Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

This new album by the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra and its chief conductor Nicholas Collon features some of the most recent orchestral compositions by Magnus Lindberg culminating with his new Viola Concerto, a substantial new work masterfully performed by Lawrence Power as soloist.

Composer Magnus Lindberg (b. 1958) is one of Europe's leading names in contemporary music. Having traveled a long road as a composer, from the steely and edgy modernism of his early period to the soft and sonorous sound worlds of his most recent output, Lindberg's new, more emollient sound world building on a harmonic environment rooted in pentatonic scales at times seem to hark back even to Debussy and Impressionism.

Classical Music

Magnus Lindberg is one of Finland' most important living composers. The differences between his piano works from the late 1970s and early 1980s and those composed in the early years of the 21st century, following a break of 12 years, can seem quite s.

Includes work(s) by various composers. Soloist: Jakob Lindberg.

This special box contains all four of Ralph van Raat's Naxos recordings plus an exclusive interview CD which includes music selected by Ralph specifically for this boxed set. Also on this bonus CD, Ralph speaks about his musical choices for the set, as well as his own playing in an exclusive interview with Naxos Classical Music Spotlight's very own Raymond Bisha. Featured composers include: Tavener, Adams, Rzewski, Lindberg, Takemitsu, Ives, Bolcom, Messiaen, and more. 1. Adams, J.: Piano Music (Complete) 2. Rzewski, F.: People United will never be Defeated (The) (Van Raat) 3. Tavener: Piano Works 4. Lindberg, M.: Piano Music (Van Raat) - Klavierstuck / Play I / Jubilees / Twine / Etudes 5. Artist Profile Series - Van Raat, Ralph

First, a confession: I have always found Magnus Lindberg a hard nut to crack. His music is full of incident, he has a fastidious ear for sonority, and as composers go he is a virtuoso; but there is an aggressive edge to his work?as there is also with Birtwistle?which can sometimes make for a harsh, grating result. Lindberg?s music is dense and uncompromising: never dull? it?s far too clever for that?but rarely light-hearted or delicate either. His Clarinet Concerto of 2002 is a good example of the pros and cons of his work. Written for the amazing musician Kari Krikku, with whom he has often collaborated, it covers as wide a range of instrumental techniques as you (or Lindberg) could possibly imagine. The Concerto begins with a limpid Debussy-like figure from the soloist, who is soon joined by glistening strings and rhapsodic orchestral woodwinds; no doubt about it, the opening is gorgeous. Before too long, however, the ear tires (well, mine does) of the soloist?s rapid scales, piercing stratospheric tones, extreme register jumps, and split-reed growls. It is the contemporary equivalent of those 19th­-century piano concertos with their dense passages of virtuosity for its own sake; only the greatest composers managed to make music out of them. From moment to moment, this concerto is absorbing, but the argument constantly seems to be interrupted by banal pyrotechnics. Lindberg wrote the concerto expressly to showcase the talents of Krikku, but in my opinion he could have stepped back a little to see the bigger picture. The orchestral writing is highly polished?in no way do I wish to suggest there is anything second-hand about this music?and the performances from everyone here, not least the clarinetist, are phenomenal. The notes tell us the work falls into five sections, and that it has a ?dramaturgical? layout. I can?t hear any of that: to me, the form seems random, wandering from one episode or texture to another. A chorale from the soloist in alt accompanied by the orchestral brass turns up twice, the second time to close the work: that?s all the formal structure I could discern. Other listeners may respond on a more visceral level?and clarinet-players will be stunned. (They should also get hold of Krikku and Saramo?s Ondine recording of clarinet concertos by Crussell.)


Gran Duo , for 13 winds and 11 brass, was premiered by Sir Simon Rattle in Birmingham in 2002. The point of departure here is Stravinsky?s Symphonies of Wind Instruments . Maybe it?s because Lindberg is not showcasing a particular soloist?there are 24 soloists, in fact?but I find this work to be more interesting. The blocks of sound first posited by Stravinsky in his 1920 masterwork are elaborated with dense, virtuoso figuration. The cake/icing relationship as it might be termed of brass to wind is forever shifting, manipulated by the composer?s deft sleight of hand. (Excuse my mixed metaphor!) One of the most memorable moments is a solemn brass chorale following a gentle passage for flutes in their highest register. The harmony is polytonal; Lindberg rarely sounds to be in any particular key. The piece ends with somber brass chords centering on the trombones. If you enjoy the Stravinsky, you?ll certainly respond to this.


Chorale is a short work designed to be played with Berg?s Violin Concerto: it quotes the same Bach chorale, Es ist genung , and concludes on a resonant major chord from widely spaced strings. It feels like a study for some larger opus.


In spite of my reservations concerning the Clarinet Concerto, this is an engrossing disc overall. I find Lindberg similar to the Estonian Erkki-Sven Tüür (they are only one year apart in age). Both composers produce music that is busy, dense, and texturally fascinating; both are at the peak of their creativity. To my mind, Tüür?s work satisfies on a deeper level, but that is to take nothing away from Ondine?s achievement. Sound is, as usual, first-class.


