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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
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5:4
Category:

Premières

  • ConcertsFestivalsPremières

    HCMF 2018: Divertimento Ensemble, Stockhausen: Oktophonie

    by 5:4 November 24, 2018 • 12:19
    November 24, 2018 • 12:19

    When writing about United Instruments of Lucilin’s concert last Tuesday i noted how the only thing the four works they played had in common was their complete dissimilarity to each other. Yesterday evening, in St Paul’s Hall, we experienced the opposite: four pieces of Italian music performed by Divertimento Ensemble…

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  • ConcertsFestivalsPremières

    HCMF 2018: A History of the Voice, Christian Marclay + Okkyung Lee, Quatuor Bozzini

    by 5:4 November 23, 2018 • 13:30
    November 23, 2018 • 13:30

    If there’s one thing guaranteed to generate a load of pre-festival buzz, it’s a major new work by Jennifer Walshe. In recent years, while i’ve admired the invention and audacity of Walshe’s large-scale compositions – 2014’s The Total Mountain and EVERYTHING IS IMPORTANT, performed at HCMF two years ago –…

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  • ConcertsFestivalsPremières

    HCMF 2018: HISS@10, Kudzu, Fast Gold Butterflies

    by 5:4 November 22, 2018 • 14:46
    November 22, 2018 • 14:46

    Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival. Of those four words, i’d hazard to suggest that the most important is the third one, music. What exactly constitutes ‘music’ is a good question, and one of HCMF’s strengths is the way it’s prepared to challenge and probe what that word connotes and how it…

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  • ConcertsFestivalsPremières

    HCMF 2018: United Instruments of Lucilin, Harriet

    by 5:4 November 21, 2018 • 12:48
    November 21, 2018 • 12:48

    Considering the lengths to which curators and ensembles often go to create deep and meaningful connections between the works featured in a concert, yesterday’s performance by Luxembourg ensemble United Instruments of Lucilin was a refreshing break from the norm. The only thing the four pieces had in common was their…

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  • ConcertsFestivalsPremières

    HCMF 2018: Ensemble Musikfabrik, Christian Marclay: Investigations

    by 5:4 November 19, 2018 • 00:27
    November 19, 2018 • 00:27

    It’s not unusual, considering HCMF’s openness to stepping outside the bounds of convention, for a new work at the festival to have to overcome how extraordinary it is. That was certainly the case in Huddersfield Town Hall yesterday afternoon, where Christian Marclay‘s Investigations received its world première. It wasn’t just…

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  • ConcertsFestivalsPremières

    HCMF 2018: Duo Gelland, Ensemble Mosaik

    by 5:4 November 18, 2018 • 15:04
    November 18, 2018 • 15:04

    Yesterday’s late evening concert at HCMF, given by Ensemble Mosaik in Bates Mill, presented the first UK performance of Enno Poppe‘s Rundfunk. There are ways in which the piece is remarkable, and ways in which it isn’t. What certainly is remarkable – and the more i’ve thought about this the…

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  • ConcertsFestivalsPremières

    HCMF 2018: Ensemble Musikfabrik, Christian Marclay: To be continued

    by 5:4 November 17, 2018 • 19:47
    November 17, 2018 • 19:47

    On the opening night of last year’s Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, i remember pondering about the shift in tactic regarding the festival’s opening gambit. In 2017, there was a move away from the full-throttle shock and awe that has often typified HCMF’s opening nights, but the first concert of the…

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  • PremièresThematic series

    Estonia in focus weekend: Erkki-Sven Tüür – Prophecy (UK Première)

    by 5:4 October 28, 2018 • 05:00
    October 28, 2018 • 05:00

    Another of the works at the BBC Symphony Orchestra’s Maida Vale concert of Estonian music on 4 July was Erkki-Sven Tüür‘s 2007 accordion concerto Prophecy, which received its first UK performance with Olari Elts conducting and Mika Väyrynen (for whom it was written) as soloist. Any composer who writes a…

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  • PremièresThematic series

    Estonia in focus weekend: Helena Tulve – Extinction des choses vues (UK Première)

    by 5:4 October 27, 2018 • 05:00
    October 27, 2018 • 05:00

    In the UK, while it’s not that difficult to find performances of music from many parts of the world, opportunities to hear music from Estonia – with the obvious exception of Arvo Pärt – are extremely rare. So the decision of the BBC Symphony Orchestra to include in their season…

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  • CommentFestivalsPremières

    Proms 2018: the premières – how you voted

    by 5:4 September 25, 2018 • 12:04
    September 25, 2018 • 12:04

    Many thanks to all of you for the comments you made and votes you cast during my coverage of the premières at the 2018 Proms season. A total of 1,467 votes were cast this year, an increase of 34% on last year’s ‘turnout’. Once again, there was something of an…

