The innovative and prolific Icelandic composer Jóhann Jóhannsson (1969-2018) would have turned fifty years old this year, on 19 September. Honouring him and his legacy, Deutsche Grammophon is set to release an outstanding new studio album featuring the world premiere recording of his piece 12 Conversations with Thilo Heinzmann.

Is the creative process fundamentally the same for the composer writing music as it is for the visual artist painting a picture? Jóhann Jóhannsson and the Berlin-based painter Thilo Heinzmann explored this profound question throughout a four-year dialogue. The musical result is a twelve-movement string quartet that considerably stands out among Jóhannsson’s multiple award-winning works.

Jóhannsson was “obsessed with the texture of sound”, regularly bending the barriers between classical and electronic music. With his eclectic style, he created hypnotically lyrical images of outstanding refinement. The delicacy and beauty of Jóhannsson’s puristic string quartet writing in 12 Conversations reveals what could be referred to as the essence of his sound.

After his sudden passing in February 2018, Jóhannsson’s long term musical collaborators of Echo Collective brought the score to life through their previous experience of performing his earlier work (Orphée), as well as through conversations with the composer himself about this extraordinary set of works.