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Advent Calendar

  • 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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  • Advent CalendarPremières

    Bergrún Snæbjörnsdóttir – Ecognosis (World Première)

    by 5:4 December 23, 2024 • 06:00
    December 23, 2024 • 06:00

    Behind today’s Advent Calendar door is an ambitious work by arguably Iceland’s most exciting and radically forward-looking composer of recent years, Bergrún Snæbjörnsdóttir. Ecognosis was composed in 2021, a work for bass clarinet, bassoon, violin, viola, cello and various transduced tam-tams. It was intended to be premièred at the Dark …

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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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  • Advent Calendar

    Aphex Twin (arr. Stefan Freund) – Cock/Ver10

    by 5:4 December 21, 2024 • 06:00
    December 21, 2024 • 06:00

    i’ve always felt surprised that Aphex Twin‘s music can be transferred from its original electronic form into instrumental configurations. The proof that it can has been demonstrated several times, ever since Philip Glass’ masterful orchestration of Icct Hedral way back in 1995, and in previous Advent Calendars i’ve discussed arrangements …

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  • Advent Calendar

    Janek Schaefer – Tri-phonic Revolutions

    by 5:4 December 20, 2024 • 06:00
    December 20, 2024 • 06:00

    In 1997, British musician Janek Schaefer created an instrument he named the ‘tri-phonic turntable’, a pimped-up record deck featuring a trio of tone arms and the ability to play fast and loose with rotation direction and speed. That same year, he gave a performance at the Urban Salon in London …

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  • Advent CalendarPremières

    Elis Hallik – The Firehearted (World Première)

    by 5:4 December 19, 2024 • 06:00
    December 19, 2024 • 06:00

    As i’ve often remarked here (usually in connection with yet another Proms commission) i’m not a fan of contemporary works that seek to ‘respond’ to earlier music. It’s a lazy commissioning approach, usually producing dismal musical results, with the only successes emanating from composers who aren’t particularly fussed about how …

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  • Advent CalendarPremières

    Otto Iivari – Static (World Première)

    by 5:4 December 18, 2024 • 06:00
    December 18, 2024 • 06:00

    Today’s Advent Calendar piece, Static by Finnish composer Otto Iivari, is technically an audiovisual work. On the two occasions i experienced it, the electronics were presented in conjunction with a tiny TV on a table, displaying a mixture of static and several clear bands that made for a curious relationship …

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  • Advent CalendarPremières

    Elnaz Seyedi – A Mark of Our Breath (World Première)

    by 5:4 December 17, 2024 • 06:00
    December 17, 2024 • 06:00

    There are times when it can feel like all contemporary music is split down the middle, with half the composers concerned with frantic activity and movement, and the other half obsessed with the opposite, stillness and immobility. That’s an exaggeration, but there’s more than a little truth to it, and …

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  • Advent CalendarPremières

    Sasha Scott – Humans May Not Apply (World Première)

    by 5:4 December 16, 2024 • 06:00
    December 16, 2024 • 06:00

    Behind today’s Advent Calendar door is a quick bit of fun from British composer Sasha Scott. In 2019, Scott won the Senior category in the BBC Young Composer of the Year Competition with a four-minute orchestral-electronic hybrid titled Humans May Not Apply. It’s a work that both pits the acoustic …

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  • Advent CalendarPremières

    György Kurtág – Circumdederunt… in memoriam Rita Wagner (World Première)

    by 5:4 December 15, 2024 • 06:00
    December 15, 2024 • 06:00

    Today’s Advent Calendar piece is one of the shortest works i’ve ever written about. Circumdederunt… in memoriam Rita Wagner by György Kurtág commemorates the Hungarian pianist who died in 2021. Back in 2019, my esteemed blogospherical colleague David Nice mentioned that, after attending a masterclass with Wagner, he had “probably …

