570542 bk Lindberg US 14/7/08 11:25 Page 4 Ralph van Raat Pianist and musicologist Ralph van Raat studied the piano with Ton Hartsuiker LINDBERG and Willem Brons at the Conservatory of Amsterdam and Musicology at the University of Amsterdam. He concluded both studies with distinction in 2002 and 2003. Van Raat also studied with Claude Helffer (Paris), Liisa Pohjola (Helsinki), Ursula Oppens at Chicago’s Northwestern University and Pierre-Laurent Aimard Complete Piano Music at the Musikhochschule in Cologne. Van Raat has won, among other awards, Second Prize and Donemus-Prize (for Contemporary Music) of the Princess Christina Competition (1995); Stipend-Prize Darmstadt during the Internationale Klavierstück • Play I • Jubilees Ferienkurse für Neue Musik in Darmstadt (1998); First Prize of the International Gaudeamus Interpreters Competition (1999); Philip Morris Arts Award (2003); Elisabeth Everts Prize (2005); a Borletti-Buitoni Fellowship (2005); VSCD Classical Music Prize (2005) and the Fortis MeesPierson Award of the Ralph van Raat Concertgebouw, Amsterdam (2006). He appears as a recitalist and as a soloist with orchestras in Europe, the Middle-East, Asia and in the United States. Ralph van Raat has been a Steinway Artist since 2003. www.ralphvanraat.com Photo: Marco Borggreve Maarten van Veen The pianist Maarten van Veen comes from a musical family and started playing the piano at a young age. He studied at the Conservatories of Utrecht and Prague, and completed his studies in Amsterdam at the Sweelinck Conservatory, where he specialised in the performance of contemporary music. He studied with Alwin Bär, Kyoko Hashimoto, Ton Hartsuiker and György Sebök and at the Mozart Academy with Oleg Maisenberg, Ivan Klánsky and David Golub. He was a prize-winner at the Orleans Twentieth Century Piano Music Competition in 1996; he and his brother Jeroen van Veen also won First Prize of the Murray Dranoff Two Piano Competition (United States 1995). In 1998 he worked with Robert Craft on Stravinsky ‘s piano repertoire, and recorded Les Noces with him in London. Van Veen has performed throughout Europe and played with major orchestras and conductors. He founded the International Piano Quartet (four pianos) and has played many concerts in the United States and Canada. In 2003 Van Veen started conducting, with performances in Paris, Amsterdam and Rotterdam. In his search for the authentic Photo: Lex Draijer performance of repertoire from 1850 to 1950, he is Artistic Director of the Hortuse Ensemble (Amsterdam), which performs with historically authentic instruments, mainly on Erard grand pianos. In the United States he is Artistic Advisor to the Dranoff International Two Piano Foundation. www.maartenvanveen.com 8.570542 4 570542 bk Lindberg US 14/7/08 11:25 Page 2 Magnus Lindberg (b. 1958) different rules, but the Movement sections are generally Messiaen. The resulting transformation of sound, Complete Piano Music notated precisely. Besides the playful, free character of however, is hard to compare with any other composer’s the work, the Debussy- and Scriabin-like textural style. The compositional process of the six Jubilees Whoever becomes acquainted with the compositional long durations make up their own structure, separating qualities of Movements form a new element in (2000) started as a single piece written for the occasion style of Magnus Lindberg by hearing his most recent the flow of the music. Lindberg’s musical language. of the 75th birthday of Pierre Boulez, but soon five more piano compositions will be baffled to hear his earlier In Klavierstück (1977), this time scored for one After a compositional silence of two years in which movements were added. Every movement seems to shed works, and vice versa. The Jubilees and the two Etudes, piano only, Lindberg applied similar principles. the composer rethought the direction of his musical a new light onto a basic set of spectral sonorities. The strongly influenced by Debussy, Scriabin and However, the composer by that time had already evolution, the first work with which he reappeared on first movement acts as a kind of exposition for the other Rachmaninov, seem to be in stark contrast to his early developed a more flexible approach to music: with the music scene was Twine (1988). Not less complex five movements, in which many compositional elements strictly modernist works such as the Klavierstück or dynamics indicated for each note, the rhythms were than any of his earlier works, this composition was of the initial movement are explored. It is a telling fact Musik för Två Pianon which seem much closer to the notated more freely, using many fermatas and based for the first time mainly on symmetrical harmonic that Lindberg later orchestrated the score for chamber works of Pierre Boulez and Brian Ferneyhough. On appoggiaturas. Silence in this work, again, is as sequences, in which root notes were actually found in orchestra; even though this is piano music, it is