Magnus Lindberg had a big success in 2006 with his Violin Concerto No 1, a succinct, glittery piece for the eloquent soloist and chamber orchestra. Now he has written No 2 and, while it is a bigger beast, it has perhaps less impact on a first listen. As premiered here by Frank Peter Zimmermann, with Jaap van Zweden conducting the London Philharmonic Orchestra – for which Lindberg is composer in residence – the piece couldn’t seem to decide quite what it was.
On one hand, it’s a throwback to the big romantic-era concerto, with lush orchestral forces that threaten to subsume the soloist and a cadenza that seems to use every technique a 19th-century violinist might have had available. The harmonic language is similarly old fashioned, perfumed even, continuing Lindberg’s trajectory away from overt modernism. On the other, there is little sense of dialogue between the violin and the orchestra, and no big solo tune. The grand climax is purely orchestral, and the violin is restless, spending much of the piece tracing relentless spirals that loop upwards again and again.
Perhaps Lindberg is also referencing the baroque period. The piece could be read as a kind of collision between, say, Telemann and Brahms. The elusiveness of identity could be the point. Whatever the answer, one wished Lindberg had made more of the glowing sonorities of the very beginning and the very end, and that the brilliant but impassive Zimmermann had offered a bit more old-school showmanship.
Alongside this, Van Zweden had presented Dutch composer Johan Wagenaar’s 1905 overture Cyrano de Bergerac, little heard this side of the polders – a sumptuous swashbuckle of a piece that shamelessly rips off Strauss’s Don Juan. The true original on the programme was Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony, which under Van Zweden’s rather careful introduction properly took off in the finale.
