblebee”, played by my father on clarinet, when I was two years old. We were living in Amsterdam at the time, where my dad was studying, and I would often listen to my parents practising and warming up. It was a fairly everyday experience, and I remember he told me that this piece of music was about a bumblebee flying around and it felt so alive to me.
It was a real window into feeling like music could be alive as something more than just notes. I was so fascinated by it, and I remember asking him to play it for me again and again and again and again and again. My poor dad, it must have been exhausting, but I guess it was a good warm up for him anyway.
The realisation that something could become alive through music is something that has always stuck with me. Music is so much more than just the notes. There’s so much in the way that it’s performed and who is performing it, and also who is listening. That interaction is so rich. Music is such an amazing activator of feelings. Obviously I wasn’t actively thinking about it at two years old, but the memory is magical.
BEST FIT: Isn’t it funny how this piece has become almost like a competitive sport for who can play it the fastest? I think the current world record is held by a guy who played, like, 66 notes a second or something, which is wild.
[laughs] Wow. I’ve never been super interested in playing fast, as you can probably guess from my music. It’s normally very, very slow, because I love to hear all the different textures. I love the sound of the bow hair on the strings and the breath that comes with it. I’m always looking for the air in everything.
I think people’s personalities really shine through in the way that they play. For me, growing up around my dad’s chamber orchestra, every instrument was so coloured by the person playing it. It was completely intertwined. It’s similar to listening to Peter & The Wolf, where each instrument has its own character, and that’s exactly how I feel like I work on music with other people. It’s always been that the person playing is more important than which instrument they have.
How influential to you was hearing the cellist in your dad's chamber orchestra?
Well, she became my cello teacher, so she is probably one of the most influential cellists in my life. I was so inspired by her. She’s a magnificent performer, and she could be very matter-of-fact when it came to teaching.
It’s funny, because back then, although I loved the cello, I didn’t love spending hours by myself just practising. I had this theory back then that the less I practised the better I was, which is a really shit theory – and now playing by myself is all I really want to do.
Anyway, I remember one day we were talking about a piece that I was learning and she said to me, “Stop thinking about it. Just play,” and that’s probably the most influential thing anyone has ever said to me. To just get out of my head, and I think that’s what I’ve been trying to do ever since.
I love that this short song about a bumblebee has gone on to have such a big life. I love hearing it in cartoons and films where they are soundtracking something frantic. When you hear it in that context, does it reconnect you to that day with your father?
It really does, and I have a lot of fond memories of that. That’s also another thing that I think music does better than anything else. When you hear a piece of music it can instantly take you back to the first time you heard it and who you were with. It really is a time machine.
“Cello Suite No. 2: Sarabande” by Johann Sebastian Bach
BEST FIT: Why does this piece hold such a special place for you among all six cello suites?
HILDUR GUÐNADÓTTIR: I think the second suite is one that I’ve practised the most. It’s normally the book that’s open on my music stand, because I just love coming back to it.
Bach’s cello suites are such incredible music, and I think, for any cellist, they’ve really got all the fundamentals of playing. It’s like the essence of the instrument shines through these pieces. They are very technical, so practising them is a great way to wake up the fingers. And of course it’s very beautiful to hear too, but it has a kind of no-nonsense feeling to it. It’s pure music. It’s so gorgeous and so perfect, and so full of feeling and emotions, but it’s not overbearing emotionally. It’s not like Elgar's cello concerto, which is a more romantic piece that’s also been very influential to me, but it has just as much feeling to it, and I love that about Bach.
I’ve probably played the sarabande more than anything else for that reason. You know, I still have all the markings in the sheet music where I’ve taken notes from my teacher, like “Remember to bow more at this part” and “Remember to practise this bar in this way.”
Is there a moment in the piece that feels especially meaningful or transformative when you perform it?
It’s really just the whole thing. It’s hard to dissect for me. I don’t imagine I would be writing music in the way that I write do if it wasn’t for playing the Bach cello suites. I was probably 12 or 13 when I started, and these pieces have probably affected my playing and my musicality more than anything else.
“Dido’s Lament” by Henry Purcell
HILDUR GUÐNADÓTTIR: Since a very early age, Purcell’s “Dido’s Lament” has been engraved in my soul as one of the most beautiful pieces of music ever written. I don’t remember the first time I heard it, but my mother was an opera singer so I think it must have been hearing her rehearsing it when I was very young. That’s probably why I have such a strong connection to the piece that somehow goes beyond my conscious memory. Purcell’s music is just so, so glorious. When I hear this piece, I always get this feeling of being flooded with this unbelievable beauty.
BEST FIT: Did you sense the emotional weight of the song, even at such a young age?
