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5:4
FestivalsPremières

Forum Wallis 2023 (Part 2)

by 5:4 March 22, 2023 • 08:23 0 comment

Galina Ustvolskaya – Symphony No. 1

by 5:4 March 20, 2023 • 09:09 2 comments

Killing My Darlings: Suite for solo violin (1995)

by 5:4 March 18, 2023 • 09:59 1 comment
FestivalsPremières

Forum Wallis 2023 (Part 1)

by 5:4 March 16, 2023 • 09:34 0 comment

Gloria Coates – Symphony No. 7 (UK Première)

by 5:4 March 14, 2023 • 07:48 0 comment

Peter Maxwell Davies – Symphony No. 7 (World Première)

by 5:4 March 9, 2023 • 07:07 0 comment
Lent SeriesPremières

Laurence Crane – Chamber Symphony No. 2 “The Australian” (World Première)

by 5:4 March 4, 2023 • 05:00 0 comment

Fermata Wallis

by 5:4 March 2, 2023 • 07:00 0 comment

Symphony Hall, Birmingham: CBSO Youth Orchestra

by 5:4 February 28, 2023 • 15:47 1 comment
Lent Series

Huw Watkins – Little Symphony

by 5:4 February 27, 2023 • 08:43 5 comments

Gloria Coates – Symphony No. 1 “Music on Open Strings” (UK Première)

by 5:4 February 20, 2023 • 17:12 6 comments

Killing My Darlings: Meditation No. 3 (1994)

by 5:4 February 16, 2023 • 10:57 3 comments

more articles

  • FestivalsPremières

    Forum Wallis 2023 (Part 2)

    by 5:4 March 22, 2023 • 08:23
    March 22, 2023 • 08:23

    The most entertaining event at Forum Wallis 2023 was ‘Adventurous Sounds’, a concert billed as being “New Music for and with children” as part of a project aimed at introducing contemporary music to young people, which also extends to in-school activities. One of the most hilarious compositions i’ve ever heard,…

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  • Lent Series

    Galina Ustvolskaya – Symphony No. 1

    by 5:4 March 20, 2023 • 09:09
    March 20, 2023 • 09:09

    None of Galina Ustvolskaya‘s five symphonies are particularly well-known. That’s also true for most of her output, but it’s particularly true of the symphonies, which are rarely performed and even more rarely recorded. Her First Symphony is perhaps the most obscure of them all. Composed in 1955, the work is…

    Read more
  • Killing My Darlings

    Killing My Darlings: Suite for solo violin (1995)

    by 5:4 March 18, 2023 • 09:59
    March 18, 2023 • 09:59

    My Suite for solo violin was completed on 17 January 1995. It took the form of a 13-minute theme and variations, based on a song called ‘Ich bin der Doktor Eisenbart‘ (which i found in an anthology of German student songs), though the theme appeared at the end rather than…

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  • FestivalsPremières

    Forum Wallis 2023 (Part 1)

    by 5:4 March 16, 2023 • 09:34
    March 16, 2023 • 09:34

    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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  • Lent SeriesPremières

    Gloria Coates – Symphony No. 7 (UK Première)

    by 5:4 March 14, 2023 • 07:48
    March 14, 2023 • 07:48

    Gloria Coates‘ Symphony No. 7 was composed from 1989 to 1990, a highly politically-charged time for those (as Coates was) living in Germany. The Berlin Wall would subsequently fall (on 9 November 1989), but while this promised to usher in a new era of peace, the profound uncertainty that suffused…

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  • Lent SeriesPremières

    Peter Maxwell Davies – Symphony No. 7 (World Première)

    by 5:4 March 9, 2023 • 07:07
    March 9, 2023 • 07:07

    Do you now see the possibility of several symphonies? Yes, yes, I do, which just five years ago I would not have seen at all. But I do now feel … that it’s perhaps not too far-fetched to think that possibly I might be able to develop that. Paul Griffiths,…

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  • Lent SeriesPremières

    Laurence Crane – Chamber Symphony No. 2 “The Australian” (World Première)

    by 5:4 March 4, 2023 • 05:00
    March 4, 2023 • 05:00

    Laurence Crane‘s music often sounds like a cross between a game and a puzzle, and that’s certainly the case with the next work i’m featuring in this year’s Lent Series, his Chamber Symphony No. 2 “The Australian”. That subtitle can be safely ignored; Crane has spoken of enjoying combining abstract…

    Read more
  • Announcements

    Fermata Wallis

    by 5:4 March 2, 2023 • 07:00
    March 2, 2023 • 07:00

    This morning i’m setting for a few days in the Swiss Alps, checking out the long-delayed Forum Wallis festival in Leuk. The Lent Series will continue while i’m away, and i’ll be reporting on the (in all likelihood, weird and wonderful) goings-on in Switzerland once i’m back next week.

