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  • About
  • Patrons
  • The Lists
    • List of compositions reviewed on 5:4
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    • Festivals reviewed on 5:4
    • Best Albums of the Years
    • The Proms premières – Poll results
    • Complete list of ratings
  • Mixtapes, etc.
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5:4
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Concerts

  • ConcertsPremières

    CBSO Centre, Birmingham: BCMG – Migrating Sounds

    by 5:4 December 16, 2019 • 11:45
    December 16, 2019 • 11:45

    i’m going to start with an observation, a complaint and a plea. Yesterday evening’s concert given by Birmingham Contemporary Music Group featured four pieces of music that together lasted one hour and two minutes. The actual concert lasted more than double that length. It continues a trend that appears to…

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  • Concerts

    Centrala, Birmingham: Illuminate Women’s Music

    by 5:4 October 17, 2019 • 15:23
    October 17, 2019 • 15:23

    In Birmingham last Saturday i caught the latest concert in the current season by Illuminate Women’s Music, touring six UK towns between September and November. As the name implies, the purpose of Illuminate Women’s Music is to shine a light on women composers and performers, featuring a mixture of new…

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  • ConcertsPremières

    King’s Place, London: Theatre of Voices – Baltic Voices

    by 5:4 October 4, 2019 • 11:16
    October 4, 2019 • 11:16

    Personality and connection tend to go hand in hand. This is just as true for getting to know a person as it is for getting to know a piece of music: we’re drawn towards or pushed away according to the ways in which its personality – its qualities and characteristics,…

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  • ConcertsPremières

    CBSO Centre, Birmingham: BCMG – Celebrating Sir Harrison Birtwistle at 85

    by 5:4 September 25, 2019 • 12:54
    September 25, 2019 • 12:54

    The latest concert given by Birmingham Contemporary Music Group, last Sunday, was an extended celebration for the 85th birthday of Britain’s most radical musical octogenarian, Harrison Birtwistle. In fact, the occasion was marked by not one but two back-to-back concerts, the first of which gave prominence to performers taking part…

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  • ConcertsFestivals

    Summartónar 2019 (Part 2)

    by 5:4 August 12, 2019 • 15:56
    August 12, 2019 • 15:56

    As i previously remarked, one of the most (and one of the only) disappointing things about my first experience of the Faroe Islands’ Summartónar festival was the almost complete lack of music by Faroese composers. The inclusion of Kristian Blak – artistic director of the festival – mitigated that to…

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  • ConcertsFestivals

    Summartónar 2019 (Part 1)

    by 5:4 August 7, 2019 • 16:26
    August 7, 2019 • 16:26

    When did you last listen to music from the Faroe Islands? Who’s your favourite Faroese composer or group? For many, i suspect, those questions would likely be impossible to answer, and until recently – with the big exception of Eivør, one of my very favourite singers – i would have been…

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  • ConcertsPremières

    St Mary’s Church, Penzance: Kevos – Old Kings in Exile

    by 5:4 June 4, 2019 • 13:22
    June 4, 2019 • 13:22

    Last weekend i made a pilgrimage to the far south-west of England to catch the latest concert given by (as far as i can tell) Cornwall’s one and only contemporary music ensemble, Kevos. The title of the concert, named after one of the works being performed, Old Kings in Exile,…

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  • ConcertsFestivalsPremières

    Only Connect 2019 (Part 2)

    by 5:4 May 31, 2019 • 15:18
    May 31, 2019 • 15:18

    The lack of ostentation in most of the music at this year’s Only Connect festival was perhaps nowhere more conspicuous than in a concert last Saturday devoted to French composer Pascale Criton. Performed by violinist Silvia Tarozzi, cellist Deborah Walker and singers Stine Janvin Joh, Signe Irene Stangborli Time and…

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  • ConcertsFestivalsPremières

    Only Connect 2019 (Part 1)

    by 5:4 May 29, 2019 • 14:41
    May 29, 2019 • 14:41

    There’s something absolutely right about the bringing together of Norway’s Only Connect – a festival that, as its name implies, encourages one to question (inter)connections between ostensibly disparate musics – with Tectonics, Ilan Volkov’s peripatetic festival the name of which evokes fundamental, underlying bedrocks that continually meet, connect and rupture.…

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  • ConcertsFestivalsPremières

    World Music Days 2019, Estonia (Part 4)

    by 5:4 May 20, 2019 • 15:42
    May 20, 2019 • 15:42

    Aside from the chamber concerts, by far the most dominant force at this year’s World Music Days in Estonia was choral music. i’ve written before of my admiration of Estonia’s choral tradition – both the standard of its choirs (including, in my view, two of the very best in the…

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  • ConcertsFestivalsPremières

