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20th Century

  • 20th CenturyAdvent Calendar

    Hugh Wood – Variations for Orchestra

    by 5:4 December 25, 2024 • 05:00
    December 25, 2024 • 05:00

    HAPPY HOLIDAYS! Behind the final door on this year’s Advent Calendar is a short but exciting work by one of England’s more curiously neglected composers, Hugh Wood. The Variations for Orchestra began life 30 years ago, apparently composed over a three-year period from 1994 to 1997. That seems a surprisingly …

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  • 20th CenturyAdvent Calendar

    Galina Ustvolskaya – Symphony No. 5 “Amen”

    by 5:4 December 24, 2024 • 06:00
    December 24, 2024 • 06:00

    Everybody needs more Galina Ustvolskaya in their life. Especially at this time of year, which so easily and so unthinkingly tends to the traditional, the saccharine and the stupid. i’ve explored Ustvolskaya’s bracingly refreshing, invariably mesmerising music on several occasions, including her first and third symphonies. i remarked before about …

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  • 20th CenturyAdvent Calendar

    Giacinto Scelsi – Maknongan (kannel version)

    by 5:4 December 22, 2024 • 06:00
    December 22, 2024 • 06:00

    On 3 December i explored a performance of Giacinto Scelsi‘s enigmatic late piece Maknongan on electronics. This second performance, which comes from the same concert, uses the kannel – the Estonian folk zither – performed by Anna-Liisa Eller with a mixture of fingers and ebow.

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  • 20th CenturyCD/Digital releases

    Grażyna Bacewicz – Complete Symphonic Works Vol. 2; Orchestral Works, Vol. 1

    by 5:4 June 14, 2024 • 11:54
    June 14, 2024 • 11:54

    It was a little under a year ago that the CPO label brought out the first volume in their new series exploring the Complete Symphonic Works of Polish composer Grażyna Bacewicz. As i pointed out in my review, they effectively jumped into her music halfway through, beginning in the early …

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  • 20th CenturyAnniversariesCD/Digital releases

    Ligeti at 100

    by 5:4 May 28, 2023 • 05:00
    May 28, 2023 • 05:00

    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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  • 20th CenturyAnniversariesBlasts from the Past

    Blasts From the Past: Rued Langgaard – Symphony No. 1

    by 5:4 April 10, 2023 • 08:58
    April 10, 2023 • 08:58

    110 years ago today, something extraordinary took place in Berlin. During the previous few years, the young Danish composer Rued Langgaard had been working on his first symphony. He began it in early 1908, at the age of 14, and completed it the following year, though he continued revising the …

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  • 20th CenturyCD/Digital releases

    Michael Gielen conducts Messiaen, Szymanowski & Penderecki

    by 5:4 November 4, 2022 • 16:10
    November 4, 2022 • 16:10

    Twentieth century music is at an interesting point in its history from the perspective of recordings. Contemporary music, for obvious reasons, is always the most under-represented, whereas works from the last hundred years are beginning to reach the stage where’s there’s a more meaningful range of recordings available. In the …

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  • 20th CenturyBlasts from the PastCD/Digital releases

    Blasts from the Past: Boris Lyatoshynsky – Symphonies

    by 5:4 August 23, 2022 • 10:12
    August 23, 2022 • 10:12

    While the answer to the question, “What is it good for?” continues to be “Absolutely nothing!” where war is concerned, there’s a tiny sliver of comfort to be gained from the fact that the ongoing outrage perpetrated by the Russian regime has thrown a spotlight onto aspects of Ukrainian culture …

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  • 20th CenturyAnniversariesCD/Digital releases

    25 years on: John Wall – Fractuur

    by 5:4 May 26, 2022 • 05:00
    May 26, 2022 • 05:00

    Fractuur, released in 1997, occupies an interesting position in the output of British composer John Wall, coming at a pivotal point in his approach to working with sound. On Wall’s previous album Alterstill, released two years earlier, he had created five ambitious sound sculptures, playfully constructed from samples plundered from …

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  • 20th CenturyCD/Digital releases

    Tālivaldis Ķeniņš – Symphonies Nos. 5 & 8

    by 5:4 May 19, 2022 • 17:01
    May 19, 2022 • 17:01

    A long-standing interest of mine is exploring symphonies by composers i’ve never heard of. Apropos: Tālivaldis Ķeniņš, who until relatively recently i didn’t know was one of Latvia’s foremost 20th century composers. However, Ķeniņš was arguably as much Canadian as Latvian; after Russia re-occupied Latvia during World War II, Ķeniņš …

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  • 20th CenturyCD/Digital releases