Yeah, and I have always been quite drawn to music that bears a lot of weight – as you can probably guess from the unbearable weight of most of the tracks I’ve chosen for this list! I think, with a lot of music that carries all that weight, it’s sad but, in being so beautiful, it’s also quite pleasurable and happy. There’s something about that duality that really squeezes our capacity for feeling into a new emotional landscape. It’s like opening a gate to emotion, somehow.
“Elgar’s Cello Concerto” by Jacqueline du Pré
HILDUR GUÐNADÓTTIR: My mother had a ‘premonition’ that I would become a cellist, while she was pregnant with me, because she was listening to Jacqueline du Pré play the Elgar cello concerto on repeat. There’s actually a lot of listening to stuff on repeat in my family. We get really hooked on specific things for specific periods, and we’re also very dramatic. So, my mum was listening to this music, and she claims that she just knew that the child she was carrying would be called Hildur and that she would become a cellist.
I gravitated to a lot of different instruments when I was very young, but when it came to me choosing my own instrument she says that I just walked directly to the cello and that was that. But I get the feeling she might have nudged me slightly in that direction. But I actually had quite a funny relationship with the cello for a long time, because I was always doing so many different things in music when I was growing up. I was singing in choirs, singing in restaurants, playing in bands, and experimenting with electronics, as well as practising cello and playing in string ensembles and youth orchestras, and everything else that goes along with that.
Music, for me, was so many different things at once. It was the way that I socialised. It was the way that I was by myself. There were just so many ways of being through music, and that didn’t go super well with studying classical music where you’re asked to really focus on one instrument. You’re asked to do things properly, and in a very specific movements where there’s a right and a wrong way to play. I’ve always had a bit of a hard time with the idea that there’s a right and a wrong way to make music. I’ve always felt like it should be this free form of expression, so I did kind of struggle for a lot of my studying years.
Then, when I stopped studying the cello and started playing it for myself, just for the sheer joy of playing, that’s when I really started to appreciate all the years I’d put into learning the classical method. Having those techniques really allowed me the freedom that I'd always been searching for, so it’s a realisation that happened kind of backwards. Now, for example, if I could choose between being in a room by myself practising or going on stage and performing, I would probably choose practice. It’s the thing that I enjoy most in music today. Really, I would do nothing else if I could choose, but it was a long time coming that the cello actually felt like my calling and my best friend.
BEST FIT: It’s so interesting how the cello concerto sort of flopped when it was first premiered in the early 1900s, and now it has become iconic – almost a rite of passage for cellists. And of course, that revival is largely because of Jacqueline du Pré. What is it about Jacqueline’s vision of the piece that makes it so memorable, for you?
I think it goes back to what I was saying before about how someone’s personality is able to shine through their playing. When you hear Jacqueline playing it, the concerto feels like it was written just for her, like she’s so totally at one with the piece. I mean, if you think about the Elgar cello concerto I don’t think you can possibly not think of Jacqueline du Pré and her performance, because it feels like they are one and the same thing, and I think that’s so beautiful.
I think her way of playing was so amazing, especially at the time she recorded the Elgar concerto. She was so free and kind of unruly in a way. She was super imperfect in the way that she played it, but there’s so much raw emotion to it. It’s kind of punk in the way that it’s perfectly imperfect, and I think that's what makes it so incredible. I think imperfections are such a big part of performing live and the essence of communicating something.
Yeah, and I think it's going to become even more important as AI gets more advanced. The imperfections are going to be what counts. Going back to what you were saying about personality, let’s talk about the Yo-Yo Ma performance of Elgar’s cello concerto that you saw recently. Would you say that his version represents a different emotional side to the piece for you?
Yeah, and I think that, besides being an incredible musician, he’s also a really wonderful person. He’s so full of joy, which means he brings a very different energy to the concerto than Jacqueline did, and I think that joy is so needed in the world right now.
I feel what comes through in his way of playing is a kind of awe of the world that’s so contagious. When he came to Iceland to play with an orchestra, I had a piece performed at the same concert so I was able to sit in on the rehearsals. So there I was, sitting almost alone, in front of Yo-Yo Ma as he played this piece on his cello and I just cried and cried. It such a rare thing, the connection he had to the core and the essence of music, and it felt like he was playing just for me. It was really magic.
“Sofðu unga ástin mín”, a traditional Icelandic lullaby
HILDUR GUÐNADÓTTIR: This is one of the most famous Icelandic lullabies. It’s so, so beautiful, and, for me, it’s so connected to singing with my mum when we used to sing together at a Viking restaurant in my old hometown, Hafnafjörður, when I was little.
It’s funny, because it’s one of my favourite pieces of music ever, but it’s actually so heartbreaking. It’s essentially about a mother who has to kill her own child after they have been exiled to the highlands and living in a cave, so there’s something very dramatic about it. Something so elemental. I guess Icelandic people do gravitate towards this kind of dramatic music, maybe because we kind of grew up with everything being pretty pleasant and normal. But I remember I used to sing this lullaby to my son when he was young, and then when he finally managed to start speaking he was like, “Oh mum, please stop singing that incredibly sad music.”
