Concerto No. 1 for Violin and String Quartet (1949) Arriving at Allan Pettersson’s first violin concerto comes as something of a shock. On the one hand, it continues the composer’s focus on chamber music that dates back to his earliest pieces, as well as his exploration of counterpoint, which was …
chamber music
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In the second part of this year’s Lent Series, focusing on the recently released BIS Complete Edition of Allan Petterson’s music, i’m continuing to explore the earliest compositions, which include his first large-scale work.
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About a year-and-a-half ago, in the summer of 2022, i emailed the Swedish label BIS to ask whether they might at some point box up all of their individual releases of Allan Pettersson‘s symphonies. (At the time i was immersed in the box set released by CPO, featuring all of …
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Sacrum Profanum is a festival that has taken place in Kraków, Poland, since 2003. As its name suggests, the original purpose of the festival was to juxtapose sacred and secular music, from the 18th and 19th centuries, but since 2008 it’s been focused on music from the 20th and 21st …
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Perhaps the most compelling example of the kind of disorientation that border states can engender came in the concert given by Polish ensemble Spółdzielnia Muzyczna, appropriately titled ‘The Borders of Identity’. Here, more than anywhere else during AFEKT 2023, was a concert where none of the five works on the …
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Borders are places of confusion, uncertainty and, often, danger, and in this context concerts such as the ones previously discussed at AFEKT 2023 – where most works had strong similarities while one or two were markedly different – raised related questions. Is such similarity attractive and important because it suggests …
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Elis Hallik is probably the most interesting Estonian composer who, thus far, i haven’t written much about. During my annual trips to the Estonian Music Days in recent years, she has rarely been featured, so until recently, all i knew of her music were two chamber works, To Become A …
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Even as i start to write this opening sentence i feel uncertain about exactly where it’s going to lead. This is, i suppose, a provisional response to the latest release on the Neu label, Madrigal, featuring music by Catalan composer Joan Magrané. i’ve previously encountered Magrané’s work on just one …
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Today marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of György Ligeti, one of the 20th century’s most significant and consistently engaging composers. i’ve been spending time lately with three new releases that together present an excellent overview of Ligeti’s output, from the perspectives of his music for piano, choir and …
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In previous accounts of my annual pilgrimage to Eesti Muusika Päevad, the Estonian Music Days, i’ve tended to remark on the festival’s insistence on a theme, usually in regard to how innocuous or irrelevant it seemed in relation to the actual concerts. This year, the Tallinn portion of the festival …
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You would think, by now, i’d be getting the hang of this piece. Éliane Radigue‘s Occam Delta XV, conceived for the Bozzini Quartet, has crossed my path on a couple of occasions, first at its UK première in Huddersfield in 2018, a performance that i subsequently explored in more depth, …
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It doesn’t take long to get the measure of a new music festival – aims, outlook, characteristics – but that doesn’t mean it becomes predictable. i’ve found this to be more than usually true of Forum Wallis, which remains one of the most remote festivals i’ve had the pleasure of …
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The majority of the concerts at this year’s Dark Music Days were focused on chamber music. The most leftfield of these came courtesy of Trio Isak, in a concert titled ‘Ballet on the Moon’. That title in part derived from the opening piece on the programme, Daníel Bjarnason‘s White Flags, …
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One of my personal highlights of this year’s Huddersfield Festival was the performance of Justė Janulytė‘s 2020 work for 8 trumpets, Unanime. Composed for Marco Blaauw’s Monochrome Project, the piece exists in two versions: the first, with a single climax, lasts 15 minutes; the second, with two climaxes (one muted, …
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Michael Finnissy’s Polskie tańce ludowe (Polish folk dances) have had multiple lives. Their origins are in a volume of Polish folk music given to Finnissy as a child by his godfather, Peter Klos. Finnissy recently recalled to me that … he served with the Polish Airforce, he was not a …
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There are some composers whose music i keep coming back to not out of love but with the attitude of a nutcracker, trying once again to break through its tough, tenacious surface. i don’t know Milton Babbitt‘s music well (as i admitted when noting his centenary a few years back), …
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“Everything changes it is extraordinary how everything does change.” That short quotation from Gertrude Stein’s Everybody’s Autobiography has provided Naomi Pinnock with two separate titles for two related works. Everything changes for viola and cello was composed in 2011 as the accompaniment to a short film by Pavla Scerankova titled …
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This year’s composer in residence at HCMF, Lisa Streich, was represented by an appropriately large number of performances, allowing for a pretty deep dive into her musical thinking. If i say that a lot of what i heard of Streich’s music was more intriguing than immediately enjoyable, i need to …
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In 2018, when exploring the music of Rebecca Saunders in that year’s Lent Series, i made the following remark regarding recordings of her music: The fact that i’ve explored Rebecca Saunders’ recorded output over four articles suggests that she’s well represented by recordings of her work. But almost half of …
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It’s reasonable to expect extreme variety and diversity at Ultima, though many of the more conventional concert events i experienced at this year’s festival were a surprisingly mixed bag, qualitatively speaking. The most taxing was unfortunately a concert celebrating the award of this year’s Arne Nordheim prize to Jan Martin …