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Cover: Magnus Lindberg – Piano Concerto · KRAFT

Magnus Lindberg

Piano Concerto

KRAFT

Magnus Lindberg, piano
Toimii Ensemble
Finnish RSO
Esa-Pekka Salonen, conductor

ODE 1017-2 · CD · April 2004

Buy / listen

Track listing

5 tracks · 59:31

Listen to samples on selected tracks.

Magnus Lindberg

  1. Piano Concerto (1994) 29:14
  2. 1 I. 9:54
  3. 2 II. 11:16
  4. 3 III. 8:04
  5. KRAFT (1985) 30:17
  6. 4 I. 16:04
  7. 5 II. 14:13

About this recording

Watch an interview with Magnus Lindberg on KRAFT on YouTube.

This CD features Esa-Pekka Salonen and the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra with two major important works by Finnish composer Magnus Lindberg. The composer himself plays the solo part in the Piano Concerto (1990-94).

The large-scale orchestral piece KRAFT (1983-85) features the Toimii Ensemble, in which Lindberg plays piano and percussion. This group was founded by Lindberg and Salonen in 1981 and has provided the composer with a laboratory for his sonic development. KRAFT meant for Lindberg the compositional breakthrough and earned him the UNESCO rostrum in 1986 and the Nordic Music Prize in 1988. Magnus Lindberg here performs on piano as a member of the Tomii Ensemble.

Features

Booklet with liner notes in English, German, French and Finnish

Press

Lindberg here plays his own Piano Concerto, a substantial half-hour work that is both beguiling and dazzling where Kraft is mean and moody. If rhythm drives that earlier work, here the overriding mantra is harmony, in all sorts of weird and wonderful guises, from spectral to new-romantic. Again, there is no disputing the authority of the performance, expertly balanced by the Ondine engineers.
Matthew Rye, The Daily Telegraph, July 26, 2004, Classical CD of the week

(...) the precence of an impressive talent is vividly on display here, and you won't find more persuasive interpretations.
David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com, June 10, 2004, Artistic Quality 10 / Sound Quality 10

The artists

Magnus Lindberg

Magnus Lindberg is one of the internationally best known Finnish composers of his generation. Lindberg is predominantly a composer of instrumental music, above all orchestral music. His musical language is usually highly complex yet highly full of vim and verve. Lindberg is both rationalist and pragmatist, a hands-on musician - a pianist - who participated in many premieres in the early stages of his career and founded the experimental Toimii Ensemble.

Full biography

Toimii Ensemble

Toimii (Finnish "It works!") is an ensemble for new music founded in 1981 by Finnish composer Magnus Lindberg with Esa-Pekka Salonen and several other young composers and instrumentalists connected to the Sibelius Academy. It has appeared in Finland and abroad, for instance at the Time of Music festival in Viitasaari, at the Helsinki Festival, at the Tampere Biennale, at the Warsaw Autumn contemporary music festival, and in Amsterdam, Brussels, Hamburg, London, Stockholm and Paris.

Full biography

Esa-Pekka Salonen

Esa-Pekka Salonen studied at the Sibelius Academy and made his conducting début with the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra in 1979. From 1985-1995 he was Music Director of the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra, and also in 1985 took up the post of Principal Guest Conductor of The Philharmonia which he held until 1994. Salonen returned to The Philharmonia as the orchestra's chief conductor from 2008 to 2021. He was Director of the Helsinki Festival in 1995 and 1996. From 1992 to 2009, he was the Music Director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic. In December 2018, the San Francisco Symphony announced the appointment of Salonen as its next music director, effective in 2020.

Full biography

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