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.

Shortlisted for the 2022 Gramophone Awards!

Composer Magnus Lindberg (b. 1958) is one of the leading names in today’s contemporary music. This album by the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra together with its chief conductor Hannu Lintu includes three works by the composer, including Aura, one of the most prominent monumental orchestral works of our era, together with two other works completed in the 1990s, including Marea and the first recording of Related Rocks. Aura – in memoriam Witold Lutoslawski represents a grand synthesis of Magnus Lindberg’s output in the 1990s. The work was written in 1993–1994 to a commission from Suntory Limited in Japan and was premiered by the Tokyo Symphony Orchestra under Kazufumi Yamashita at Suntory Hall in Tokyo in June 1994. Clocking in at 40 minutes, Aura is Lindberg’s most extensive orchestral work. Although not a symphony, this 4-movement work is closely linked to the symphonic concept represented by Lutoslawski. The composer heard of Lutoslawski’s death while writing the work and decided to dedicate it to his memory.

REVIEWS:

The Finnish Magnus Lindberg is among the world’s leading composers, and this is a mighty sample of his work. The nearly 40-minute Aura is a four-movement continuous structure of extraordinary power, its rich textural agglomerations as architecturally thwacking as they are minutely detailed.

– Sunday Times (UK)

All the performances on this Ondine CD are magnificent with state-of-the-art sound to match. Thus, if you are in the market for a fine programme of Magnus Lindberg, do not hesitate to add this to your collection.

– MusicWeb International

As a performer and conductor, Christian Lindberg has a rare ability to electrify an audience, and as reviewers attest, the same applies to his compositions. Released on disc in 2018, his viola concerto Steppenwolf was described as ‘one of those rare contemporary works that captures the attention from the first notes’ (Fanfare) while the five-star review in BBC Music Magazine spoke of ‘thrilling orchestral storytelling’ and ‘glorious musical cavalcades’. The present album offers further opportunity to acquaint oneself with the unstoppable energy of Lindberg in all of his three incarnations. The album is named after the closing work, 2017, described by Lindberg as his testimony about a year when the world changed, as a result of the US presidential election. Starting work on it on 1st January he followed the news in the media and let it feed his creative process throughout the course of the year. The opening work is an earlier one, commissioned for the nine trombones of The New Trombone Collective, and inspired by the spectacle of great waves rolling in at the beach in Wollongong, Australia. Framed by these two is Liverpool Lullabies, a concertante work for percussion and trombone which Lindberg composed with Evelyn Glennie and himself in mind. They are also the soloists on this recording, supported by the Antwerp Symphony Orchestra which also shines in the other two works on the album.

Magnus Lindberg (b. 1958) is among the leading figures in today’s contemporary music internationally. This new release by the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra conducted by its chief conductor Hannu Lintu includes world premiere recordings of two new works by Magnus Lindberg: orchestral work Tempus fugit and Violin Concerto No. 2, featuring Frank Peter Zimmermann as its soloist.

This release also celebrates the composer’s 60th anniversary. Violin Concerto No. 2, written for Frank Peter Zimmermann, was composed during Lindberg’s tenure as the composer-in-residence for the London Philharmonic Orchestra. This three-movement work represents well Lindberg’s late lush orchestral style and is reminiscent to the tradition of great romantic violin concertos of the past. The concerto has three movements played without a break, with a solo cadenza towards the end of the second movement. The music is at times lucid and bright and at times lusciously sonorous, and the soloist is called upon to display both fireworks and soaring melodic arcs.

Tempus fugit was commissioned by the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra and premiered at the gala concert for the centenary of Finland’s independence in Helsinki in 2017. Although the work has a strong positive and even lucid fundamental tone, the composer did not seek to write a traditional anniversary piece. Instead, he sought a new approach through means that he had first employed in the 1980s, going back to the harmonic studies that he had undertaken on computer, using the LISP programming language – the same that he had used when creating his first major orchestral work, Kraft (1983–85). The result, however, is quite different from his edgy, even aggressive, early works: Tempus fugit is a 30-minute orchestral work embracing an Impressionist brightness of color, melodic lines and a warm Romantic glow. The work is dedicated to Hannu Lintu.

For the past twenty years, while maintaining an unsurpassed career as a trombone soloist and in tandem with being a sought-after conductor, Christian Lindberg has also been composing. Previous releases of his music have earned him critical praise: the reviewer in American Record Guide ‘was captivated by his interesting ideas and rich harmonic language’ while his counterpart on German website Klassik-Heute characterised Lindberg as ‘a marvellously deft, self-reliant composer’. The present album is the third BIS release dedicated entirely to Lindberg’s music, and features some of his more recent works. In his own liner notes, Lindberg describes his method of working, and explains the background of the three pieces recorded here with the Odense Symphony Orchestra. In regards to Steppenwolf, his viola concerto, he was attracted by the solo instrument’s ‘melancholic and deep qualities … offering an opportunity to compose something that could never be expressed in the same way with, for instance, a violin’. In a classical, three-movement concerto form, the work isn’t programmatic as such, but while composing it, Lindberg was reminded of the novel by Hermann Hesse. The title of the following piece, on the other hand, refers to a previous composition by Lindberg himself. Composed for a television project involving music as well as dance, the fifteen-minute Tales of Galamanta uses material from the ‘arte commedia’ Dawn from Galamanta.

REVIEW:

The Finnish composer-pianist Magnus Lindberg has been the Marie-Josée Kravis Composer-in-Residence at the New York Philharmonic since 2009, at which time the post was initiated by the NYPO’s current Music Director, Alan Gilbert.

I have been aware of Lindberg for some time, but this was my first opportunity for in-depth listening. First impressions were of a restless, often aggressive musical persona; of constantly changing musical landscapes, and brightly coloured, dramatic orchestration. Lindberg’s music is not excessively dissonant or discordant, and he does not shy away from key-centres either. In that sense his music is, as represented here, relatively accessible. On the other hand, it is very complex, and almost profligate in its material; none of these works has a single dominating motif … that I could discern, anyway.

As you listen, you become more and more aware of how cunningly shaped his music is, following definite emotional paths, and evolving, as it were, organically. Thus Expo, on track 1, has a kaleidoscopic feel to it, yet in the end seems satisfyingly inevitable and complete. The performance by the NYPO in the première, recorded here, is quite wonderful, reminding us what a very great ensemble this is.

They are matched by the astonishing pianism of Bronfman in the concerto. This is in three movements, which play without a break. Though it requires both hands to perform (and how - an extra one or two wouldn’t have come amiss), it has a close and intriguing affinity with the Ravel D minor concerto, written for Paul Wittgenstein, who lost his right arm in WW1. Lindberg’s work follows the same kind of progress as the Ravel - from an opening in Stygian depths of darkness to an affirmative conclusion. There are also numerous specific references to the French composer’s themes, rhythmic patterns and textures that are both fascinating and maddeningly elusive. It is a fine and often thrilling work, and Bronfman’s performance, again in the première, is breathtakingly assured.

The Italian phrase Al largo - apparently man being offshore, on the open sea - has much in common with Expo in its sense of shifting land- and seascapes. It is, though, a much longer, more fully developed work, dominated by heroic brass fanfares, busy tuned percussion, and delicate woodwind writing; the solo oboe is particularly prominent. Again there is a sense of finding, then losing, then rediscovering tonal centres as points of rest and stability.

This is an exciting CD, brilliantly performed and recorded; as an introduction to one of the most approachable and individual voices in contemporary music, it could hardly be bettered.

-- Gwyn Parry-Jones, MusicWeb International

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.