Metal Work - Magnus Lindberg | Flemming Valmundsson & Tanel Eiko Novikov

From my Master's exam from The Royal Danish Academy of Music 05.06.23

From the concert program:
One of the more impactful collaborations in the accordion world is the co-efforts of Matti Rantanen and Magnus Lindberg. The ways that Lindberg viewed the instrument widened the scope of its capabilities, be it its razor sharp articulation like metal percussion, or its lyrical and polyphonic potential which parred a wind quintet. Lindberg's reimaginations of the instrument, in the hands of Rantanen, fruited two pieces, "Metal Work" (1984) for accordion and percussion and "Jeux d'Anches"(1990) for solo accordion, but Jeux d'Anches is now an inescapable staple and milestone in the solo accordion repertoire.
The former is not performed as frequently, as it requires both a very large collection of percussion instruments, and an incredible dedication of the performers to manage to put the piece together and play it, as it is very dense and jampacked with difficult passages for both players. Through smashing, hammering, smelting, honing and all sorts of blacksmithery, the metal reeds of the accordion become a part of the collection of metal instruments which make up the setup of the piece. The vast energy potential in the piece produces a lot of jarring clashes, unbearable heat, blinding sparks, magmatic explosions, and ear-ringing distortion, before the metals all ultimately fuse and coagulate by the end of the piece.
I came to find this piece after making a drunken pact with a percussionist (who was equally admirable and intimidating to me) to play together. This was very exciting and frightening to me, as even if we shared an aesthetic and dedication, he was far above my playing level. To match that power-dynamic, he peer-pressured me into playing the most difficult piece we managed to find. A year later of this piece looming over me, being the most difficult piece I had read in my life at this point by a huge margin , I managed to step up to the challenge and perform it with him.
To match the adrenaline levels of my first time playing this, and to fuel the energy potential of the piece, I lucked out in finding an overly-talented percussionist who was up to the task of playing this piece with me on my exam, even if the piece is extremely far off his specialty. A huge thanks and infinite respect to Tanel Eiko Novikov for wanting and daring to dive into this with me.

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