Atli Heimir Sveinsson (1938–2019) studied piano at the Reykjavík School of Music, and composition, conducting and piano at the State Academy in Cologne, with teachers including Günter Raphael, Rodolf Petzold, and Bernd Alois Zimmermann. He also studied with Karlheinz Stockhausen, and in the Netherlands he studied electronic music with Gottfried Michael Koenig. Sveinsson’s catalogue includes nine solo concertos, numerous orchestral, chamber and solo works, an orchestral song cycle to Steinn Steinarr’s poem Time and Water; and several operas, including The Silk Drum (1981). In 1976 he became the first Icelandic composer to receive the Nordic Council Music Prize, for his Concerto for Flute and Orchestra, a key work of Icelandic modernism in the 1970s.