There’s modern music to understand, and modern music to enjoy. All too often, those things are mutually exclusive.
But not always. Sometimes we get music that fires on all cylinders and lights up both sides of the brain. For me, Bartók and Piston have always done that, and lately so has Lindberg.
Lindberg’s earlier work was about grand gestures on a large scale, but it often left me cold. Over the last decade or so, he’s scaled things back a bit. What’s left is a luminous, buoyant language that reminds me of Messiaen at his most accessible.
At its core, this is more a duet for cello and clarinet, with the pianist acting as conductor. Lindberg has a particular affection for the clarinet in his work (he wrote a magnificent concerto for it), and he shows an incredible intuition for its timbre and capabilities. The parallel lines traced in tandem with the cello at 1:15 are unique and marvelous piece of writing. Continued...