    World Music Days 2019, Estonia (Part 3)

    by 5:4 May 17, 2019 • 13:08
    May 17, 2019 • 13:08

    This year’s World Music Days featured a substantial amount of music involving electronics. That being said, relatively few of the fixed media works made as strong an impression as those combining electronics with acoustic instruments. A notable exception was Marianna Liik‘s Mets [Forest], one of several pieces during the festival…

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  • ConcertsFestivalsPremières

    World Music Days 2019, Estonia (Part 2)

    by 5:4 May 15, 2019 • 15:11
    May 15, 2019 • 15:11

    The one opportunity to hear music for full orchestra at this year’s World Music Days took place on Friday evening at the Estonia Concert Hall, performed by the Estonian National Symphony Orchestra conducted by Olari Elts. The Estonian Music Days’ tradition of recent years has been to begin the Friday…

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  • ConcertsFestivalsPremières

    World Music Days 2019, Estonia (Part 1)

    by 5:4 May 13, 2019 • 18:18
    May 13, 2019 • 18:18

    At the northernmost edge of Tallinn, looking out over the Baltic Sea towards Finland, is a huge concrete edifice called the Linnahall. Built during the Soviet occupation, it was constructed as part of the USSR’s hosting of the 1980 Olympic Games, as a coastal hub for the boating events. It’s…

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  • ConcertsPremières

    CBSO Centre, Birmingham: BCMG – Murmurs

    by 5:4 March 24, 2019 • 06:00
    March 24, 2019 • 06:00

    Since the appointment of Stephan Meier as artistic director in 2016, it’s been good to see Birmingham Contemporary Music Group starting to move beyond the relative safety that typified its mainstream-centric vision in preceding years. The group’s most recent concert, last Thursday, featured two British works alongside music by composers…

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  • ConcertsPremières

    National Maritime Museum, London: Hollie Harding – Melting, Shifting, Liquid World (World Première)

    by 5:4 March 21, 2019 • 17:16
    March 21, 2019 • 17:16

    Contemporary music taking place in unconventional places and spaces has to a large extent become the new normal, as has the concomitant tendency for composers to mould their creativity into site-specific works. A striking example of this took place last Saturday at the National Maritime Museum in London, for the…

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  • ConcertsFestivalsPremières

    Borealis 2019 (Part 2)

    by 5:4 March 19, 2019 • 13:47
    March 19, 2019 • 13:47

    Nearly but not quite everything that took place at this year’s Borealis festival was light years away from the world of conventional concert performances. The most notable exception to this was the first event i attended, at the Nykirken on Friday evening, given by Sjøforsvarets musikkorps, the Norwegian Naval Forces…

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  • ConcertsFestivalsPremières

    Borealis 2019 (Part 1)

    by 5:4 March 15, 2019 • 19:39
    March 15, 2019 • 19:39

    “En festival for eksperimentall musikk”. That’s the strapline for arguably Norway’s most progressive contemporary music festival, Borealis, some of which i was fortunate to attend in Bergen last week. As straplines go it’s almost laughably simple, yet its implications turned out to be impressively far-reaching. The key word, of course,…

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  • ConcertsFestivalsPremières

    Dark Music Days 2019: Sound Mass; Reykjavik Chamber Orchestra

    by 5:4 February 9, 2019 • 15:11
    February 9, 2019 • 15:11

    The final day of Iceland’s 2019 Dark Music Days festival was characterised by a back-and-forth between prosaic and profound. The penultimate concert i attended, titled ‘Sound Mass’, was an extreme case in point. Once again located in Harpa’s Kaldalón Hall, of the three works performed it was hard to do…

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  • ConcertsFestivalsPremières

    Dark Music Days 2019: Caput Ensemble; Nordic Affect & Maja S K Ratkje

    by 5:4 February 8, 2019 • 14:58
    February 8, 2019 • 14:58

    Last Friday evening at the Dark Music Days we were back within Harpa’s Kaldalón hall (the cube-shaped space of which was disconcertingly impressive every time i entered it) for a concert given by a group new to me, Caput Ensemble, directed by Guðni Franzson. Having been bemused the previous day at…

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  • ConcertsFestivalsPremières

    Dark Music Days 2019: Neko3; Heiða Árnadóttir

    by 5:4 February 7, 2019 • 19:42
    February 7, 2019 • 19:42

    One of the more unconventional performances at this year’s Dark Music Days took place last Thursday evening in the Hörpuhorn, an open exhibition space in the Harpa concert hall complex. It was given by the Copenhagen-based ensemble Neko3, a quartet comprising two percussionists (Kalle Hakosalo and Lorenzo Colombo), a keyboardist (Fei…

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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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