Anna Thorvaldsdottir’s Cello Concerto to Receive World Premiere

Cellist Johannes Moser will perform “Before we fall” with the San Francisco Symphony this week

The Icelandic composer Anna Thorvaldsdottir’s cello concerto “Before we fall” will have its world premiere performances on May 15, 16, and 17, 2025, featuring Johannes Moser as the soloist with the San Francisco Symphony (SFS) and conductor Dalia Stasevska. 

Written for Moser, the concerto was co-commissioned by the SFS, BBC Proms, Iceland Symphony Orchestra, Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra, and Odense Symphony Orchestra. Other works on the program will include Vaughan Williams’s Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis and Sibelius’s Fifth Symphony. 

Additionally, the concerto will receive its UK premiere on August 13 as part of the BBC Proms 2025 festival program. Here, Moser will appear with the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Eva Ollikainen at London’s Royal Albert Hall. 

“The core inspiration behind Before we fall centres around the notion of teetering on the edge, of balancing on the verge of a multitude of opposites,” writes Anna, who is also a cellist. “The musical structure flows between lyricism and a sense of distorted energy — two main forces that stabilise this entropic pull. Driven by the strong sense of lyricism that permeates the piece, the work also orbits a forward-moving energy that connects and balances the opposites in different ways. 

“The stable fundament — a grounding power of sustained harmonic presence — communicates with ethereal and distorted sounds, together providing the earth for the essence of the solo cello, the structure upon which it stands and within which it moves,” she adds. “The cello, both alone and deeply connected to the orchestral elements in its expression, generates the atmospheric progression of the world it inhabits, yet continuously on the verge of falling outside the reality it is building for itself.”

To attend the world premiere, click here. 

Thorvaldsdottir’s other large orchestral works include AERIALITY (2011), METACOSMOS (2017), AIŌN (2018), CATAMORPHOSIS (2020), and ARCHORA (2022), which are all recorded on the Sono Luminus label. This season, her music is being performed across at least 19 countries.

Other season highlights include continuing her two-year period as one of 10 CHANEL Next Prize winners, and serving as the Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich’s creative chair — a role previously held by the likes of Arvo Pärt and John Adams. 

Next season, she will begin her role as composer-in-residence with the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra. 

Thorvaldsdottir’s music has been performed and commissioned by the Berlin Philharmonic, New York Philharmonic, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Orchestre de Paris, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra, Munich Philharmonic, Ensemble Intercontemporain, Danish String Quartet, International Contemporary Ensemble, BBC Proms, and Carnegie Hall. Her work is published by Chester Music, a part of Wise Music Group.