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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
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5:4
Category:

Premières

  • FestivalsPremières

    Borealis 2021 (Part 2)

    by 5:4 April 9, 2021 • 11:32
    April 9, 2021 • 11:32

    In addition to the various multimedia / audiovisual events at Borealis 2021, the festival included a number of more conventional concerts. Violinist Ricardo Odriozola’s recital featured a mix of Norwegian, British and US works, two of which, Dániel Péter Biró‘s blink-and-you’ll-miss-it Moshe Went Up and Tim Hodgkinson‘s The Landscape Theory…

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  • FestivalsPremières

    Borealis 2021 (Part 1)

    by 5:4 April 7, 2021 • 14:19
    April 7, 2021 • 14:19

    Norway’s annual Borealis festival is more than just a conventional sequence of concerts primarily concerned with the way music sounds. Its aim is evidently toward a more holistic experience, one in which words and visuals are just as important – often, more so – than what we’re hearing. As such,…

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  • Lent SeriesPremières

    Laura Bowler – Antarctica (World Première)

    by 5:4 April 2, 2021 • 05:00
    April 2, 2021 • 05:00

    To bring this year’s nature-focused Lent Series to a close, i’m turning to a major work by British composer Laura Bowler. Antarctica is a 50-minute multimedia piece for voice and orchestra that constitutes a very personal, and very passionate, response to a variety of issues affecting the natural world. As…

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  • Lent SeriesPremières

    Ute Wassermann & Richard Barrett – Histoires Naturelles (World Première)

    by 5:4 March 29, 2021 • 05:00
    March 29, 2021 • 05:00

    When choosing the theme of nature for this year’s Lent Series, one of the first works i knew i wanted to include was Histoires Naturelles, a collaboration for voice and electronics by Ute Wassermann and Richard Barrett. Not to be confused with Ravel’s song cycle of the same name(!), the…

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  • Lent SeriesPremières

    Olivier Messiaen – Un oiseau des arbres de Vie (Oiseau tui) (World Première)

    by 5:4 March 25, 2021 • 05:00
    March 25, 2021 • 05:00

    For the next work in this year’s nature-themed Lent Series i’m turning to not so much a fully-fleshed, self-contained composition, but something of a miniature curiosity, an outtake saved from the cutting-room floor that’s subsequently been restored. Olivier Messiaen‘s final orchestral work, Éclairs sur l’Au-Delà…, completed in 1991, was a…

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  • Lent SeriesPremières

    Thomas Simaku – La Leggiadra Luna

    by 5:4 March 17, 2021 • 05:00
    March 17, 2021 • 05:00

    My nature-themed Lent Series finally gets to explore the night in La Leggiadra Luna by Albanian composer Thomas Simaku. A choral work composed in 2017, its text is an Italian translation (by Salvatore Quasimodo) of a fragment by the Greek poet Sappho. The words articulate a short reverie marvelling at the…

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  • Lent SeriesPremières

    Unsuk Chin – SPIRA – Concerto for Orchestra (UK Première)

    by 5:4 March 13, 2021 • 05:00
    March 13, 2021 • 05:00

    In The Thin Tree (discussed in my last post), Klaus Lang abstracts ideas, patterns and concepts from nature, and creates a soundworld that develops and grows from an opening 4-note idea. Korean composer Unsuk Chin‘s 2019 orchestral work SPIRA – Concerto for Orchestra does something similar, also being concerned with “the…

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  • Lent SeriesPremières

    Klaus Lang – The Thin Tree (World Première)

    by 5:4 March 9, 2021 • 05:00
    March 9, 2021 • 05:00

    For me the basic idea how to translate from one field of art into another is not to imitate the surface (like programme music) but to find underlying abstract principles and give them an acoustic representation. These words of Klaus Lang (from a lecture he gave titled ‘Boston Beauties’) refers…

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  • Lent SeriesPremières

    Akira Nishimura – Bird Heterophony (UK Première)

    by 5:4 March 5, 2021 • 05:00
    March 5, 2021 • 05:00

    For the next work in this year’s nature-inspired Lent Series, i’m returning to the world of birds. Japanese composer Akira Nishimura‘s 1993 orchestral work Bird Heterophony takes its inspiration, in part at least, from a folk tale from Papua New Guinea, in which a young woman witnesses her brother transformed…

