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Don't be fooled by all
the lightness
www.calendarlive.com
August 10,
2006
By Mark Swed,
Times Staff Writer
...Sunday
afternoon and Monday and Tuesday evenings,
SummerFest 2006, which opened last week and
continues through Aug. 20, presented the premieres
of three works by internationally important
composers &emdash; Leon Kirchner, Bright Sheng and
Magnus Lindberg &emdash; that it had commissioned
as part of the festivities for its 20th
anniversary. Each premiere proved a rich, original,
powerful piece, brilliantly performed. And each
took place in an interesting cultural context that
also included riveting, revelatory performances of
well-known masterpieces.
TUESDAY night,
back in Sherwood, Lindberg and the phenomenal
Finnish cellist Anssi Karttunen played a new work
for cello and piano that is as yet untitled. It had
its premiere last week at the Santa Fe Chamber
Music Festival, but Karttunen told the La Jolla
audience that composer Lindberg had still been
making changes Monday.
Lindberg, who with
Esa-Pekka Salonen and Kaija Saariho has been
putting Finnish music on the map for a new
generation, is a composer with a visceral sense of
harmony. But the physical power of his sound has
been softening of late. The new 15-minute work has
thick chords and delicate trills that seem to fill
the air with heady, languid sensuality.
Yet it still has
power, and the virtuosity on display was arresting,
given that Lindberg is a superb pianist and
Karttunen perhaps the most impressive cellist on
the scene today.
The program was
mostly Finnish and full of Lindberg. He began it
with an elegant small etude for solo piano, which
was followed by the 1980 piano quintet " … de
Tartuffe, je crois," a gripping work that was based
on incidental music he wrote for a play about
Molière and that launched Lindberg's career
when he was 22.
It would have been
interesting to have heard Karttunen and Lindberg
play Grieg's Cello Sonata, the one non-Finnish work
on the program, but the pianist was Schub, whose
sparkling tone stood in striking contrast to
Karttunen's dark, restrained playing with its
occasional volcanic eruptions.
After the
performance, I thought of Chandler dying in La
Jolla, where not all is as light and breezy as it
first appears but where real substance can survive
the beating sun.
SummerFest: Scandinavian
Romance: Magnus Lindberg, Grieg,
Sibelius
www.sandiego.com
by David
Gregson
August 9,
2006
Finally, thanks to
SummerFest, we finally get a newly commissioned
work by a contemporary composer of major
stature.
Of course, as
tempting as it is to say such a thing -- especially
after having heard Finnish composer Magnus
Lindberg's magnificent music -- one has to remember
we have also had Leon Kirchner in our midst. His
intriguing String Quartet No. 4 (jointly
commissioned by SummerFest, the Orion String
Quartet, Philadelphia Chamber Music Society, Santa
Fe Music Festival and Chamber Music Society of
Lincoln Center &endash; whew!) received its world
premiere here last Sunday. And Kirchner, a former
student of Arnold Schoenberg, Ernest Bloch and
Roger Sessions, is no small potatoes.
But what about
Bright Sheng? Appealing, but certainly lacking the
depth of any work by Magnus Lindberg, was Sheng's
Three Fantasies for Violin and Piano, premiered
Monday at the Stephen and Mary Birch North Park
Theater.
Last night's
absurdly titled "Scandinavian Romance" concert in
Sherwood Auditorium was introduced by Lindberg's
close friend, cellist Anssi Karttunen, who
explained that the Lindberg works we were about to
hear span 25 years of the composer's
career.
Lindberg himself
acted as soloist in a piano Etude composed around
2001. It was an extremely interesting piece, but
the winners were yet to come: Lindberg's oddly
named "...de Tartuffe, je crois" ("It's about
Tartuffe, I assume"), a quintet featuring Cho-Liang
Lin, Ani Kavafian, violins; Cynthia Phelps, viola;
Karttunen, cello; and Lindberg, piano.
The piece, which
has it roots in incidental music written for
Mikhail Bulgakov's play, Moliere, or the Conspiracy
of Pietists, is a virtual encyclopedia of the best
20th-century influences, yet it possesses its own
vital integrity and is infused with a high sense of
drama. To my way of thinking, the greatest
composers since 1790 have always had a sense of
theater.