created listening more closely, however, all these works can important as sound. The unusually dramatic first section the middle of the chords. A special pedalling technique from a mind which thinks in terms of the broadest only originate from the same artistic mind of one of of the composition, with fast, angry rumbling passages is prescribed, using the middle pedal of the grand piano. possible orchestral colours and polyphonies. The two Finland’s most important living composers, constantly in the bass register makes way for icy and delicate This pedal sustains the main harmonies of this Etudes (2001 and 2004) are in many ways an extension seeking new ways to create sounds that break silence in flurries of ‘note clouds’ in the midst of floating musical composition, creating a constant harmonic background, of the Jubilees, in which Lindberg experiments with the most powerful way. air, covering up an arching slow, single-note melody as a sublayer to the otherwise melodic lines. Although short form. Pianistically, both etudes share specific Magnus Lindberg came to the immediate attention which forms a sub-layer. this piece bears conceptual relationships to Luciano techniques, such as parallel intervals, with the piano of the world of classical music when he announced his The concept of music in its most pure form, stripped Berio’s Sequenza IV for piano, it has a striking and studies by Liszt, Chopin and Debussy. Very evident in artistic credo as a budding composer in the late 1970s. from any embellishments, is heard in the third highly individual sense of Romantic drama and the piano writing of these works is Lindberg’s own Together with Finnish contemporaries such as Kaija movement of Tre Pianostycke (1978). In this direction, besides echoes of French Impressionism and capabilities as an accomplished pianist. Saariaho, Jouni Kaipainen and Esa-Pekka Salonen, he movement, we hear just a single melody shared between occasional strong bass lines which sound as if they Retrospectively, it is not difficult for anyone willing formed a group with the name “Ears Open!” (“Korvat the two hands of the pianist, with an occasional chord to come straight from an experimental rock group. to keep his or her ears open, to notice that the most Auki!”) in 1977. With the goal of reliving the spirit of provide for a harmonic context. The three pieces, During the twelve years that followed, the recent stylistic achievements by Magnus Lindberg are in modernism and innovation in Finnish musical culture, a written as educational material for piano students, compositional style and ideas of Magnus Lindberg fact much more closely related to his early works than number of striking compositions followed which, in generally seem to form a fingerprint of Lindberg’s later continued to evolve. Seeking more connections with they seem at first hearing. All the seeds had been many different ways, were much more extreme in their style: the use of different sound layers through extreme tradition, all elements of his early works – the planted at an early stage, and the harvest is rich. This musical parameters than the works of any of Lindberg’s dynamics creating a sense of foreground and complexity, the polyphonic approach, the preference for harvest not only fits the (musical) nature of Finland, but teachers, the well-known Einojuhani Rautavaara and background; holding certain keys within a chord after a dramatic development and the importance of harmonic it stretches out far beyond. Paavo Heininen. its attack, revealing a sense of hidden polyphony; colour – came together in a highly individual style Musik för Två Pianon (1976) was one of Lindberg’s rhythmically complex structures; a sense of drama and which, in terms of harmony and gesture, ranges from first pieces, right before this period. At times very last but not least, an acute ear for harmonic colour of Rachmaninov and Liszt to Scriabin, Debussy and Ralph van Raat densely scored for the instruments, the piece is heavily alternating dramatic and spectral qualities. based on mathematical serial procedures. Durations, Play I (1979), again for two pianos, forms a new pitches and dynamics were calculated for each single direction in Lindberg’s compositional career. Although note using specific compositional laws. The result is he was still influenced by the sound of serialist Special gratitude goes to the Finnish Music Information Centre (FIMIC) seemingly objective music, however, with dramatic composers of his time, his approach especially to and Boosey & Hawkes for generously providing the scores for this recording harmonies and aural explosions. Already apparent in rhythm and form became radically more free compared such an early work is Lindberg’s notion of different to his earlier works. On large sheets of paper, groups of This recording was made possible, in part, by the Fortis MeesPierson Award layers of music: when one layer stops, another becomes notes are found in spatial notation.