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    • List of compositions reviewed on 5:4
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  • About
  • Patrons
  • The Lists
    • List of compositions reviewed on 5:4
    • List of albums and EPs reviewed on 5:4
    • Festivals reviewed on 5:4
    • Best Albums of the Years
    • The Proms premières – Poll results
    • Complete list of ratings
  • Mixtapes, etc.
  • Contact
    • Contact Form
    • Submission Contact Form
5:4
Category:

20th Century

  • 20th CenturyCD/Digital releases

    all that dust: music by Morton Feldman, Matthew Shlomowitz, Séverine Ballon, Milton Babbitt and Luigi Nono

    by 5:4 October 12, 2018 • 11:57
    October 12, 2018 • 11:57

    The launching of a new label devoted to contemporary music is something to celebrate, and the newest kid on the block is all that dust, the brainchild of composer Newton Armstrong, soprano Juliet Fraser and pianist Mark Knoop. The label’s first five releases have recently appeared, and there are a…

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  • 19th Century20th CenturyConcerts

    Symphony Hall, Birmingham: Iris ter Schiphorst, Richard Strauss, Gustav Holst

    by 5:4 August 6, 2016 • 12:41
    August 6, 2016 • 12:41

    i had many reasons for wanting to hear last night’s National Youth Orchestra concert at Symphony Hall in Birmingham, not least of which was simply to hear NYO in action again. They are an astonishing orchestra, not merely able but mature, sensitive and abounding in talent; their rendition of Messiaen’s Turangalîla-Symphonie a few…

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  • 20th Century

    George Crumb – Songs, Drones and Refrains of Death

    by 5:4 October 30, 2014 • 18:46
    October 30, 2014 • 18:46

    As it’s Hallowe’en, with All Saints’ and All Souls’ Days closely following (and Remembrance Day a little after that), i’m going to tap into the prevailing temporal undertone and explore a few pieces concerned one way or another with the subject of death. To begin, a piece that is wholeheartedly…

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  • 20th CenturyBlasts from the Past

    Blasts from the Past: Aldo Clementi – Madrigale

    by 5:4 October 18, 2014 • 11:28
    October 18, 2014 • 11:28

    My next blast from the past is a rather lovely work by the Italian composer Aldo Clementi, who died in 2011. Clementi’s interest in both bell-type sounds (music boxes, carillons, etc.) and the notion of self-generating music can be heard to good effect in Madrigale, composed 35 years ago, in…

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  • 20th CenturyPremières

    Morton Feldman – The Swallows of Salangan (European Première)

    by 5:4 June 21, 2014 • 19:19
    June 21, 2014 • 19:19

    One of the most beguiling and enigmatic premières i’ve encountered in recent times took place at Birmingham’s Frontiers Festival in March, heard for the first time outside the USA no fewer than 54 years after its composition. There doesn’t seem to be any good reason for this considerable feat of…

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  • 20th CenturyBlasts from the Past

    Blasts from the Past: György Ligeti – Poème symphonique

    by 5:4 June 14, 2014 • 16:05
    June 14, 2014 • 16:05

    A couple of days ago marked the eighth anniversary of the death of Hungarian composer György Ligeti. To mark the event, and also begin a new occasional series on 5:4, i’d like to take a brief look back at one of the more enigmatic works of Ligeti’s career. Poème symphonique…

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  • 20th CenturyFeatured Artists

    Ferneyhough Week – Missa Brevis

    by 5:4 January 17, 2013 • 09:25
    January 17, 2013 • 09:25

    From one of Brian Ferneyhough’s less familiar works i’m turning today to one of the best known, the Missa Brevis, composed in 1969. The very fact that Ferneyhough turned to a form and text so embedded in the development and consciousness of western music, so infused with associations, may seem…

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  • 20th CenturyFeatured ArtistsThematic series

    Ferneyhough Week – Prometheus

    by 5:4 January 16, 2013 • 09:48
    January 16, 2013 • 09:48

    Today i’m going to focus on a relatively early work of Ferneyhough’s, Prometheus for wind sextet, composed in 1967. It’s not a piece that’s performed terribly often, nor is there much information about it, i suspect in part due to how early it was composed (when Ferneyhough was just 24…

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  • 20th CenturyFeatured ArtistsThematic series

    Ferneyhough Week – La terre est un homme

    by 5:4 January 14, 2013 • 15:08
    January 14, 2013 • 15:08

    This week sees the 70th birthday of one of the UK’s most significant composers, Brian Ferneyhough. For nearly fifty years, his music has been thrilling and discombobulating audiences in not entirely equal measure, pursuing his compositional goals with ruthless, painstaking rigour. As has long been the case with its most…

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  • 20th CenturyCommemorations

    In Memoriam: Elliott Carter – Heart, not so heavy as mine

    by 5:4 November 6, 2012 • 14:16
    November 6, 2012 • 14:16

    Words by E. E. Cummings that came to mind last night following the first reports of the death of Elliott Carter, at the age of 103. i know i wasn’t alone in feeling an intensely heavy sadness at the news; one tended to think Carter was so single-mindedly alive that…

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  • 20th CenturyCommemorations

    In Memoriam: Hans Werner Henze – Symphony No. 5

    by 5:4 October 28, 2012 • 15:53
    October 28, 2012 • 15:53

    Yesterday brought the very sad news that the composer Hans Werner Henze has died. It’s not for me to attempt an obituary—i only know a little of Henze’s life, and have only really scratched the surface of his considerable output—but by way of a small tribute, here’s a performance of…

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  • 20th CenturyCommemorations

    Conlon Nancarrow (arr. Yvar Mikhashoff) – Study No. 7

    by 5:4 October 27, 2012 • 10:26
    October 27, 2012 • 10:26

    Today is the 100th anniverary of the birth of North America’s most singularly unorthodox composer, Conlon Nancarrow. Born in Arkansas but spending most of his life in Mexico, Nancarrow’s legacy is dominated by the large number of studies he composed for the player piano. His compositional practice was a punctilious…

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  • 20th CenturyCommemorationsPremières

    Tōru Takemitsu – From me flows what you call time (UK Première)

    by 5:4 October 8, 2012 • 12:33
    October 8, 2012 • 12:33

    It was on this day, in 1930, that one of my favourite composers, the great Tōru Takemitsu, was born. So to mark what would have been his 82nd birthday, here’s one of his most spectacular orchestral works, the wonderfully-named From me flows what you call time. The title is taken…

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  • 20th CenturyFestivalsPremières

    Proms 2012: Rued Langgaard – Symphony No. 11 ‘Ixion’; Pelle Gudmundsen-Holmgreen – Incontri (UK Premières)

    by 5:4 August 4, 2012 • 08:10
    August 4, 2012 • 08:10

    In a change to the planned schedule (due to Benedict Mason not having finished his new work meld), last Saturday’s Prom featured two UK premières, both by composers rarely heard on these shores. Difficult pieces—but for different reasons—they were given marvellously lucid performances by the BBC Symphony Orchestra, conducted by…

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  • 20th CenturyAnniversariesCommemorations

    Jehan Alain – Trois Danses

    by 5:4 June 20, 2012 • 21:52
    June 20, 2012 • 21:52

    Today marks the anniversary of the death of Jehan Alain, one of the most interesting and enigmatic French composers of the first half of the twentieth century. To me, Alain’s unique musical sensibility draws comparison with two other composers; the free-spirited, swirling exoticism and spontaneous evocations of feeling suggest Alexander…

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Nils Henrik Asheim: Lydkilder Sound and Image: Aesthetics and Practices Music Beyond Airports: appraising ambient music Simon Cummings | 間 Studies vol. 6

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