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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
Tag:

chamber

  • 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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  • Featured Artists

    Ferneyhough Week – Exordium

    by 5:4 January 15, 2013 • 10:11
    January 15, 2013 • 10:11

    La terre est un homme is an unusual work in Brian Ferneyhough’s output, inasmuch as he has only written for orchestra on two occasions (his other orchestral work will be featured later this week). The string quartet, on the other hand, is a medium to which he has turned on…

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  • CD/Digital releases

    Music of a dark and difficult pathology: Tansy Davies – Spine

    by 5:4 October 5, 2012 • 20:54
    October 5, 2012 • 20:54

    Anyone with even a mild interest in contemporary music can’t have failed to encounter the music of Tansy Davies. She’s clearly going through something of a vogue at the moment, the high-profile commissions (including the Proms and King’s College, Cambridge) and performances being complemented more recently by CD releases of…

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  • FestivalsPremières

    Proms 2012: Simon Bainbridge – The Garden of Earthly Delights (World Première)

    by 5:4 August 26, 2012 • 23:26
    August 26, 2012 • 23:26

    The final Proms Matinee last Saturday week featured one of the more substantial and aspirational of this season’s new works. Simon Bainbridge has turned for inspiration to one of art’s most well-known and -loved works, Hieronymus Bosch‘s The Garden of Earthly Delights (image), seeking to bring it alive as a…

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  • Lent SeriesPremières

    John Tavener – Towards Silence (European Première)

    by 5:4 April 7, 2012 • 13:25
    April 7, 2012 • 13:25

    It was hard thinking of a work to feature today; in the wider scope of Lent and Holy Week, Holy Saturday is a strange day, and in some ways listening to John Cage’s 4’33” on repeat would seem to be the most appropriate thing to do. However, i’ve opted instead…

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  • Lent Series

    Anton Webern – Five Canons

    by 5:4 March 30, 2012 • 21:02
    March 30, 2012 • 21:02

    Next in my Lent series is an early work from the twentieth century, Anton Webern‘s Five Canons for high soprano, clarinet and bass clarinet. Rather like Mahler, Webern’s busy schedule restricted his compositional activities to the summer holidays; three of the canons were written in the summer of 1923, and…

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  • Lent Series

    Morton Feldman – Bass Clarinet and Percussion

    by 5:4 March 28, 2012 • 20:50
    March 28, 2012 • 20:50

    As Lent has now entered Passiontide, it’s time to crank things up a notch, so the next piece in my Lent series is by one of the great masters of compositional discipline and restraint, Morton Feldman. There aren’t many composers about whom one can say that they’re able to tap…

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  • Anniversaries

    George Crumb – Black Angels

    by 5:4 October 24, 2011 • 09:26
    October 24, 2011 • 09:26

    Today is the 82nd birthday of one of my favourite composers, George Crumb. To mark the occasion, here’s a recording of a performance of one of his most well-known and loved pieces, the great and formidable string quartet Black Angels, which received its first performance 41 years ago yesterday (hmm,…

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  • FestivalsPremières

    Proms 2011: Sally Beamish – Reed Stanzas (String Quartet No. 3) (World Première)

    by 5:4 July 26, 2011 • 10:24
    July 26, 2011 • 10:24

    The first chamber music première at this year’s Proms took place yesterday afternoon, at the Cadogan Hall. Sally Beamish‘s new work for the Elias Quartet bears two conjoined titles, reflecting different aspects of the work: Reed Stanzas throws together modern notions of marshland and poetry, while String Quartet No. 3…

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  • Premières

    Adam Duncan – Images Sombres (World Première)

    by 5:4 June 16, 2011 • 07:07
    June 16, 2011 • 07:07

    The final concert in the “New Tunes on Old Fiddles” series included the world première of Images Sombres by Adam Duncan, composed for the viola da gamba player Jonathan Manson. A title such as Images Sombres, composed for viol, puts John Dowland in mind, but while Duncan’s sensibility might echo…