FANFARE: Phillip Scott

The carefully chosen Latin fragments from ancient Pompeii graffiti inscriptions form a fresco of the society of 2000 years ago and of today; since ancient times, graffiti has been used as a tool for free expression of social or political criticism. GRAFFITI also contains references to Igor Stravinsky's Oedipus Rex, as well as to the music of Bartók and Puccini. However, GRAFFITI carries the individual sound of Magnus Lindberg, who has always been recognized as a great master of the orchestral sound, and who now has proves to be a master of choral music.

Avant-garde origins never quite let go. Brilliance, fantastic, imaginative orchestra textures all add to the draw of this music.

Make no mistake, Finnish composer Magnus Lindberg is a cutting-edge modernist nor has his blade been stropped smooth. It's severing is achieved through ragged saw-teeth and violent conflict.

He attended classes given by Paavo Heininen at Helsinki’s Sibelius Academy. Later he studied in Darmstadt with Ferneyhough and Lachenmann and with Donatoni at Siena and Grisey in Paris.

The works featured here have been riffled and reshuffled to present them broken from original couplings and sequenced early to late: 1982 to 2005.

Tendenza gives no quarter. Its upheaval and collisions are utterly committed. The shock-waves radiate outwards. Dissonance is the norm as is fragmentation and belligerence. Kraft is as obsidian-hard as Tendenza. It somehow embodies preferences for things that are fast and complicated. Its first of two segments ends in slowly turning scintillation. The second section quivers, squeaks and moans though ultimately rises to growling sharply accentuated aggression and a shriek of volleyed violence. Kinetics, written after a debilitating tropical illness forced silence on him for 18 months is more pointilliste than Kraft and Tendenza. Parts of it are redolent of Stravinsky's Petrushka though the music also lashes out with a vengeful goad and in viscous dissonance .

Marea starts with violent upheaval and nightmare bass-accented attack. As with Tendenza Avanti! sounds every bit the full orchestra - not scaled down at all. On the other hand, as the movement progresses, there are more foot and hand holds for the less ‘advanced’ listener and the accelerating rush speaks directly if with more wildness than we may be used to. A sprinting piano adds decorative pearlescent streamers and there is some degree of repetition to acclimatise the ears and mind. In this sense the music is a little closer to Silvestrov symphonies 4 and 5.

Joy is the third panel of the trilogy of Kinetics, Marea and Joy. It is dissonant yet has a softer impact but is just as complex in texture - with pianos, electronics and vividly recorded percussion.

Corrente for chamber orchestra shivers with eldritch life and references Stravinsky time and again but filtered through Darmstadt's disaffected alembic. Tragedy tolls out at the end. Corente II is a rewrite of Corrente for full orchestra and is allowed much more space. There are some lyric insurgencies and plenty of generously rhythmic interest.

Coyote Blues is another chamber orchestra piece. This incorporates ululating material redolent of 1960s Hovhaness and Penderecki with baleful trombones and rolling and roiling waves of sound. A Petrushka-like delight is suddenly shaken free at 10:09.

Arena has an abundance of fine lines often seething in activity and rising to a high glowing voltage of shining writing for violins. This is closed off by a steady humming diminuendo.

Arena II is the original written but large rather like the Corrente pair but by no means as effective in its dénouement.

Feria is jewelled with little fanfare figures allocated to brass and woodwind as individuals.

Gran duo strips out the strings and percussion leaving us in a tension net between brass and woodwind. There are no lead soloists - not a concerto except that all these Lindberg works sound like Concertos for Orchestra. His title Concerto for Orchestra comes after Chorale - the shortest piece here and one written expressly as a companion to the Berg Violin Concerto. It makes frank play with Bach's Es ist genug. The Concerto for Orchestra is a single movement piece of about half an hour duration. Its demeanour and fantastically mercurial nature brought home to me that all his orchestral pieces are display effusions, Darmstadt or otherwise.

The final and most recent work is Sculpture. Violins are elided. Instead we hear an orchestra of quadruple woodwind, two thrumming pianos, two harps, organ, two Wagner tubas and full brass complement. Again this is a spectacular written to complement the vast space of the Walt Disney Hall in Los Angeles. A touch of ancient Rome aside, this is very much another virtuoso race-course as well as reminiscent of Penderecki and Sibelius at his most the most enigmatic and his most heroic and most catastrophic. It operates as a sort of dissonant Pohjola's Daughter. This is a vast lapidary gauze in motion cut across with gritty rhythmic attack as at 18:11. Parts of this look towards the grand tone poems of David Mathews. The sunburst at 1830 onwards is redolent of the sunrise in Night-Ride and Sunrise complete with an extravagantly chattering organ. It’s a mite garrulous but full of delights in the manner of Silvestrov's psychedelia. It ends on an almost Baxian glow; so very different from the Tendenza of two decades before.

There’s a good English and Finnish booklet by Kimmi Korhonen which tells you what you want to know at about the right pace and length. Avant-garde origins never quite let go - why should they - but brilliance, fantastic imaginative orchestra textures and Stravinskian mulch all add to the draw of this music.

-- Rob Barnett, MusicWeb International