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  • Lent SeriesPremières

    Evelin Seppar – Seesama meri (World Première)

    by 5:4 March 1, 2021 • 05:00
    March 1, 2021 • 05:00

    The next piece i’m exploring in this year’s nature-themed Lent Series is a vocal work by Estonian composer Evelin Seppar. Pretty much all of my experience with Seppar’s music thus far has been vocal: Поля ли мои, поля (Fields, Oh My Fields) made a strong impression at the 2017 Estonian…

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  • Lent SeriesPremières

    Joanna Bailie – To Be Beside the Seaside (World Première)

    by 5:4 February 25, 2021 • 05:00
    February 25, 2021 • 05:00

    For reasons geographical and pandemical, it’s quite a long while since i’ve had the chance to be by the sea. To a limited extent, i’ve been able to do this vicariously through the opening movement of To Be Beside the Seaside, the first orchestral work by English composer Joanna Bailie.…

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  • CommentFestivalsPremières

    Proms 2020: the premières – how you voted

    by 5:4 October 12, 2020 • 12:03
    October 12, 2020 • 12:03

    Many thanks to those of you who voted in this year’s Proms première polls. Not surprisingly, given the circumstances, the turnout was considerably lower than usual, with just under 200 votes cast. Considering that the polls were only open for four weeks this year (instead of the usual 10), and…

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  • FestivalsPremières

    Estonian Music Days 2020 (Part 2)

    by 5:4 September 30, 2020 • 05:00
    September 30, 2020 • 05:00

    In addition to purely electronic music, this year’s Estonian Music Days once again featured many works melding instrumental and electronic elements. The most potent collision of old and new technology came at the Arvo Pärt Centre on Saturday afternoon, where Anna-Liisa Eller’s kannel (the traditional Estonian instrument, a form of…

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  • FestivalsPremières

    Estonian Music Days 2020 (Part 1)

    by 5:4 September 25, 2020 • 14:11
    September 25, 2020 • 14:11

    The last couple of years have been unusual for the Estonian Music Days. In 2019 the festival was bloated beyond all recognition and sense due to its assimilation into the World Music Days, making for a horribly hectic and exhausting experience. In 2020, for reasons pandemical, it was the opposite,…

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  • FestivalsPremières

    Proms 2020

    by 5:4 September 13, 2020 • 16:43
    September 13, 2020 • 16:43

    Like most of this year’s festivals the 2020 Proms was cancelled due to the pandemic, with the BBC offering a selection of ‘greatest hits’ from their Proms archive. That itself was pretty interesting, inasmuch as (just like with their broadcasts of Choral Evensong) it revealed how one year’s festival is…

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  • FestivalsPremières

    Forum Wallis 2020 (Part 2)

    by 5:4 August 24, 2020 • 16:37
    August 24, 2020 • 16:37

    As was the case at last year’s festival, most of the concerts at Forum Wallis 2020 focused on works for ensemble. However, while in 2019 the majority of performances involved larger numbers of players, due to the pandemic almost all of the pieces this year were for small chamber groupings,…

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  • Lent SeriesPremières

    John Tavener – Flood of Beauty (World Première)

    by 5:4 April 9, 2020 • 05:00
    April 9, 2020 • 05:00

    i’m bringing this year’s Lent Series to an end with the last large-scale work by one of Britain’s most strange and singular composers, John Tavener. Tavener died in November 2013, and in some respects it would be hard to go out with a bigger bang than with Flood of Beauty…

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  • Lent SeriesPremières

    Harrison Birtwistle – Semper Dowland, semper dolens (World Première)

    by 5:4 March 26, 2020 • 05:00
    March 26, 2020 • 05:00

    Last autumn, when i began thinking about this Lent Series, one of the first works i intended to include was by Harrison Birtwistle, his opera The Last Supper. However, in light of the events that have transpired in the last couple of months, and which now overshadow everything, i’m instead…

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  • Lent SeriesPremières

    Rebecca Saunders – Yes (UK Première)

    by 5:4 March 8, 2020 • 05:00
    March 8, 2020 • 05:00

    One of the foci of this year’s Lent Series exploring larger-scale works is where time and material become convoluted. In the case of the next work i’m exploring, this kind of convolution applies not only to the music but also to the text that inspired it. Yes by Rebecca Saunders…

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  • FestivalsPremières

    Dark Music Days 2020 (Part 2)

    by 5:4 February 9, 2020 • 08:01
    February 9, 2020 • 08:01

    As i mentioned previously, allusions to or evocations of nature were few and far between at this year’s Dark Music Days, indicating the strength and diversity of Iceland’s more searching, abstract approach to composition. This seemed to be precisely the point of Sigurður Árni Jónsson’s Illusion of Explanatory Depth, premièred…

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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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