After intermission
we heard the West Coast premiere of "New Work for
Cello and Piano" (actually still in a state of
evolution), featuring the Karttunen/Lindberg
pairing once again. Risto Nieminen writes in the
program that "Lindberg's music is energetic, and it
often builds on a chaconne-like repeated harmonic
succession. Based more on rhythm than melody, the
music undergoes a continuous transformation during
the piece. Lindberg is a modernist who knows what
his forebears have done."
Whatever the
structural principal of this work, one can
definitely sense its order and design. Its debt to
the greatest modernists is also obvious -- one
reason I personally like the music so much. This is
music that combines intellect, drama and poetry in
the greatest of mainstream traditions. It is far
from exhibiting what I object to in Steve Reich
(although I feel I may have overstated my distaste
in Monday's review), namely a kind of clinical
fascination with tones and contrapuntal
patterns.
The Grieg Cello
Sonata in A Minor, Opus 36 (Karttunen and
André-Michel Schub, piano), was little more
than a curiosity, most of its thematic material
being bland and uninspired. The performance was
largely first rate, although Schub affected a
peculiarly clipped attack during some of
dramatic/romantic passages which truly demand a
more straightforward approach.
Pictures of the flowing
world
Santa Fe New
Mexican
August 1,
2006
The Chamber Music
Festival performance on July 31, like a similar
program during the festival's first week, opened
and closed with works by Mozart. In this instance,
those works were the String Quartet in C Major, K.
465, and the String Quintet in D Major, K. 593
&emdash; both dating from the composer's final
years. They were sandwiched between a pair of
contemporary scores, the String Quartet No. 3 in F
Major by Dmitri Shostakovich, and the world
premiere of an untitled work for cello and piano by
Finnish composer Magnus Lindberg.
...All ears, of
course, were on the newly composed piece by
Lindberg, who himself played the piano part. He was
joined onstage by a fellow Finn, cellist Anssi
Karttunen. Cast as a single, uninterrupted span
that begins and ends in near silence, the music is
often taut and turbulent, yet it is also highly
Romantic and passionate. If that all sounds like a
description of what came out of the Second Viennese
School in the early 20th century, you wouldn't be
far wrong. Lindberg's music is grounded in the
late-Romantic musical dialect, even if its modern
angularity and outbursts of clatttering dissonance
belie that statement. The musicianship, meanwhile,
was breathtaking. Lindberg's keyboard work had a
wonderfully liquid, flowing quality to it, while
the strength and nuance of Karttunen's
cello-playing was riveting and
rewarding.
David
Prince
A breath of fresh air
Santa Fe New
Mexican
August 5,
2006
On Aug. 4, a
sparse but appreciative audience gathered in St.
Francis Auditorium to hear an all? Magnus Lindberg
Modern Masters program, with varying combinations
of clarinet, piano, cello, and bass drum. Many in
attendance had no doubt been energized by the July
30 and 31 performances of Lindberg's new piece for
cello and piano (commissioned by the Santa Fe
Chamber Music Festival and La Jolla Music Society).
At the August concert, they were treated to a
excellently played recital that contained not only
a repeat reading of the new work but also four
earlier works by the Finnish composer.
The concert began
with Ablauf (written in 1983 and revamped in 1988),
for clarinet and a pair of massive bass drums. It
turned out to be the evening's most curious and
outrageously expressive moment. Clarinetist Chen
Halevi opened the proceedings with a series of
emotionally wrought split-toned wails on his
instrument, akin to what you might expect to hear
from a reincarnated Eric Dolphy. Halevi was a
galvanizing physical presence &emdash; his body
shook and bent along with the tones he elicited
from his horn; he held notes for a seeming eternity
and then drew a loud and audible breath as he
prepared for his next melodic statement. At
unexpected intervals, Lindberg and Anssi Karttunen
dealt nearly deafening blows to their bass drums in
unison, creating a resonant and long-decaying
thunder effect. As the piece progressed, the drums
took a more prominent part, then receded again to a
supportive role, while Halevi switched over to bass
clarinet about halfway through and, at one
juncture, launched into wordless
vocalizations.
