1B1 and Lars Anders Tomter release new album of Nordic works for viola and string orchestra

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Today, Simax Classics releases a new album featuring four major works for viola and strings, performed by Lars Anders Tomter and the string orchestra 1B1 under the direction of Jan Bjøranger. The release brings together music by Rolf Wallin, Hafliði Hallgrímsson, and Arvo Pärt, presenting the viola as an instrument with a singular voice: introspective, warm, and deeply human — a quality that has increasingly drawn contemporary composers to its sound.

Tomter reflects: “The composers are of different generations, but all vibrantly alive.
Over the past decades, I have commissioned and premiered numerous concert works for viola and orchestra — a challenge many composers have approached with both curiosity and some hesitation.
The fundamental character of the viola may be more inward than declamatory; it carries more of a Mona Lisa smile than theatrical gestures. This has made it a less frequently used solo instrument historically, yet perhaps all the more attractive to today’s composers — its possibilities do not feel exhausted.”

Two Major Viola Concertos

Rolf Wallin: Under City Skin

Medieval zoological textbooks make for strange reading. Mermaids and centaurs appear as naturally as lions and horses, and one might learn that “the blood of a male goat dissolves diamonds” or that “a dog crossing the shadow of a hyena loses its voice.”

In our modern age, we know better — or do we? Might we humans still be mythological at heart? Might the world we experience daily contain hidden layers of power, fear, longing, and ecstasy?

In Under City Skin, Wallin interweaves viola, strings, and urban soundscapes into a mythological journey through the modern sonic jungle, where town hall bells, a locomotive, a woman’s high heels, and a skidding Mercedes are transformed into strange mythic creatures.

Hafliði Hallgrímsson: Ombra

Where Wallin depicts the metropolis, Hallgrímsson opens another landscape: barren, mist-laden, and timeless. Ombramoves from dark, rough textures toward a more virtuosic and luminous expression — like a dream reaching toward clarity.

Hallgrímsson, himself a cellist and composer with a keen sensitivity to the physical resonance of string instruments, writes music in which the viola becomes both shadow and voice, solitude and song.

Two Shorter Works in New Arrangements

Rolf Wallin: Elegi

When Wallin’s sister Erna died at a young age in 1979, he composed Elegi for trumpet and organ, performing it himself at her funeral in Lom Stave Church. Since then, the work has been performed countless times around the world. Wallin has expressed how deeply moved he is by this — that Erna, in a sense, continues to be present among us.

Arvo Pärt: Fratres (arr. Tomter)

Fratres (“Brothers”) is among Pärt’s most renowned works and an early cornerstone of his tintinnabuli style. With its crystalline stillness and timeless pulse, the music creates a space between moment and eternity.

Tomter’s arrangement allows the viola to emerge as a vulnerable and searching solo voice.

A Nordic Release in the Sign of the Viola

The album brings together four works that, in different ways, connect what we know with what we can only sense: city and wilderness, grief and silence, the body and the beyond.

“It is a powerful experience to witness the unveiling of a work of art in real time,” says Lars Anders Tomter. “I hope listeners will find joy in this music, and that violists will take up these works and make them their own.”

The orchestra 1B1 has been a young and inspiring partner throughout the project, and the recording is produced by Sean Lewis.