    Read more
  • ConcertsPremières

    Symphony Hall, Birmingham: CBSO Youth Orchestra

    by 5:4 February 28, 2023 • 15:47
    February 28, 2023 • 15:47

    i headed up the M5 to Birmingham last Sunday for a concert given by the CBSO Youth Orchestra at Symphony Hall. For many people in the audience, i suppose the highlight would have been two works by Berlioz: the concert opened with the Roman Carnival Overture and closed with the…

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  • Lent Series

    Huw Watkins – Little Symphony

    by 5:4 February 27, 2023 • 08:43
    February 27, 2023 • 08:43

    The idea of a symphony can tend to suggest grandiosity and an epic sense of scale or significance, exemplified by those of Bruckner, Mahler, Scriabin and Pettersson, among others. But it needn’t be anything of the kind, working just as well at the opposite end of the continuum, greatly reduced…

    Read more
  • Lent SeriesPremières

    Gloria Coates – Symphony No. 1 “Music on Open Strings” (UK Première)

    by 5:4 February 20, 2023 • 17:12
    February 20, 2023 • 17:12

    For this year’s Lent Series i’m turning to a subject that’s one of my personal passions: symphonies. It’s interesting to hear how the word ‘symphony’ has, over time, been defined, consolidated, expanded, elevated, deconstructed, redefined, and along the way become sufficiently loaded that many contemporary composers choose to avoid both…

    Read more
  • Killing My Darlings

    Killing My Darlings: Meditation No. 3 (1994)

    by 5:4 February 16, 2023 • 10:57
    February 16, 2023 • 10:57

    i’ve been thinking a lot during the last couple of years about what it means to be a composer. One of the unexpected personal side-effects of the pandemic was that it made my compositional impulse shut down entirely (it only began switching on again late last year). For the first…

    Read more
  • FestivalsPremières

    Dark Music Days 2023 (Part 3)

    by 5:4 February 11, 2023 • 19:10
    February 11, 2023 • 19:10

    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,…

    Read more
  • FestivalsPremières

    Dark Music Days 2023 (Part 2)

    by 5:4 February 7, 2023 • 16:34
    February 7, 2023 • 16:34

    Larger-scale works featured in several Dark Music Days events. One of the toughest to engage with was given by Caput Ensemble, a concert marred by the yawningly awful Polo by Simon Mawhinney, a quarter of an hour’s worth of relentless, faceless, arbitrary blarney. Veronique Vaka‘s Holos was marginally more interesting,…

    Read more
  • FestivalsPremières

    Dark Music Days 2023 (Part 1)

    by 5:4 February 3, 2023 • 11:05
    February 3, 2023 • 11:05

    While it’s normal to feel a sense of familiarity returning to a festival year after year, it was stronger than usual at the 2023 Dark Music Days in Reykjavík since it was only 10 months since last year’s festival, which had been delayed due to the pandemic. It also served…

    Read more
  • CD/Digital releasesFree music

    Sole Massif – Encircle

    by 5:4 January 30, 2023 • 09:00
    January 30, 2023 • 09:00

    i’m bringing my annual January exploration of free music to a close with an album that, as happens every year, should have appeared in my Best Albums of 2022 but i ended up listening to it just too late. That being said, when i first spent time with Encircle, by…

    Read more
  • CD/Digital releasesFree music

    Darren McClure – The World Is Made Of Words

    by 5:4 January 26, 2023 • 09:00
    January 26, 2023 • 09:00

    Today’s piece of freely-available music comes via Yugen Art, an online repository of sound art that in some respects resembles a netlabel but is more aloof, publishing things online with an absolute minimum of fuss or extraneous (or even pertinent) information. i’ve written about works from the Yugen Art archive…

    Read more
  • Announcements

    Fermata myrkir

    by 5:4 January 24, 2023 • 09:00
    January 24, 2023 • 09:00

    This morning i’m setting off for a week in Reykjavík, to experience all that’s going on during this year’s Myrkir músíkdagar, aka Dark Music Days. In my absence there’s a bit more free music to be explored, and there’ll be words galore when i get back from Iceland.

    Read more
  • CD/Digital releasesFree music

    Seaming – Mermaid

    by 5:4 January 23, 2023 • 09:00
    January 23, 2023 • 09:00

    Seaming To is an English singer and musician whose work seems to be the product of, to date, three distinct periods of activity. She was a guest vocalist on some singles in the early 2000s, followed by her own first EP, Soda Slow, in 2006. Then things went quiet until…

    Read more
  • CD/Digital releasesFree music

    Gelg – Look Around You

    by 5:4 January 19, 2023 • 09:00
    January 19, 2023 • 09:00

    The next music i’m featuring in my series exploring interesting free music is another soundtrack, again very short, this time from television. It’s something of an oddity, partly because it was never a ‘release’ in the usual sense of the word (and isn’t really available any longer), partly because it’s…

    Read more
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5:4
  • About
  • Patrons
  • The Lists
    • Listening History
    • Complete List of Ratings
    • Compositions reviewed on 5:4
    • Composer Map
    • Albums and EPs reviewed on 5:4
    • Festivals reviewed on 5:4
    • Best Albums of the Years
    • The Proms premières – Poll results
  • The Dialogues
  • Mixtapes
    • Mixtapes
    • The Isolation Mixtapes
    • Mystery Mixtapes
    • Podcasts
  • Contact
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