Dos Coyotes, which
followed, was played by Lindberg on piano and
Karttunen on cello. Like his new work for cello and
piano, Dos Coyotes (begun in 1991 and finalized in
2002) is rooted in the late-Romantic tradition but
takes full advantage of the advances of Schoenberg
and his followers. The piece, which plays out in a
single span, has lots of cat-and-mouse moments,
when one instrument suddenly takes up a motif
suggested by the other.
Then the pattern
reverses itself, but the hide-and-seek aspect
remains intact throughout.
Lindberg's solo
piano composition from 2000, Jubilees, gave the
audience an opportunity to witness the composer's
keyboard technique with no distractions. He proved
to be quite a handsome soloist, with a firm and
precise touch. Lindberg's writing for piano has a
very liquid feel &emdash; as demonstrated in his
new work for piano and cello &emdash; and his sharp
and clean attack lent the piece a cold and
refreshing air.
The 1990 Steamboat
Bill, Jr. is a duo for clarinet and cello. Whether
the piece is or isn't cartoonish seems beside the
point. What it does show is how well the standard
B-flat clarinet and cello are suited to each other
when it comes to tone and timbre. At times, it was
difficult, if not impossible, to tell which
instrument was singing which of the intertwining
melodic lines.
A combination of
fine and considered compositional skill along with
uniformly superlative musicianship turned the
concert into an unqualified success.
David
Prince
A Composer Who Helps
Play the Music
New York
Times
ALLAN KOZINN,
November 26, 2002
The Finnish
composer Magnus Lindberg was the subject of an
installment of Carnegie Hall's Making Music series
at Weill Recital Hall last Tuesday. In these
programs the composer typically discusses his works
and then sits back as the music is played. Mr.
Lindberg spoke casually with Ara Guzelimian,
Carnegie Hall's artistic adviser, but instead of
taking in the program as a listener, he performed
as a pianist, both in solo works and with Anssi
Karttunen, a cellist.
Mr. Karttunen
opened the concert on his own, with ''Stroke''
(1984), a five-minute work that pushes a cellist
through nearly the full range of techniques, from
eerily sliding harmonics to warm-hued long notes to
pizzicato. But it is typical of Mr. Lindberg's work
that even when his scores range so widely in what
seem to be purely technical areas, they never seem
mere display pieces. For all of its abstraction,
''Stroke'' is a compact, focused drama.
Still, a second
solo cello work put Mr. Karttunen's considerable
interpretive strengths more fully in the spotlight.
''Partia'' (2001) is a six-movement work in the
style of a Baroque dance suite. In this more
expansive form, Mr. Lindberg casts his music in
long lines, with appealing melodies offset by some
of the same timbral effects in
''Stroke.''
Mr. Lindberg, who
proved a formidable pianist, played one solo work
on each half of the program. ''Jubilees'' (2000),
like ''Partia,'' is cast in six movements (although
in this case the movement titles are simply tempo
indications). This is a tactile piece with
harmonies that shift almost continuously.
Dissonances never quite resolve; they merely give
way to other dissonances. Yet there is something so
settled and so nonabrasive in Mr. Lindberg's
approach to harmony that a listener never feels
lost, no matter how unsettled the music may seem
from an analytical point of view. The solo piano
work on the second half of the program was a brief
Étude (2001) that shared many qualities of
''Jubilees.''
The final work in
each half of the program brought Mr. Lindberg and
Mr. Karttunen together.
In ''Moto''
(1988-90), the two instruments mirror each other's
lines so closely that much of the work seemed less
a dialogue than a joint proclamation. The cello and
piano lines do eventually go their own way, though,
and some attractive rhythmic complications arise
from the friction between them.
Mr. Lindberg and
Mr. Karttunen closed the program with ''Dos
Coyotes,'' an arrangement that Mr. Lindberg made
this year of ''Coyote Blues,'' a 1993 work for
voice and chamber ensemble. Here the cello line
sings plaintively over a sharp-edged keyboard
accompaniment, and as in ''Moto,'' the interaction
creates its own peculiar sparks.
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Santa
Fe 2006