Magnus Lindberg was born in Helsinki in 1958. Following piano studies, he entered the Sibelius Academy where his composition teachers included Einojuhani Rautavaara and Paavo Heininen. The latter encouraged his pupils to look beyond the prevailing Finnish conservative and nationalist aesthetics, and to explore the works of the European avant-garde. This led around 1980 to the founding of the informal grouping known as the Ears Open Society including Lindberg and his contemporaries Eero Hämeeniemi, Jouni Kaipainen, Kaija Saariaho and Esa-Pekka Salonen, which aimed to encourage a greater awareness of mainstream modernism.
His compositional breakthrough came with two large-scale works, Action-Situation-Signification (1982) and Kraft (1983-1985), which were inextricably linked with his founding with Salonen of the experimental Toimii Ensemble. His works at this time combined experimentalism, complexity and primitivism, working with extremes of musical material. During the late 1980s his music transformed itself towards a new modernist classicism, in which many of the communicative ingredients of a vibrant musical language (harmony, rhythm, counterpoint, melody) were re-interpreted afresh for the post-serial era.
Lindberg’s output has positioned him at the forefront of orchestral composition, including the concert-opener Feria (1997), large-scale statements such as Fresco (1997), Cantigas (1999), Concerto for Orchestra (2002-2003) and Sculpture (2005), and concertos for clarinet (2002), two for violin (2006 and 2015) and two for cello (1999 and 2013).
Magnus Lindberg was composer-in-residence of the New York Philharmonic between 2009 and 2012, with new works including Al Largo for orchestra and Piano Concerto No. 2 premiered by Yefim Bronfman. Recent works have included Tempus fugit, commissioned by the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra to celebrate the centenary of Finnish Independence in 2017, Serenades for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Piano Concerto No. 3 premiered by Yuja Wang and the San Francisco Symphony under Esa-Pekka Salonen in October 2022.
