Thanks to Steve Schwartz for his informative and challenging review.
He writes:

>It may be that Lindberg's scoring is just too thick in the louder
>passages and events move too quickly for me.  If so, it's probably
>just a matter of more listening before stuff falls into place.

It took me a while to appreciate Lindberg, but his music interested me
enough from the outset to make me persevere. At first he overwhelmed me.

>My only adverse criticism is that Lindberg gives very little
>relief.  The scoring tends to over-thickness.  Nevertheless, the piece
>carries you along.

Although the amazing dynamics of the music do carry you along, sometimes
in a whirlwind of fury, it was finally the intricate vertical detail
that won me over to his music. His music demands great vertical clarity
and spatialization and an interpretation lacking these can make his music
appear muddy at the worst, over-thick at the best.

>Maybe this is Salonen's fault.  I've never fallen under his spell.
>I consider him very often slapdash and undifferentiating in performance.
>He's one of those conductors, like Solti, who's so busy digging his
>elbows into your ribs he loses the coherence of the "story."

I have not heard this particular Salonen disc but he has already given
me cause to nurture similar misgivings... very humbly... I think maybe
sometimes he also goes for an overall drift or surge of sound, underdefining
textural relief and losing the wealth. But I don't know. I don't have
enough experience. However, one conductor more than others has definitely
satisfied the demands I seem to be making. Jukka-Pekka Saraste conducts
the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra on Ondine (ODE 911-2) and the three
Lindberg pieces, as rich, personal, well-written and structured as ever,
are "Corrente ll" (1992), "Arena" (1995), and "Feria" (1997). Knussen's
version of "Aura" (1994) on DG is also impressive.

Yet Salonen and Lindberg once worked together, developing an instrumental
performance laboratory, the Toimii Ensemble ('toimii' - 'it works')...

"Aura" is in memoriam Witold Lutoslawski... one of the greats for me...

Regards,

Christine Labroche