“With fierce intelligence confirmed, Bjarnason now seems primed for a romp through the rest of the 21st century.”

- A Closer Listen

“The program opened with Mr. Bjarnason’s “Bow to String,” a 2009 work originally written for solo cello with multilayered electronic elements. The version played here, by members of the Philharmonic with a few guest artists, is for solo cello and nine instrumentalists. The first movement is pulsing, thick and frenetic, with aggressive, Bartok-like chords, given extra punch by a thumping piano. The second movement is like a fractured, jittery dance, at once cosmic and sensual. In the slow, subdued final movement, the elegiac solo cello is comforted by hazy, plush, pungent chords.”

- New York Times

“[H]is colorful, restless score drew me in, with its passages of overlapping cyclic riffs, slowly heaving instrumental expanses and episodes of darting fragments, like some mystical dance.”

- New York Times

“…coming eerily close to defining classical music’s undefinable brave new world.”

- Time Out New York

…expect to hear much more of Bjarnason’s music over the years ahead.

- Gramophone