Attend the tale of Beinta Broberg. So dark an aura gathered around this unfortunate seventeenth-century soul that she became known on her native Faroe Islands as ‘Wicked Beinta’. Composed by Anna Katrin Øssursdóttir Egilstrøð and Allan Gravgaard Madsen, the symphonic song cycle’s introspective, veiled songs are couched within a mostly passive-aggressive orchestral landscape: not a roaring and surging ensemble but a brittle, desolate and minutely changeable one.

The 17th-century Faroese tale of ‘Wicked Beinta’, is shrouded in a dark aura. According to folklore, she married three priests, who all either died under unclear circumstances or lost their mind.

‘I think that society reacted to her rebellious spirit by trying to stain her reputation, by casting her out and portraying her as a kind of fallen woman’, says Faroese singer and electronic composer Anna Katrin Øssursdóttir Egilstrøð.

Egilstrøð and her composer colleague and friend Allan Gravgaard Madsen had wanted to collaborate for some time, and in Beinta they found their subject. The score is produced in a common musical language by the two composers with different artistic background.

Egilstrøð’s extraordinarily expressive voice is the starting point for the song cycle scored for orchestra and amplified voice. The songs have folk-like melodies and are couched in the brittle, desolate and changeable orchestral landscape.

The dramatic context of the work is provided by the nature of the Faroese Islands, with its timelessness, icy winds, endless sea, cliffs and mountains.