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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
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Denmark

  • FestivalsPremières

    Nordic Music Days 2019 (Part 1)

    by 5:4 November 19, 2019 • 16:31
    November 19, 2019 • 16:31

    Founded in 1888, the annual Nordic Music Days is one of the oldest contemporary music festivals in the world. It’s a peripatetic festival, moving from place to place each year, and for 2019 – surprisingly, for the first time – it moved north of the Arctic Circle, to the small…

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  • FestivalsPremières

    Ultima 2019 (Part 2)

    by 5:4 September 20, 2019 • 17:35
    September 20, 2019 • 17:35

    A golden rule in cinema is “show, don’t tell”, reminding the director it’s invariably more subtle and effective to avoid directly stating the things you want the audience to consider and instead to incorporate them into the medium itself, in the process allowing for a more subtle, rich and wide-ranging…

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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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  • ConcertsFestivalsPremières

    Dark Music Days 2019: Zoë Martlew

    by 5:4 February 6, 2019 • 14:00
    February 6, 2019 • 14:00

    One of the plagues that continues to afflict most contemporary music festivals is ‘première-itis’, an acute obsession with presenting loudly-trumpeted world premières at the expense of providing opportunities for second, third or indeed nth performances. It was a relief, therefore, that this year’s Dark Music Days (which was otherwise similarly…

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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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  • CD/Digital releasesFree internet musicThematic series

    Free internet music: Martin Stig Andersen – Rabbit at the Airport

    by 5:4 January 11, 2018 • 14:21
    January 11, 2018 • 14:21

    Next up in my series looking at free internet music is a triptych by Danish composer Martin Stig Andersen. To many, Andersen is likely best known for his award-winning music and sound design work on Limbo, one of the most breathtakingly stunning – and, often, terrifying – video games of recent…

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  • Premières

    Per Nørgård – Three Nocturnal Movements (World Première)

    by 5:4 June 5, 2016 • 16:04
    June 5, 2016 • 16:04

    It’s Constitution Day (Grundlovsdag) in Denmark today, the closest the country gets to a national day, so i thought i’d mark the occasion with a piece by one of the country’s best-known composers that i’ve been spending time with lately. It’s a re-thinking by Per Nørgård of one of his earlier works, Remembering Child,…

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  • Lent SeriesPremières

    Simon Steen-Andersen – String Quartet No. 2 (UK Première)

    by 5:4 February 21, 2013 • 22:45
    February 21, 2013 • 22:45

    If there’s one thing practically guaranteed every year at the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, it’s the presence of a string quartet that approaches the medium from a radical perspective, one that does away, almost entirely, with its traditions and connotations. The next work in my Lent series focusing on new…

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  • FestivalsPremières

    Proms 2012: Per Nørgård – Symphony No. 7 (UK Première)

    by 5:4 August 18, 2012 • 11:17
    August 18, 2012 • 11:17

    Despite the understandable reluctance on the part of contemporary composers to use the word, there’s nothing quite like seeing ‘symphony’ on a concert programme to get one’s blood and expectations pumping. When the composer in question is Per Nørgård, as it was last week at the Proms, then the excitement…

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  • 20th CenturyFestivalsPremières

    Proms 2012: Rued Langgaard – Symphony No. 11 ‘Ixion’; Pelle Gudmundsen-Holmgreen – Incontri (UK Premières)

    by 5:4 August 4, 2012 • 08:10
    August 4, 2012 • 08:10

    In a change to the planned schedule (due to Benedict Mason not having finished his new work meld), last Saturday’s Prom featured two UK premières, both by composers rarely heard on these shores. Difficult pieces—but for different reasons—they were given marvellously lucid performances by the BBC Symphony Orchestra, conducted by…

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  • FestivalsPremières

    Proms 2010: Bent Sørensen – La mattina (Piano Concerto No. 2) (UK Première)

    by 5:4 August 27, 2010 • 21:41
    August 27, 2010 • 21:41

    This year’s Proms has already had a couple of concerto premières, and the third, from Bent Sørensen, is one for piano and orchestra. Inspiration for the work, La mattina (Piano Concerto No. 2) is in part connected to Mozart, and Sørensen has opted for an orchestra of like size (no…

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  • FestivalsPremières

    Proms 2010: Hans Abrahamsen – Wald (UK Première) plus Knussen, Bedford and Benjamin

    by 5:4 August 20, 2010 • 11:56
    August 20, 2010 • 11:56

    So, where were we? Ah yes, The Proms; my catchup starts with the concert that took place on Friday 6 August, given by the splendid Birmingham Contemporary Music Group. Oliver Knussen‘s Two Organa is a work all the more engaging for its entirely lopsided nature. The first ‘organum’, “Notre Dame…

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  • CD/Digital releases

    Like a ton of feathers: Morten Riis – Digital Sound Drawings

    by 5:4 February 1, 2009 • 21:25
    February 1, 2009 • 21:25

    Many moons ago, i wrote a retrospective of the work of Ryoji Ikeda, composer of some the finest raw digital music yet created. It’s an unfortunate corollary that Ikeda, like all great innovators, has a sizeable cluster of imitators (‘flattery’ be damned), many of whom form part of the now…

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  • Premières

    Ensemble Exposé: Brian Ferneyhough – Incipits (UK Première) plus Davies, Xenakis, Barrett, Dillon and Sørensen

    by 5:4 June 6, 2008 • 21:15
    June 6, 2008 • 21:15

    Here’s a real treat for those who prefer their contemporary music to be at the more intellectually rewarding end of the continuum. It’s music from a concert given at the ICA in London by Ensemble Exposé (plus violist Garth Knox), under the direction of Roger Redgate, who also discusses the…

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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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