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  • FestivalsPremières

    Proms 2018: Roxanna Panufnik – Songs of Darkness, Dreams of Light (World Première)

    by 5:4 September 11, 2018 • 12:27
    September 11, 2018 • 12:27

    And so to the annual conveyor belt of over-cranked fripperies and falderals that is the last night of the Proms. Nestling among them – not, for a change, getting the concert party started – was the last première of this year’s season, Songs of Darkness, Dreams of Light by British composer Roxanna…

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  • FestivalsPremières

    Proms 2018: Iain Bell – Aurora; Nina Šenk – Baca (World Premières)

    by 5:4 September 7, 2018 • 11:48
    September 7, 2018 • 11:48

    The interplay of performing relationships has been at the centre of the last two Proms premières. Iain Bell’s Aurora, a concerto for coloratura soprano and orchestra, given its first performance on 29 August by Adela Zaharia and the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Vasily Petrenko, seeks to pit the soloist as…

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  • FestivalsPremières

    Proms 2018: Per Nørgård – Symphony No. 3 (UK Première); Rolf Wallin – WHIRLD; Bushra El-Turk – Crème Brûlée on a Tree (World Premières)

    by 5:4 August 29, 2018 • 12:51
    August 29, 2018 • 12:51

    Quite apart from anything else they may embody, this year’s Proms premières have occupied pretty much the entire span of the profound—trivial continuum. At its most extreme, this has been exemplified by the most recent new works, which have ranged from a compositional exploration of infinity culminating in a state…

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  • FestivalsPremières

    Proms 2018: Philip Venables – Venables Plays Bartók; Laura Mvula – Love Like A Lion (World Premières); Agata Zubel – Fireworks (UK Première)

    by 5:4 August 22, 2018 • 06:00
    August 22, 2018 • 06:00

    The last few Proms premières have been, to put it mildly, an extremely mixed bag. By far the most excruciating of them was Venables Plays Bartók, a violin concerto of sorts by Philip Venables, given its first performance last Friday by Pekka Kuusisto with the BBC Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Sakari Oramo. As its title…

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  • FestivalsPremières

    Proms 2018: Simon Holt – Quadriga; Suzanne Farrin – Hypersea (World Premières)

    by 5:4 August 21, 2018 • 10:12
    August 21, 2018 • 10:12

    Last Monday at Cadogan Hall, percussionist Colin Currie and the JACK Quartet combined forces to perform two works from the ’80s by Xenakis and two world premières, by Simon Holt and Suzanne Farrin. The points of inspirational origin of these pieces were somewhat different from what one usually encounters in new music,…

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  • FestivalsPremières

    Proms 2018: Mark-Anthony Turnage – Farewell; Lisa Illean – Sleeplessness … Sails (World Premières)

    by 5:4 August 16, 2018 • 14:19
    August 16, 2018 • 14:19

    Two of the smallest of this year’s new works were given their first performances in a recital at Cadogan Hall on 6 August by mezzo-soprano Sarah Connolly and pianist Joseph Middleton. The concert had themes of sleep (and the lack of it), dreams and lullabies running through it, explored primarily…

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  • FestivalsPremières

    Proms 2018: The Brandenburg Project

    by 5:4 August 14, 2018 • 15:05
    August 14, 2018 • 15:05

    The Proms wouldn’t be the Proms if it didn’t feature one of its favourite obsessions: contemporary music commissioned with the specific aim that it ‘responds’ to existing works in the repertoire. The most recent example of this is The Brandenburg Project, an idea dreamt up by the Swedish Chamber Orchestra…

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  • FestivalsPremières

    Proms 2018: Tansy Davies – What Did We See?; Jessica Wells – Rhapsody for solo oud; Joby Talbot – Ink Dark Moon (World Premières); Georg Friedrich Haas – Concerto Grosso No. 1 (UK Première)

    by 5:4 August 5, 2018 • 13:01
    August 5, 2018 • 13:01

    Every year the nature of the works premièred at the Proms – presumably due in part to the festival’s (i.e. the BBC’s) risk-averse emphasis on popularity and familiarity over challenge and provocation – veers wildly between extremes of light- and heavyweight fare. The most recent quartet of new works, considered…

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  • FestivalsPremières

    Proms 2018: Chaines – Knockturning; Laurie Spiegel – Only Night Thoughts; Daphne Oram – Still Point (World Premières)

    by 5:4 August 2, 2018 • 15:40
    August 2, 2018 • 15:40

    For the most part, the Proms has always liked to pretend that electronics don’t really exist. The exception to this wilful ignorance are the occasions when electronics are made the focus of either a specific piece or an entire concert, as was the case with ‘Pioneers of Sound’, a late…

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  • FestivalsPremières

    Proms 2018: Ēriks Ešenvalds – Shadow; Eve Risser – Furakèla (World Premières); Andrew Norman – Spiral (UK Première)

    by 5:4 July 31, 2018 • 16:02
    July 31, 2018 • 16:02

    A piece doesn’t have to be – in fact, can hardly be – all things to all people, but in the case of Shadow, by Latvian composer Ēriks Ešenvalds‘, one has to wonder if it has much if anything to offer a mature listener. This in itself is interesting precisely because…

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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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