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  • Advent Calendar

    J. S. Bach (arr. Eller / Kerikmäe) – Adagissimo

    by 5:4 December 14, 2024 • 06:00
    December 14, 2024 • 06:00

    One of the most incredible – and entirely unexpected – performances i’ve heard this year took place in Tartu University Museum in April, at a recital given by Estonian duo Anna-Liisa Eller and Taavi Kerikmäe. These two, in their combinations of kannel, keyboard instruments and electronics, exploring both contemporary and …

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  • Advent CalendarPremières

    Larry Goves – Borneo Rivers 2 (World Première)

    by 5:4 December 13, 2024 • 06:00
    December 13, 2024 • 06:00

    One of the more memorable pieces to have been featured in the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival’s annual ‘Shorts’ day (comprising a conveyor belt of miniature concerts, all free to the public) in recent years is Borneo Rivers 2 by Larry Goves. In many ways it’s an unassuming piece: just six …

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  • Advent CalendarPremières

    Maria Kõrvits – I Am Calling To You (World Première)

    by 5:4 December 12, 2024 • 06:00
    December 12, 2024 • 06:00

    Nestling behind today’s Advent Calendar door is one of the most remarkable choral works i’ve ever heard, and one that nicely continues the “I am” reflections from yesterday. I Am Calling to You by Maria Kõrvits is a piece for male choir setting a text that, while some attribute to …

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  • Advent CalendarPremières

    Naomi Pinnock – I am, I am (World Première)

    by 5:4 December 11, 2024 • 06:00
    December 11, 2024 • 06:00

    When words emerge in Naomi Pinnock‘s music, that’s precisely what they do: emerge. This is achieved partly by paring down the text to a bare essential minimum (The writings of Jakob Br. uses just two words, for example), but more due to the manner in which the words are articulated. …

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  • Advent Calendar

    Georg Friedrich Haas – ein kleines symphonisches Gedicht

    by 5:4 December 10, 2024 • 06:00
    December 10, 2024 • 06:00

    The piece lurking behind today’s Advent Calendar door is something of an amuse-bouche by Austrian composer Georg Friedrich Haas, titled ein kleines symphonisches Gedicht [a little symphonic poem]. Composed in 2017, its 7-minute duration is occupied with one of Haas’ typically focused behavioural-timbral explorations, looking at the way both transformation …

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  • Advent CalendarPremières

    Maria Rostovtseva – Calcium Cooke 1959 (World Première)

    by 5:4 December 9, 2024 • 06:00
    December 9, 2024 • 06:00

    i’ve heard many wonderful things during my numerous trips to Estonia during the last decade, but today’s Advent Calendar piece is one of the most memorable of them all. That may seem strange considering it’s done and dusted in under four minutes, but its brevity is one of the prime …

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  • Advent Calendar

    Michael Finnissy – Two Motets

    by 5:4 December 8, 2024 • 06:00
    December 8, 2024 • 06:00

    British composer Michael Finnissy has so often turned to extant music in his own compositions that it’s practically one of the defining features of his work. Today’s Advent Calendar piece is one of his most blissful responses to earlier music, rethinking material by Byrd and Ockeghem as Two Motets for …

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  • Advent CalendarPremières

    Milton Babbitt – Autobiography of the Eye (European première)

    by 5:4 December 7, 2024 • 06:00
    December 7, 2024 • 06:00

    In my 2022 Advent Calendar, i included Milton Babbitt‘s An Encore, a work i likened to a nut that i kept returning to in order to try new ways to crack it. It’s a similar situation with the work of his i’m featuring today, Autobiography of the Eye for soprano …

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  • Advent Calendar

    Lauri Supponen – Continuo

    by 5:4 December 6, 2024 • 06:00
    December 6, 2024 • 06:00

    6 December is Finland’s Independence Day, so today’s Advent Calendar piece is by Finnish composer Lauri Supponen. Continuo (which i briefly discussed earlier this year) is a short ensemble work, composed in 2021, that’s rooted in much earlier music, Frescobaldi’s Recercar con obligo di cantare la quinta parte senza toccarla. …

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5:4
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