MAGNUS LINDBERG (b.1958): Sculpture for Orchestra, Campana in aria for Horn and Orchestra, Concerto for Orchestra.

Description: Sculpture was commissioned for the opening of Frank Gehry's Disney Hall in Los Angeles and appropriately, the music is bold and adventurous, conceived on a grand scale, and suggests flowing, organic shapes in exquisite balance. A very large orchestra, handled with the composer's customary virtuosity, emphasizes darker-hued timbres in a vocabulary that remains grounded in harmonically sumptuous tonality. Campana in aria is a virtuosic concertante work for solo horn (supported and echoed by two antiphonally placed orchestral horns), dedicated to Esa-Pekka Salonen, who started his career as a horn player. The piece is colorful, confident and heroic in character. The half-hour orchestral concerto is in five contrasting sections, played without a break. The first is monumental, the second a somber slow movement, the third divides the orchestra into chamber-music ensembles emphasizing the breadth of colors available within the orchestra (as one might expect from this composer, the range is very broad and deftly displayed); there follows a scherzo and a triumphant finale, ending in very tonal tranquility. Esa Tapani (horn), Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra; Sakari Oramo.