Seht die Sonne, Magnus Lindberg's substantial and impressive new orchestral piece, borrows its rubric from the last chorus in Schoenberg's monumental Gurrelieder. That luxurious C major hymn to the sun is the final assertion of the power of tonality from the composer who did more than any to undermine it, and a perfect symbolization of the way in which late romanticism gave way to modernism in the start decade of the twentieth century. Lindberg's piece, which also sets out from a unison C, seems to lie in on that tipping item, and maps out a very ambiguous relationship with conventional tonality itself.
The energy and the architecture of the 20-minute individual movement, though, are recognisably Lindberg's own. The voluptuary, proliferating string lines, busy woodwind figuration and billowing brass give buoyancy to the textures, even though the orchestra is a massive Mahlerian one. Lindberg wrote the score for Simon Rattle and the Berlin Philharmonic, but since their first performance utmost year it has already begun to travel. The UK premier opened the Oslo Philharmonic's prom with their music director Jukka-Pekka Saraste. The performance was highly accomplished, with the dynamic terracing of the orchestral writing carefully contoured, though a bit more space around some of the ideas might have paid dividends.
At the other end of the concert, Sibelius's First Symphony was equally vivid. Saraste seemed intent on presenting it as a young man's manifesto, and as a pointer to the greater symphonic Sibelius to come, but at the terms of some of the music's individuality. Rachmaninov's Third Piano Concerto was accompanied just as impressively, but Nikolai Lugansky's fluent solo playing lacked the dark edge of danger on which the work depends.
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