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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:

Norway

  • AnnouncementsCD/Digital releases

    Nils Henrik Asheim – Muohta

    by 5:4 November 17, 2020 • 16:31
    November 17, 2020 • 16:31

    It’s a work i’d very much like to write about in more depth at a later date, as there’s so much to say about it… i wrote those words following a concert that took place almost exactly a year ago, before the time when lockdowns were a thing and i…

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  • Outside-In

    Outside-In: Cato Langnes

    by 5:4 June 30, 2020 • 09:05
    June 30, 2020 • 09:05

    It’s three months since i began the Outside-In project, responding to the lockdown by compiling submitted field recordings that could act as vivid reminders of, and virtual windows onto, the outside world during a time when we weren’t able to experience it first-hand. Thankfully, much has changed and improved from…

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  • CD/Digital releases

    Jonas Sjøvaag – Commuter Music

    by 5:4 April 29, 2020 • 11:05
    April 29, 2020 • 11:05

    i don’t know if it’s a weird kind of defocused, more-easily-distracted side-effect of the lockdown, but lately i’ve been finding it easiest to engage with mid-length albums where i can immerse myself for half an hour or so. Happily, quite a few of these have found their way to me…

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  • FestivalsPremières

    Dark Music Days 2020 (Part 1)

    by 5:4 February 5, 2020 • 06:00
    February 5, 2020 • 06:00

    It no doubt goes without saying that Iceland’s Dark Music Days festival is primarily named for the fact that it takes place in January, when the amount of daylight the country receives is minimal. In a less literal sense, though, musically speaking there’s a lot to be said for listening…

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  • FestivalsPremières

    Nordic Music Days 2019 (Part 2)

    by 5:4 November 21, 2019 • 06:00
    November 21, 2019 • 06:00

    Being the host nation, music from Norway was especially well-represented at this year’s Nordic Music Days in Bodø. Harnessing the large and impressive organ of Bodø Cathedral, Trond Kverno‘s Triptychon 2 was one of the fieriest things i heard at the festival. We tend to think of toccatas as fast-flowing,…

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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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  • FestivalsPremières

    Ultima 2019 (Part 1)

    by 5:4 September 19, 2019 • 18:25
    September 19, 2019 • 18:25

    When you listen to music what do you see? What does music look like, and what do images sound like? What’s the relationship between musical and visual stimuli? These questions became something of a recurring consideration during the three days of concerts i attended recently during the opening weekend of…

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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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  • CD/Digital releases

    Juhani Silvola – Post-biological wildlife

    by 5:4 July 8, 2019 • 17:23
    July 8, 2019 • 17:23

    We might call it “conjectural anthropology”. What i’m referring to here is music (or any art, for that matter) that seeks to fabricate and/or otherwise be inspired by fictitious notions of organic life and activity. We find examples of this in, among other places, the strange electronic languages being uttered…

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  • ConcertsFestivalsPremières

    Only Connect 2019 (Part 2)

    by 5:4 May 31, 2019 • 15:18
    May 31, 2019 • 15:18

    The lack of ostentation in most of the music at this year’s Only Connect festival was perhaps nowhere more conspicuous than in a concert last Saturday devoted to French composer Pascale Criton. Performed by violinist Silvia Tarozzi, cellist Deborah Walker and singers Stine Janvin Joh, Signe Irene Stangborli Time and…

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  • ConcertsFestivalsPremières

    Only Connect 2019 (Part 1)

    by 5:4 May 29, 2019 • 14:41
    May 29, 2019 • 14:41

    There’s something absolutely right about the bringing together of Norway’s Only Connect – a festival that, as its name implies, encourages one to question (inter)connections between ostensibly disparate musics – with Tectonics, Ilan Volkov’s peripatetic festival the name of which evokes fundamental, underlying bedrocks that continually meet, connect and rupture.…

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  • ConcertsFestivalsPremières

    World Music Days 2019, Estonia (Part 3)

    by 5:4 May 17, 2019 • 13:08
    May 17, 2019 • 13:08

    This year’s World Music Days featured a substantial amount of music involving electronics. That being said, relatively few of the fixed media works made as strong an impression as those combining electronics with acoustic instruments. A notable exception was Marianna Liik‘s Mets [Forest], one of several pieces during the festival…

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  • ConcertsFestivalsPremières

    Borealis 2019 (Part 2)

    by 5:4 March 19, 2019 • 13:47
    March 19, 2019 • 13:47

    Nearly but not quite everything that took place at this year’s Borealis festival was light years away from the world of conventional concert performances. The most notable exception to this was the first event i attended, at the Nykirken on Friday evening, given by Sjøforsvarets musikkorps, the Norwegian Naval Forces…

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  • ConcertsFestivalsPremières

    Borealis 2019 (Part 1)

    by 5:4 March 15, 2019 • 19:39
    March 15, 2019 • 19:39

    “En festival for eksperimentall musikk”. That’s the strapline for arguably Norway’s most progressive contemporary music festival, Borealis, some of which i was fortunate to attend in Bergen last week. As straplines go it’s almost laughably simple, yet its implications turned out to be impressively far-reaching. The key word, of course,…

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  • ConcertsFestivalsPremières

    Dark Music Days 2019: Caput Ensemble; Nordic Affect & Maja S K Ratkje

    by 5:4 February 8, 2019 • 14:58
    February 8, 2019 • 14:58

    Last Friday evening at the Dark Music Days we were back within Harpa’s Kaldalón hall (the cube-shaped space of which was disconcertingly impressive every time i entered it) for a concert given by a group new to me, Caput Ensemble, directed by Guðni Franzson. Having been bemused the previous day at…

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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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  • FestivalsPremières

    Only Connect 2018 (Part 2)

    by 5:4 June 3, 2018 • 16:47
    June 3, 2018 • 16:47

    From the lofty architecture of Sentralen, day two of the Only Connect festival took place in the infinitely more modest environment of Skippergata, a relaxed café-bar-nightclub with various large and small performance spaces. Though the venue was low-key, the concerts were anything but. Flautist Alessandra Rombolà’s rendition of Christina Kubisch‘s 1974 Emergency…

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  • FestivalsPremières

    Only Connect 2018 (Part 1)

    by 5:4 June 1, 2018 • 12:14
    June 1, 2018 • 12:14

    At contemporary music festivals one becomes accustomed to expecting the unexpected. However, in the case of Norway’s Only Connect festival, which took place last weekend in Oslo, expectations were overturned in no small part by the weather, due to the country experiencing its warmest May in over 70 years, basking…

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  • FestivalsPremières

    HCMF 2014 revisited: Jan Erik Mikalsen – Too much of a good thing is wonderful (UK Première)

    by 5:4 November 9, 2015 • 16:31
    November 9, 2015 • 16:31

    One of the strongest impressions that Norwegian composer Jan Erik Mikalsen‘s Too much of a good thing is wonderful made on me last year was grandiosity, emanating from allusions to Liberace, of whom the piece is something of an affectionate (if somewhat wry) homage. Returning to the piece since, that…

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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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