Magnus Lindberg: Seht die Sonne reviews from Berlin
Magnus Lindberg: Seht die Sonne reviews from Berlin
Magnus Lindberg’s new orchestral work, Seht die Sonne, provided a dramatic opening to the Berliner Philharmoniker’s season and travels with Simon Rattle to New York.
Following the August premiere of Magnus Lindberg's Seht die Sonne, commissioned by the Stiftung Berliner Philharmoniker in association with the San Francisco Symphony, Simon Rattle tours the work with the orchestra to Carnegie Hall in New York on 13 November.
Jukka-Pekka Saraste will conduct the Toronto Symphony Orchestra in the Canadian premiere in February 2008. The San Francisco Symphony under Sakari Oramo gives the first West Coast performance on 19 June 2008.
Programmed at its premiere with Mahler’s Symphony No.9, Lindberg’s work is scored for the same forces as that of the Viennese master. Adopting its title from the final sunrise chorus of Schoenberg’s epic cantata Gurrelieder, the work explores the tipping point from late-Romanticism to modernism.
“…a work that liberally mixes the exquisite colours of the orchestra… and that in its luminescent excess is indeed reminiscent of Schoenberg’s Gurrelieder: as a revolving sphere of sound in which opulence follows upon opulence.
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
“Sharp as a knife – a tour de force”
Der Tagesspiegel
“Again and again the huge orchestra releases bolts of energy… Lindberg’s sun does not smile mildly upon its worshippers. Instead, it fires up the music and lends it a lasting resplendence.”
Berliner Morgenpost
“…an extravagant and glittering piece on a grand scale, full of bold gestures and big effects… The second movement ends with a solo cello cadenza so lengthy that it is almost a miniature concerto, a mournful lament full of ethereal harmonics. The third movement is the work’s darkest, opening in the lower depths of the bass registers and rising to a howl of anguish before settling into a pensive chorale and slipping unobtrusively into silence.”
Financial Times
Clarinet and violin concerti travel
Other summer highlights for Lindberg included a rapturously received BBC Proms performance of the Clarinet Concerto with Kari Kriikku as soloist. The Times described the work as “a perfect concerto, perfectly performed….” and the Daily Telegraph praised its “fabulous glittering orchestral palette, and glowing harmonies… It was heartening to see a packed Albert Hall audience rising to its feet and cheering a contemporary piece.”
“If there’s any justice it will soon be as oft-performed as Mozart’s concerto”
The Times on Lindberg’s Clarinet Concerto
In recent months the Violin Concerto, premiered last year, has been heard for the first time in Copenhagen, London and Helsinki with soloist Lisa Batiashvili, whose new recording has just been released on Sony Classical (88697 129362). The concerto’s Swiss, German, Spanish and Norwegian premieres are scheduled during the 2007/08 season.
"… a wonderfully effective concerto, entirely typical of Lindberg's recent music yet thrillingly direct in its impact. Batiashvili's playing was exceptional, too; other violinists will surely rush to take up the work, but she has set a standard that will be hard to match."
The Guardian
> Further information on Work: Seht die Sonne
> Further information on Clarinet Concerto (Hawkes Pocket Score - HPS 1386)
Photo: Hanya Chlala/ArenaPAL
