Lindborg, PerMagnus: Bombastic SonoSofisms 8′

WP Copenhagen 1996. Frode Haltli (acc)
Recorded at ‘Looking on Darkness’ (2002)

The Greek sophists studied and tested out their arguments by turning premises upside down to show how you could argue both for and against every premise. This is the starting point for the Swedish-born composer PerMagnus Lindborg, when in ‘Bombastic SonoSophisms’ he turns the notes upside down and in differing ways tests them out, but the conclusion of the work, which was commissioned by Frode Haltli, holds far less bombast than the title would indicate. Playfully lively, almost physically present, Lindborg hurls the elements around, which then gather and spread out, the tripping descant and the quasi-powerful bass relate to each other in space searchingly, playfully and competitively. By degrees the voices in the work seek each other, find each other in an almost jazz-like rhythmic main movement, yet still wanting their own direction, even their own expression; the rhythm attempts to structure the space but refrains from overwhelming it, the elements fragment again and when we look back at the conclusion of the work, which ends in an ironic self-commentary, it seems as if we have been in a house where the internal staircase was in course of construction without being built and which we nevertheless find to be both functional and completely inhabitable.
(Erland Kiøsterud)