LINDBERG, M.: Clarinet Concerto / Gran Duo / Chorale (Kriikku, Finnish Radio Symphony, Oramo)

Album review

Even though Magnus Lindberg's music is densely textured, highly varied, and unpredictable, and as complex, dissonant, and explosive as the wildest avant-garde music, it is often surprisingly pleasant, accessible, and exciting, particularly so in the kaleidoscopic and insanely colorful Clarinet Concerto (2002). This spectacular piece may serve as the best introduction to Lindberg's extremely virtuosic, multilayered music, especially because the focus on a single line instrument clarifies many of Lindberg's procedures and ideas -- which can often seem buried in his thicker orchestral works -- and highlights them in vivid relief against the elaborate and lush accompaniment. In this meticulously wrought setting, clarinetist Kari Kriikku virtually floats above the orchestra without any sense of gravity or technical difficulty, and the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Sakari Oramo, sounds richly Straussian and sumptuous in this performance. The Gran Duo for 13 winds and 11 brass (2000) is imaginatively scored and contrapuntally inventive, but in its neo-Classical detachment -- reminiscent of Stravinsky's wind music at its most austere and "objective" -- it may be regarded as an acquired taste; and with the rather Hindemithian and dense Chorale (2001-2002), these filler pieces may not be judged as representative of Lindberg's work at its most interesting or inviting. Ondine's sound is exceptionally vivid and realistic.

© TiVo