Hildur Guðnadóttir’s This Will Be Us: Eight Orchestral Reworks and Two New Pieces

The album arrived on the anniversary year of Mount A

Hildur Guðnadóttir’s This Will Be Us was released on October 23, 2026, by Deutsche Grammophon. The date lands twenty years after her debut album Mount A, first released in September 2006. The new record uses that anniversary as a reason to revisit the early catalogue, but it is not simply a reissue or a compilation of the original recordings: eight earlier pieces have been newly arranged for orchestra, joined by two new compositions.

That distinction is the album’s clearest starting point. Mount A was an intimate, largely solo project; This Will Be Us brings the music into a performance with the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, conductor Robert Ames and Guðnadóttir on solo cello. The release therefore looks backward in repertoire while changing the scale and credits of the recording. Deutsche Grammophon lists digital, CD and vinyl editions, while Apple Music Classical identifies the streaming album as ten tracks with a total running time of 43 minutes.

Mount A began as a solo recording under another name

The anniversary has a specific backstory. In a FluxFM interview published on October 22, Guðnadóttir recalled that she recorded Mount A by herself on cello and released it under the pseudonym Lost in Hildurness. The interview says she wanted room to hear her own thoughts, and that her friend Skúli Sverrisson encouraged her to let other people hear the work. This history makes the orchestral version more than a change in instrumentation: it revisits music first made in deliberate solitude.

The three albums represented on the new record span different stages. Mount A arrived in 2006; Without Sinking followed in 2009; Saman came in 2014. Deutsche Grammophon notes that Guðnadóttir’s later recordings involved collaborators including Sverrisson, composer Jóhann Jóhannsson and her father, Guðni Franzson. The catalogue sequence gives a listener a way to locate the source pieces without implying that the 2026 arrangements reproduce the original sessions.

Apple Music Classical’s note says Guðnadóttir performed on cello, gamba, piano, zither, vibraphone and other instruments on the 2006 debut. That makes the contrast more precise: Mount A was a solo recording, but not a one-instrument record. The 2026 anniversary project changes the scale by placing eight earlier compositions in orchestral versions, with Guðnadóttir returning on solo cello.

Eight older pieces and two new works make up the ten-track set

The track map is unusually clear. “In Gray” is the Mount A selection. Five pieces come from Without Sinking: “Ascent,” “Erupting Light,” “Opaque,” “Overcast” and “Unveiled.” Two come from Saman: “Bær” and “Birting.” These eight pieces are presented as orchestral versions. Apple Music Classical’s listing supplies a useful check on the full set and credits Guðnadóttir, the Berlin orchestra and Ames on the relevant tracks.

The remaining two titles are new compositions: “Blind Sarabande” and “The Song That Never Was.” Deutsche Grammophon’s announcement says the album combines those works with the eight reimagined pieces; Apple’s page lists all ten and gives their individual durations. Together they run for 43 minutes, with the catalogue listing “Birting” at 2:58 and “Unveiled” at 8:40. That range gives the track list a practical scale: this is a compact album rather than an extended multi-part suite. For someone returning to the earlier records, most of the program is familiar material in a new orchestral form, while two tracks were written for this release.

The anniversary belongs to Mount A, but the selected repertoire extends through Saman in 2014. That eight-year span brings compositions from different stages of Guðnadóttir’s solo catalogue into the same ensemble setting. Listeners comparing the original recordings with these arrangements can follow the named source albums without treating all eight older works as pieces from the debut.

The published sequence interleaves the source albums rather than presenting three chronological blocks. It opens with “Overcast,” “Birting,” “Bær,” “Opaque” and “In Gray”; the two new works occupy tracks six and seven, followed by “Ascent,” “Erupting Light” and “Unveiled.” That order gives listeners a concrete route through the material: familiar pieces from different periods meet before the final three orchestral versions close the track list.

The collaboration changes who is audible and who is credited

Guðnadóttir performs solo cello with the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, conducted by Robert Ames. Deutsche Grammophon credits her as producer and says long-time collaborator Francesco Donadello recorded, mixed and mastered the album. The result is a new ensemble recording rather than a set of untouched masters with an orchestra added as background. The label’s announcement explicitly describes the eight earlier tracks as orchestral versions, and Apple’s catalogue lists the orchestra and conductor alongside Guðnadóttir for the selections.

This team connects the album’s anniversary idea to its production. Guðnadóttir has said she once imagined herself as a one-person string orchestra and wanted to hear the music played by a larger group. In the new credits, that wish becomes a collaboration among the composer, a full symphony orchestra, a conductor and an engineer who has worked with her for years. The available source material supports that production history; it does not require a claim about how the finished album sounds to a listener.

The liner material puts friendship alongside the music

The release also credits people beyond the performers. Icelandic-Danish artist Ólafur Elíasson created the cover artwork, titled The purple sun for Hildur, and filmmaker Sarah Polley contributed liner notes. Deutsche Grammophon frames the album around memory, connection and the people who shape an artist’s work. FluxFM’s interview likewise discusses family and friends as part of Guðnadóttir’s decision to share music that began as a personal practice. Those are the label and interview’s stated themes, not a claim that every track has a single autobiographical meaning.

Deutsche Grammophon’s artist profile also identifies Guðnadóttir’s film and television work, including Chernobyl, Joker and Tár. She won an Academy Award for Joker and has received Grammy, Emmy and Golden Globe awards. Listeners who know those screen scores will find a different repertoire on This Will Be Us: the album returns to compositions from her three solo records and presents them with orchestral forces. It is not a soundtrack collection of those films and television productions.

The anniversary rollout extends beyond the new album

This Will Be Us is part of a wider twentieth-anniversary release plan. Deutsche Grammophon says it reissued Mount A, Without Sinking and Saman on vinyl on July 3, 2026; the debut received its first LP release in that campaign. The label also scheduled a launch event with Guðnadóttir at Berlin Philharmonie for October 25, two days after the album date. As of October 24, that event is upcoming, so the published notice confirms a plan rather than an outcome.

For listeners choosing a format, Deutsche Grammophon lists digital, CD and LP editions, and Apple Music Classical shows the ten-track digital listing and 43-minute total. The earlier vinyl reissues provide one route into the source albums; the new recording offers the orchestral versions and two new pieces in one place. That makes the release easy to understand without treating it as a greatest-hits package or assuming that the anniversary event has already taken place.