Users' Reviews
By DB115673
23-May-2011
Modernism with Heart Magnus Lindberg is one of the most original and significant yet least intimidating orchestral composers of the 20th century. This magnificent four-CD box set amply showcases his music, which takes the listener on a complex yet accessible voyage full of color, movement, emotion and sensuality.
His orchestral drama and virtuosity recalls Stravinsky; his icy tonalities and atonalities rival those of Ligeti (especially in his string passages). Lindberg’s great gift, however, is to make elaborate and sophisticated sound structures unfold in completely natural and organic fashion.
The 15 collected works range from the early 1980s to the present, and reflect a constantly evolving, yet artistically consistent approach. Each piece, no matter how abstract, manifests unshakeable structural logic and unity. And while much alternative classical tends to be emotionally arid, Lindberg’s music is always deeply moving. The aptly named “Joy,” a work for chamber orchestra and electronics, is a perfect example of Lindberg’s gift for insinuating melodic beauty and emotional consonance within adventurous, avant-garde settings. It’s but one of the many staggering pieces on offer, all of them given superb interpretations by the Avanti! Chamber Orchestra, the Toimii Ensemble, the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra and the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, guided variously by conductors Sakari Oramo, Jukka-Pekka Saraste and Esa-Pekka Salonen. One cannot overstate their collective artistry or the historical and aesthetic importance of this compilation.
This treasure trove of music would be a steal at twice the price.
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Published Reviews
By Rob Barnett
MusicWeb International
07-Jul-2011
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.
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By Allen Gimbel
American Record Guide
01-Jul-2011
Reissues of orchestral works by Magnus Lindberg, who is given a deluxe retrospective at the relatively young age of 53. This collection contains works dating from 1982 to 2005, tracing a path from his early extremist modernism (his teachers included Helmut Lachenmann, Brian Ferneyhough, Vinko Globokar, and, perhaps most critically as his career progressed, spectralist Gerard Grisey) to his more recent, and notably more palatable, efforts. Maestro Salonen asserts on the jewelbox that Lindberg has created “a distinct, personal, approachable language…in the spirit of Strauss, Ravel, and Stravinsky”. I will return to this comment below following a necessarily brief survey of this set’s contents.
Tendenza (1982) is a 12-minute piece of electric action-painting splatter for chamber orchestra, with an actual held but jittery single pitch threatening stability at its climax. This at the time surprising pass at the tonal will become an important factor as his career unfolds. Kraft (1985, reviewed N/D 2004, coupled with his Piano Concerto) is scored for the Toimii Ensemble (a mostly percussion group) and huge orchestra supplemented by a variety of junk percussion, electric drums (he was influenced by German punk rock at the time), and a nutty episode of vocal blabberings by the players. I said all I had to say about the piece in my earlier review. Kinetics (1989), the first of three works written after the composer was sidelined for a year and a half by a severe tropical disease contracted on a vacation, is notably influenced by Grisey’s spectralism. It is more lush than its predecessors, and certainly more French, but it retains the sense of hysterical delirium typical of the young composer. Marea (1990) refers to the tide, Lindberg completing the work off the coast of Normandy. It is more of the same, but for chamber orchestra.
Joy (1990) is the third piece of the post-disease trilogy. More consonant than the earlier pieces, this nearly half-hour work is positively sumptuous harmonically, with its rich chords and vibraphones suggesting jazz influence. There is an electronic presence in the piece as well, involving rather tinny synthesizerprocessed grand piano sounds. It seems long to me. Corrente (1992), its title referring more to “current” (in the sense of “flow”) than to the baroque dance (though there is a tonal reference here and there), juxtaposes floating ostinato fragments in its drifting spectralist mix, leading to an active and exciting climax. Corrente II is an expanded arrangement for large orchestra produced the same year. Coyote Blues (1993), for chamber orchestra, opens with some instrumental coyote howls (it was originally supposed to be a vocal piece), and that bluesy gesture offers the main idea for the piece. The work has a lighter touch than most of the music collected here.
Arena (1995) is based on a major-minor third motive. It has as a result a jazz tinge at its core,more....
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