Magnus Lindberg

Magnus Lindberg is a Finnish composer (he was born in 1958, in Helsinki) and hasn't yet died -from which you may conclude that his music is uncompromisingly “modern”, with a tendency to the madness of latter-day plinky-plonk. A man that can write a score which is a meter tall (for Kraft, in 1985), using 70-note harmonies (which is nearly every note on a piano played simultaneously… yum! not!!), is probably quite dangerous all by himself; that he studied with Brian Ferneyhough seals the deal and is the smoking gun!

That said, he has calmed himself down somewhat since his heady Eighties youth and now writes in a much more tonal style that is exciting, clearly modern and yet utterly listenable, if not compelling. His more recent works, such as the second violin concerto, or the cello and clarinet concertos, are rollicking good listens and he retains a welcome place in my music collection from whence Ferneyhough was long-since consigned to the skip of doom. That's probably because in his more recent pieces, he has moved rather closer to a recognisably Sibelian mode of organic development, based on memorable short motifs that don't sound as if they're being played on the kitchen sink, with spoons.

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