Magnus Lindberg

Magnus Lindberg was born in Helsinki in 1958. He studied the piano and then composition at the Sibelius Academy, where his teachers included Einojuhani Rautavaara and Paavo Heininen, and continued his studies in Paris with Vinko Globokar and Gérard Grisey. Around 1980 he was one of the young Finnish musicians, with Kaija Saariaho and Esa-Pekka Salonen, who formed the Ears Open Society to make modernist music better known in Finland, and he founded the experimental ensemble Toimii, in which he played himself. His breakthrough came with ‘Kraft’ (1983-85), a huge and abrasive score for that ensemble and orchestra. From the late 1980s his style changed, becoming more concerned with harmony and orchestral colour. He has written mostly for orchestra, including concertos for clarinet, violin, cello and piano. He was composer-in-residence of the New York Philharmonic from 2009 to 2012 and of the London Philharmonic Orchestra from 2014 to 2017.