ANDERS ELIASSON (b.1947): Concerto for Violin, Piano and Orchestra, Sinfonia per archi.

Description: These works achieve the unusual feat of sounding completely original while remaining apparently familiar in idiom (in the concerto, Martinu seems to meet Pettersson). The composer's idiom is tonal throughout, but in a constantly evolving, unstable fashion that at any given moment may suggest a particular modality but never stays there long enough to establish a definite tonal center. Throughout the overriding impression is of energy - pent up in episodes of calm and introspection; hectically explosive in the vigorous outer movements of the concerto, for instance. Eliasson's use of his soloists in this work is also reassuringly familiar; this is a bold vehicle for virtuosic display and decisive, thoughtful argument from the principal characters in a drama played out in a lively narrative that seems to end, in a final adagio epilogue, in a spirit of reconciliation and summing-up. From its opening gesture, the Sinfonia builds an atmosphere of tension - Eliasson's treatment of tonal relationships, though quite different from Nielsen's, is similarly effective in ratcheting up a sense of mounting energy, which when finally released is equally devastating or cathartic. Ulf Wallin (violin), Roland Pöntinen (piano), Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra; Johannes Gustavsson.