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  • Premières

    Matthew Bilyard – Impressions; Panayiotis Kokoras – Jet (World Premières)

    by 5:4 June 15, 2011 • 06:56
    June 15, 2011 • 06:56

    Third in the “New Tunes on Old Fiddles” concert series was a recital given by the outstanding Dutch recorder player Erik Bosgraaf. The concert included two world premières: Impressions by Brit Matthew Bilyard and Jet by Greek composer Panayiotis Kokoras. The preamble claims Impressions conjures up “images of bustling coastal…

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  • Premières

    Duncan Ward – Who Is Mr Grobe? (World Première)

    by 5:4 June 14, 2011 • 09:15
    June 14, 2011 • 09:15

    The second première in the “New Tunes on Old Fiddles” concert series was a work for viola d’amore and harpsichord, Who is Mr Grobe? by Duncan Ward, given its first performance last November by Catherine Mackintosh and Christopher Bucknall. Ward’s piece grew out of the apparent ‘mystery’ surrounding another piece…

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  • Premières

    Marc Yeats – rhêma (World Première)

    by 5:4 June 13, 2011 • 15:10
    June 13, 2011 • 15:10

    A few months ago, BBC Radio 3 broadcast a series of lunchtime concerts recorded late last year at the Clothworkers Centenary Concert Hall in Salford, under the heading “New Tunes on Old Fiddles”. Each of the concerts featured early music played on period instruments, plus the première of a new…

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  • Premières

    Daniel Kellogg – Soft Sleep Shall Contain You: A Meditation on Schubert’s Death and the Maiden (UK Première)

    by 5:4 February 24, 2011 • 22:15
    February 24, 2011 • 22:15

    Last autumn, on 27 November, at a lunchtime concert at London’s Wigmore Hall, the renowned Takacs Quartet gave the UK Première of the American composer Daniel Kellogg‘s Soft Sleep Shall Contain You: A Meditation on Schubert’s Death and the Maiden. As that title suggests, the piece draws on material from…

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  • AnniversariesThematic series

    Schnittke Week – Concerto Grosso No. 6, Monologue, String Trio & Concerto for Three

    by 5:4 November 24, 2010 • 07:58
    November 24, 2010 • 07:58

    Day three of my celebration of the music of Alfred Schnittke features music from a concert focusing on works involving solo strings, broadcast on 14 January 2001. Taking centre stage are soloists Ula Ulijona (viola), Marta Sudraba (cello), and the great violinist Gidon Kremer; they’re joined by the London Sinfonietta, directed…

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  • AnniversariesThematic series

    Schnittke Week – String Quartets Nos. 2 & 3, Piano Quintet

    by 5:4 November 22, 2010 • 10:19
    November 22, 2010 • 10:19

    The coming week sees the anniversary of the birth of one of Russia’s most outstanding composers, Alfred Schnittke, born on 24 November 1934. 5:4 is therefore devoting this week to his music, focusing on works that were included in the Barbican’s ‘Seeking the Soul’ festival, in January 2001. Having kicked…

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  • Miscellaneous

    George Benjamin – Viola, Viola; Three Miniatures for Solo Violin; Into the Little Hill

    by 5:4 March 5, 2009 • 17:33
    March 5, 2009 • 17:33

    George Benjamin is one of the first contemporary composers in whom i became interested, as a teenager. It’s difficult to pin down or articulate quite what i find appealing in his music, and in fact reasonably often i’ve found myself ambivalent about certain pieces. There’s an intensity and earnestness of…

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  • Premières

    James MacMillan – String Quartet No. 3 (World Première)

    by 5:4 July 31, 2008 • 16:11
    July 31, 2008 • 16:11

    James MacMillan‘s most recent work, the String Quartet No. 3, was premièred a couple of months ago by the Takacs Quartet on 21 May, at the Queen Elizabeth Hall in London. i don’t know either of MacMillan’s previous two quartets, but this new addition is a fairly ambitious work. MacMillan…

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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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