Lindberg, Magnus: Jeux d’anches 9′

The Finnish composer Magnus Lindberg makes ‘Jeux d’anches’ into a meeting place for two traditions. The title itself, ‘Jeux d’anches’, refers to the metal tongues in the accordion which are set in movement that creates sound when air is blown through them, and it is in the examination of sound as well as the play on sounds and the actual organisation of the inside as well as the outside of sound that Lindberg, in ‘Jeux d’anches’, with his own background in severe structuralism goes to meet Grisey and French spectral music. Like agitated humming birds that stochastically and without direction fly high and low out of pure joy, far and wide in their search for nectar, the notes spread out playfully and eagerly in this informally excessive work. With brilliant energy and apparently by coincidence and without aim, Lindberg investigates the potential of the instrument, but the coincidence is only apparent, because when ‘the nectar flowers’ following the dramatic concentration have been found, the coincidences turn out to have been from the beginning the grounding and movement towards the conclusion, which assumes classical dimensions.

(Erland Kiøsterud)