BEST FIT: It sounds like a strange song to sing in a restaurant, maybe as everyone cries into their dessert.
[laughs] Yeah, and it was my first job. We’d go out dressed in full Viking costume and sort of hijack the tourists coming in from the airport, then take them to this cave where we would sing them these very sad Icelandic songs.
I might have been 9 or 10 when I started, I don’t remember, but it was quite a funny setting. And it wasn’t just for tourists. It was also for Icelandic people. I remember, during the high season around Christmas, I would do a solo performance where I’d walk out among the tables with a candle while singing.
It’s funny because there’s still this idea of a stereotypical ‘Icelandic sound’, where people’s expectation is that anyone writing music from Iceland is writing about the mountains and the ocean or whatever. But for most of my adult life I’ve lived in Berlin, where my landscape is… [gestures out of the window] just the next house.
So I learned at an early age that there are a lot of preconceived ideas about where music comes from, and I still see that in people who write about my music today. That I’m writing about the mountains, but I’m really not.
You’re writing about those freezing Berlin winters.
Exactly. So it feels, in some ways, like I'm still in my Viking costume somehow,
I think it’s also interesting how people talk about music like it ties into your gender. A common thing I’ve seen is people saying things like “Oh my god, I would have never thought a woman had written this.” I mean, what is music written by a woman supposed to sound like? What kind of music are women allowed to write? I find it interesting where these ideas come from.
Have you always felt a strong connection to your cultural roots, even though you lived abroad even as a child?
I do have really strong roots there, yeah. Iceland is still very much my home place, and I think that has to do with the people there, probably more than anything else. I think Icelanders are such a great group of people. It’s a very different society, as opposed to, for example, England, where there’s a very clearly defined class system that kind of colours everyone’s interactions with others.
I didn’t realise it, until the last few years really, how people’s postcodes and accents influence so much there, because we don’t have that in Iceland at all. There’s a handful of rich people, but not many. It’s such an informal place, we don’t even use last names. We always call everyone by their first name, otherwise you’re essentially just calling someone the child of their parents. So, I’m grateful that I grew up in that kind of environment, where class doesn’t really exist and people are just people.
“Papa Don’t Preach” by Madonna
HILDUR GUÐNADÓTTIR: From the age of about four to 14, I listened almost exclusively to Madonna on cassette, so I could name pretty much any track of hers from the first album up to Like a Prayer as highly influential on me. I randomly chose this one, for the sake of choosing.
BEST FIT: What do you think drew you to Madonna at such a young age, and kept you fascinated all the way through to your early teens?
There was an older girl, the daughter of my mum’s friend or something like that, and I thought she was really cool. She was really into to Madonna and she was like, “Oh my god Hildur, listen to this!”
Because I grew up mostly listening to the classical music that was played at home, there was something very exciting about Madonna. She just seemed so free and able to write about whatever she wanted. Obviously I only understood a fraction of what she was writing but, looking back, those were just really great songs.
On a subconscious level, for me, it was through listening so much to Madonna that made it seem like women were totally allowed to make music. It was only much later that I realised it wasn’t as common in those days as I thought. So, I’m really grateful that she happened to be the person that I listened to most and that I had this very strong role model of a woman who wrote songs. Obviously, I write very, very different music, but it was still a great introduction.
You say you chose it randomly, but what does “Papa Don’t Preach” represent to you?
I think it’s just that True Blue was my favourite tape of hers. I was obviously very young at the time, but listening to Madonna there was definitely a sense of going against the grain with your parents and being unafraid. That’s probably one of the only things that I truly understood from it – the fearlessness of going your own direction, and I love that.
What's the most rebellious thing you did as a teenager?
Oh, I was a very unrebellious teenager [laughs]. I was quite easygoing. Not a hard teenager to be around, I think. Luckily, my parents allowed me do whatever I was interested in, so I was always able to go my own way and just keep trotting on in that direction. I mean, mostly very slowly with everything I was doing… it took me two years to ride a bike, because even though I’d take my bike out every day I didn’t want to ride it. I would just go out walking with it. And then, after two years, I was like, “Okay, now I’m ready!”
“Electric Counterpoint” by Steve Reich
HILDUR GUÐNADÓTTIR: I often listen to a piece of music to get me going in the morning. I feel like it really sets the tone for the day. I think the longest period I had with one piece of morning music was with “Electric Counterpoint”, which I listened and danced to every morning for about a year, from 2005 to 2006.
