Salonen: Wing On Wing, Dichotomie
Esa-Pekka Salonen
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| Name | Artist | Time | Price | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Foreign Bodies | Esa-Pekka Salonen & The Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra | -- | Work Only | View In iTunes |
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1 Part I: Body Language
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Esa-Pekka Salonen & The Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra | 9:52 | Work Only | View In iTunes | |
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2 Part II: Language
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Esa-Pekka Salonen & The Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra | 6:03 | $0.99 | View In iTunes | |
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3 Part III: Dance
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Esa-Pekka Salonen & The Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra | 3:38 | $0.99 | View In iTunes | |
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4 |
Wing On Wing | Anu Komsi, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Pia Komsi & The Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra | 25:56 | Work Only | View In iTunes |
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5 |
Insomnia | Esa-Pekka Salonen & The Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra | 21:14 | Work Only | View In iTunes |
| 4 | Dichotomie | Yefim Bronfman | -- | Work Only | View In iTunes |
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6 I. Mécanisme (Bonus Track)
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Yefim Bronfman | 9:46 | Work Only | View In iTunes | |
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7 II. Organisme (Bonus Track)
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Yefim Bronfman | 7:49 | Work Only | View In iTunes |
| Total: 7 Songs |
Customer Reviews
Exhilarating!
Esa-Pekka Salonen overcame a prickly Modernist influence with his beautiful 1991 symphonic work, LA Variations, and his music has been beautiful ever since. So far, though, he has peaked with the works in this compilation, which were completed between 2001 and 2004.
Before 2001 and after 2004, Salonen's music takes the prettiest sequences of notes he can summon, then repeats, rotates, and inverts them in regular minimalist fashion. It surprises and entertains on a note-by-note basis, but doesn't make many bold emotional statements. By contrast, you'd be hard-pressed not to catch the comedic chaos that opens the first movement of Foreign Bodies, the slow-boiling moodiness that gives way to kinetic redemption in Wing on Wing, or the epic paranoia that plays out in Insomnia. The latter two pieces in particular are rather violent (despite starting out softly, as the meager iTunes samples show) and took me a few listens to fully appreciate. After that, they stuck to my heart and soul.
At its core, this is old-fashioned, spine-tingling, thoroughly tonal music, and is thus stuck in a very awkward position: It's not calm enough for the casual Tchaikovsky listener, nor is it screechy or complicated enough for the modern-classical elitist. (It's worth noting that Salonen joined the LA Philharmonic partly because of his native Europe's hostile musical climate.) In fact, the satisfying structure and clearly communicated mood swings in each piece suggest that Salonen would make a great film composer, if only he'd been alive early enough to peak in the 1970s. Given today's mundane "thrillers," obtuse "dramas," and concepts of film music as awkwardly paced sonic filler, perhaps he should stay in the concert halls.
With that in mind, Salonen's Wing on Wing is one of the most colorful classical albums to grace this young twenty-first century. If you have a bone in your body that loves Bernard Herrmann, John Adams, John Williams, or Sergei Prokofiev -- to name a few comparable talents -- don't think twice. Buy it.
(Do think twice about buying it from iTunes, though. If you're interested in Salonen's self-titled 2008 compilation and you buy Wing on Wing here, you'll be paying for two copies of Dichotomie, the piano composition that laid the groundwork for Foreign Bodies.)
Salonen is as good a composer as he is a conductor.
Wow. I didn't know that E-P S could compose like that. It sorta reminds me of Bartok. Still. A Finnish conductor playing a Finnish orchestra playing a Finnish composition. I love it.
What?
Why is Track 6 Dichotomie #1 the same as Track #1 Foreign Bodies. The only diffrence is that track 6 is a piano reduced verson. But other than that this is well worth the money.
Biography
Born: June 30, 1958 in Helsinki, Finland
Genre: Classical
Years Active: '70s, '80s, '90s, '00s, '10s
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