The ongoing collaboration between Spitfire Audio and BAFTA-winning Icelandic composer Ólafur Arnalds has so far yielded two libraries of haunting and evocative textures — the string quartet-based Ólafur Arnalds Evolutions and Ólafur Arnalds Composer Toolkit, which centres around a devastatingly beautiful felted grand piano. For this latest collection, Ólafur Arnalds Chamber Evolutions, Arnalds and Spitfire have chosen a 16-piece chamber string ensemble.
Recorded at AIR Studios’ legendary Lyndhurst Hall and conducted by Viktor Orri Árnason, the ensemble consists of four first violins, three second violins, three violas, three cellos and three double basses. The library features a range of “fragile yet warm, beautifully evolving phrases”, which sounds thoroughly in keeping with Arnalds’ Nordic minimalist aesthetic. Using Spitfire’s now well-established Evo Grid interface to combine these extra-long evolving articulations, the library promises to make it easy to create sophisticated, moving textures from a simple series of notes. Ólafur Arnalds Chamber Evolutions also introduces a brand-new feature called Waves. Here, notes follow a wave-like dynamic arc, appearing from nothing, rising to a swell then dying away again. The library is available now, priced £249$299.
