Lindberg's Clarinet Concerto

One of the most amazing clarinet concerto pieces ever. The use of the clarinet in this piece is amazing, and the piece in itself is most lyrical and exciting

YouTube - Clariperu: Kari Kriikku in rehearsal

Unfortunately that's the only video of it I could find on youtube, and it doesn't do it any justice at all (despite the player being good, as far as I can read..). But off you go at amazon/itunes and listen to the samples!

Ahhh, awesome piece! I heard this quite some time ago, I should have another go! I guess I'll go listen to it in my local CD store.

Speaking of amazing clarinet "concertos": Last Saturday I heard the world premiere of Wolfgang Rihm's "Male über Male II" for clarinet and ensemble (with Jörg Widman playing the clarinet) at the Wittener Tage für Neue Kammermusik. It blew my socks off. Just terrific (both the composition and the performance).

I'm pretty sure I remember a very exciting performance of this at the Ulster Hall, but I can't say I know the piece properly.

I love this concerto! I was in owe the first time I heard it. Great Clarinet writing.
Love it!

I really like Rihm - I wish I was there to hear the performance

Live performances of contemporary music totally beat the shit out of the recordings. I think it's a lot different watching the players engaging with a contemporary score than with a classical/romantic/whatever score and the feeling you get from watching players play contemporary music is a lot different too, apart from the music itself.

I am very worried about Magnus Lindberg's recent output. I adore the spiky, frenetic modernism of his early pieces such as the masterpieces Kraft and Kinetics, but his recent works including the clarinet concerto show a stylistic shift away from that highly original modernist language towards a simpler and more conservative language, a more diatonic harmonic idiom and neo-romantic gestures... Of course Lindberg's compositional craftmanship and brilliant orchestration are still impressive, but nonetheless I found the clarinet concerto quite disappointing, because of its mellow and diatonic idiom. I wonder, is Lindberg losing his genius?

some people mellow with age, gianluca.

Same can be said for Penderecki. His later works are nothing compared to his earlier works of the 60s and 70s. They do sound quite more "romantic", yet still retain a character of modernism and elements from his earlier compositions.

Really, it depends on the person, I think. Birtwistle hasn't found a need for writing music like that, for example, but on the other hand, it can be said that Birtwistle has found a whole new way of composing in general.