After studying at the Sibelius Academy in his native Finland, Lindberg
studied privately with Gérard Grisey and Vinko Globokar in Paris and
attended courses given by Franco Donatoni (Siena) and Brian Ferneyhough
(Darmstadt).
If Magnus Lindberg had an Opus 1, it would be
Quintetto dell'Estate (1979), which shows a depiction of drama through
gesture that is still highly relevant to his work today. A further
breakthrough is marked by Action-Situation-Signification (1982), the
first work in which he turned towards the technique of musique
concrète. This work is also important because it ultimately led to the
founding (with Esa-Pekka Salonen ) of Toimii - an ensemble dedicated to
experimentation in composition - which became a laboratory for
developing many of Lindberg's subsequent ideas.
Kraft
(1983-85), in essence a concerto for the members of Toimii and
orchestra, sees the distillation of these experiments and together with
Ur (1986) shows Lindberg exploring further the processing of
conventional sound with electronic devices.
In the 1990s,
pieces such as Marea (1990), the Piano Concerto (1990-94), Corrente
(1992), Corrente II (1992) and Coyote Blues (1993) have been less
concerned with the use of electronics (although the composer still uses
computers as a compositional aid) and show Lindberg putting a stronger
emphasis on the harmonic structure of his music. June 1994 saw the
triumphant premiere in Tokyo of the major new orchestral work Aura - in
memoriam Witold Lutoslawski , a commission from the Suntory
International Program for Music Composition, and in June 1995 his Arena
was the test piece for the first International Sibelius Conductor's
Competition in Helsinki. In 1995 he was the featured composer at the
Aldeburgh Festival and in 1996 he was Artistic Director of the South
Bank Centre's Meltdown Festival. In 1997 he was featured at the Ars
Musica Festival in Brussels and the Strasbourg Musica Festival where
his two largest works Kraft and Aura received their French Premieres.
Recent
works include Engine (1996), a commission from the London Sinfonietta,
Arena II (1996) for sinfonietta, and Related Rocks (1997), an IRCAM
commission for electronics, 2 pianos and percussion.
Among the
many prizes his music has won are the Prix Italia (1986), the UNESCO
Rostrum (1986), the Nordic Music Prize (1988) and the Royal
Philharmonic Society Prize for large-scale composition (1992).
Magnus Lindberg's music is available on the Finlandia, Ondine and Adès labels.
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