    Michael Gielen Edition Vol. 10: Music after 1945

    by 5:4 February 18, 2022 • 13:21
    February 18, 2022 • 13:21

    i’m really not a conductor fanboy. Composers are always getting me excited; performers too, from time to time; but conductors, in general, not so much. There are some special cases: Bernard Haitink and Riccardo Chailly have both stunned me on countless occasions; i’ve always had a lot of time for …

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  • 20th CenturyAdvent Calendar

    Howard Skempton – One for the Road

    by 5:4 December 12, 2021 • 05:00
    December 12, 2021 • 05:00

    Today’s Advent Calendar work is one of Webernesque miniature proportions. Composed in 1976, Howard Skempton‘s One for the Road for solo accordion is a typically strange piece, full of paradoxes. In a not dissimilar way to a more recent work like Oculus, Skempton’s material is obsessive, cycling around a single …

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  • 20th CenturyCD/Digital releases

    Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir – music by Schnittke and Pärt; Latvian Radio Choir – Ramon Humet: Light

    by 5:4 July 21, 2021 • 17:43
    July 21, 2021 • 17:43

    This week i’ve been spending time with a couple of new albums that could each be described as being “devotional”. By that i don’t simply mean ‘religious’, although both of them are fundamentally informed by that attitude, one explicitly, the other implicitly. Listening to them has been a thought-provoking experience, …

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  • 20th CenturyCD/Digital releases

    Krzysztof Penderecki – Complete Music for String Quartet & String Trio

    by 5:4 June 16, 2021 • 14:34
    June 16, 2021 • 14:34

    It must have been a strange experience for anyone smitten by the music of Krzysztof Penderecki during the 1960s and early 1970s, falling in love with the bold, abrasive, raw abstract shapes and sound forms unleashed in works such as Emanations (1959), Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima (1960), St …

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  • 20th CenturyBlasts from the PastCD/Digital releases

    Blasts from the Past: Gustav Mahler – Symphony No. 7

    by 5:4 June 9, 2021 • 17:30
    June 9, 2021 • 17:30

    It’s often felt a bit strange for me that the composer about whose music i’m the most passionate, whose music occupies the largest percentage of my music collection, and whose music i’ve analysed and studied in more depth and therefore know more about than any other composer, is someone i …

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  • 20th CenturyCD/Digital releases

    Remixed, remastered, revised, reissued: John Oswald (Part 2)

    by 5:4 September 4, 2020 • 05:00
    September 4, 2020 • 05:00

    It would be disingenuous to downplay just how laugh out loud funny is so much of John Oswald’s music. And this is surely one of the main reasons why he has fallen foul of the more simple-minded legal “brains” in the pop industry, since a casual encounter with his later …

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  • 20th CenturyCD/Digital releases

    Remixed, remastered, revised, reissued: John Oswald (Part 1)

    by 5:4 September 3, 2020 • 09:58
    September 3, 2020 • 09:58

    To return to the theme of reissues that i was exploring recently, another composer whose work has hitherto been languishing relatively unheard is the Canadian John Oswald. i first encountered his music around 25 years ago, at a Birmingham Symphony Hall concert where the Kronos Quartet included his astonishing electroacoustic …

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  • 20th CenturyCD/Digital releases

    Remixed, remastered, revised, reissued: irr. app. (ext.)

    by 5:4 July 24, 2020 • 11:11
    July 24, 2020 • 11:11

    The most fascinating – and the most extensive – campaign of reissuing earlier work that i’ve ever encountered is by US artist Matt Waldron, better known as irr. app. (ext.). His earliest releases date from the late 1990s, a time when Waldron’s access to and capabilities with technology were apparently …

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  • 20th CenturyCD/Digital releases

    Remixed, remastered, revised, reissued: Paul Dolden

    by 5:4 July 21, 2020 • 05:00
    July 21, 2020 • 05:00

    Another composer who has been polishing off, smartening up and reissuing old works recently is Canadian Paul Dolden. It always surprises me how underappreciated and even unknown Dolden’s music continues to be, particularly as it’s among the most extreme stuff i’ve ever encountered (and, for good or ill, people love …

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  • 20th CenturyCD/Digital releases

    Remixed, remastered, revised, reissued: The Hafler Trio

    by 5:4 July 16, 2020 • 05:00
    July 16, 2020 • 05:00

    A few months back i wrote about about the appearance of various releases by The Hafler Trio on Bandcamp, which quite apart from being highly unexpected (hitherto Andrew M. McKenzie had seemed opposed to his output being released in a digital format) is a very good thing indeed, since most …

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Eesti Muusika Paevad / Estonian Music Days 2025 World New Music Days 2025 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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5:4
  • About
    • Other writings
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    • Listening History
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    • Compositions explored on 5:4
    • 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
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  • Contact
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