I find that what you do in the morning, and what you listen to in those first moments, really does kind of determine what the day is going to be like. This morning I listened to much slower music, because I’m always wanting life to slow down a bit, but when I was younger I really loved getting a burst of energy from music like “Electric Counterpoint”. It’s such a fun piece, and I really love the transitions in it. I think those are my favourite parts, because it just feels so satisfying to go from being in one state for a while to being in another. It’s so energising, and a great way to wake up.
I think transitions are also what I like so much about a lot of minimalist music. They can be so exciting and rewarding when they happen. Having settled into a state that gives you enough time to really be with it, you can really appreciate the changes when they do happen.
BEST FIT: Why do think “Electric Counterpoint” lasted longer than other pieces you’ve used to kickstart your days?
I think it’s related to another thing that I love about music, which is that when you associate music with something specific, when there’s a feeling attached to it, hearing it again gives you faster access to that state. I mean, if you go to a Sigur Rós concert, you know that half of the audience probably fell in love to that music or gave birth to their child to that music. Everyone just gets very loved up.
When a piece of music is your happy place or your energetic place, your access to those feelings is so much faster. So, whenever I listen to “Electric Counterpoint” today, I just have this association of waking up and moving my body.
“Clap Hands” by Tom Waits
HILDUR GUÐNADÓTTIR: Last year, my favourite morning music was this song by Tom Waits, which has such a fun groove. I had about three months of beginning my days to this song, and I absolutely adore his music in general.
Tom Waits is one of those artists who has spoken a lot about how to write music, especially about the philosophy that a song will come when it comes, it will arrive when it wants to, even if you’re out driving and you have to pull over to write it down. And I really, really relate to that idea of having to be ready to receive it.
I also love his creativity, his spirit of creating. I think you can hear the joy of writing when you listen to his records. There are some artists where you can feel that so strongly, and he’s one of them. It’s like you can hear the creativity oozing out of him. It’s in the way he uses his voice in different and fun ways, in the way he arranges so beautifully, and in the way he uses the rhythm section in such amazing ways.
For me, “Clap Hands” is one of those Tom Waits tracks that gets you into such a fun groove and a great way to wake up. I was writing a lot during that period so it was great to start the day listening to someone who is so free, so receptive, so unafraid, and so groovy. I feel like, when you’ve been writing music for a long time, you have to have the faith and the courage to keep showing up at the writing desk, to not lose heart or lose interest in what you’re doing.
You never know how people are going to receive what you do. Sometimes lots of people get to hear what you’re doing, and sometimes no one cares at all, and I’ve gone through many waves and different kinds of receptions and amounts of ears listening. So I think it’s so beautiful to come back to artists who have just been so unafraid in their creative paths, and Tom Waits is definitely one of those people who give so much courage. There's so much soul in his music. So much soul and groove and heart.
“River Man” by Nick Drake
HILDUR GUÐNADÓTTIR: In terms of music that I listen to on a daily basis, I tend to listen to quite a lot of folk music, a lot of singer/songwriters, and Nick Drake’s “River Man” is one of the most glorious examples of that.
Because a lot of the music I write lives in a more classical and/or experimental world, it’s hard to listen to music that’s in the same sort of creative field and not to analyse things instead of trying to enjoy them for what they are. It’s kind of an occupational hazard in any field, I guess, and, for me, it’s harder to turn that analytical voice off when I listen to music that’s closer to what I’m doing.
I’m not a singer/songwriter and it’s not often that I write songs, so listening to folk music feels a lot more free, more open. I love songs and I love guitar, even though I don’t play it much myself. It’s not so rule based. To me, it feels like a pure expression of a wandering soul when I listen to someone like Nick Drake, or to other artists that I come back to often like Karen Dalton, Joni Mitchell, and Vashti Bunyan. All of them are such lovely songwriters.
I also think what's so beautiful about Nick Drake's records in particular is that the arrangements are so gorgeous. I love those arrangements, and I think “River Man” is just such a perfect singer/songwriter song.
BEST FIT: This song in particular does come up quite often in these Nine Songs pieces, because who doesn't love Nick Drake?
Yeah, how can you not? It’s just unbelievable to think he was so young when he was writing the songs. So young, so depressed, and having all these strong feelings for someone of his age. It’s such timeless music that it’s hard to not completely fall in love with it, and stay in love with it through the years. I was young when I first heard it, and listening to him now really does take me back to this place of pure, childish love for playing, and for these songs.
It's just very special music. Do you ever see a time where you might make a folk record yourself, maybe with a friend or two? Would that be a fun challenge?
Yeah, probably. I mean, I would definitely have to work with someone on the lyrics because I suck at lyrics, but I would love to. I’ve played in a lot of bands before, but to make a pure folk record? Yeah, if I was doing it with the right people. Maybe one day!
Hildur Guðnadóttir & Friends play Where to From at The Barbican on 21 March
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