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Lent Series

  • Lent SeriesPremières

    Gloria Coates – Symphony No. 11 “Philemon und Baucis” (World Première)

    by 5:4 April 7, 2023 • 09:37
    April 7, 2023 • 09:37 2 minutes read

    i’m bringing this year’s Lent Series to a close with another of Gloria Coates‘ remarkable symphonies. Symphony No. 11 was completed in 1999, being a response to a commission from Baron von Freyberg for the Festspiele Europäische Wochen, with the stipulation that the work should be related to Ovid’s recounting …

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  • Lent SeriesPremières

    Peter Maxwell Davies – Antarctic Symphony (Symphony No. 8) (World Première)

    by 5:4 April 3, 2023 • 10:18
    April 3, 2023 • 10:18 1 minutes read

    On 14 January 1953, Vaughan Williams’ Sinfonia Antartica – a symphony derived from his 1948 film score for Scott of the Antarctic – was premièred in Manchester. In the audience that evening was Peter Maxwell Davies who, in 1997, was commissioned by the British Antarctic Survey to create a 50th …

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  • Lent SeriesPremières

    Luc van Hove – Symphony No. 4 (World Première)

    by 5:4 March 29, 2023 • 09:06
    March 29, 2023 • 09:06 2 minutes read

    Belgian composer Luc van Hove has, to date, completed four symphonies. The first two (available on a double CD from Megadisc Classics) present a musical attitude that doesn’t just embrace extremes of aggression and tenderness but also moves between them quickly. The first movement of Symphony No. 1 (1989) is …

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  • Lent Series

    Ester Mägi – Symphony

    by 5:4 March 24, 2023 • 05:00
    March 24, 2023 • 05:00 2 minutes read

    Despite being one of Estonia’s foremost composers, Ester Mägi‘s reputation is pretty negligible outside the borders of her native land. It’s a situation that, thus far, hasn’t changed since her death in 2021, at the age of 99. My own contact with her music, despite the extent to which i’ve …

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  • Lent Series

    Galina Ustvolskaya – Symphony No. 1

    by 5:4 March 20, 2023 • 09:09
    March 20, 2023 • 09:09 1 minutes read

    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 …

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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 2 minutes read

    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 2 minutes read

    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 4 minutes read

    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 …

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  • Lent Series

    Huw Watkins – Little Symphony

    by 5:4 February 27, 2023 • 08:43
    February 27, 2023 • 08:43 2 minutes read

    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 …

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  • 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 1 minutes read

    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 …

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  • Lent SeriesPremières

    Helena Tulve – Lament (World Première)

    by 5:4 April 16, 2022 • 05:00
    April 16, 2022 • 05:00 3 minutes read

    Curating this year’s Lent Series, focusing on death, grief and loss, has been something of a difficult experience. As i mentioned at the start of the series, this theme has felt unavoidable and inevitable at the moment, but at the same time works such as the ones i’ve featured, that …

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  • Lent SeriesPremières

    James MacMillan – The Keening (World Première)

    by 5:4 April 13, 2022 • 05:00
    April 13, 2022 • 05:00 3 minutes read

    The penultimate work in this year’s Lent Series is one that ended up having to wait over a quarter of a century from the date of composition to receive its first performance. James MacMillan completed his orchestral piece The Keening in 1987, while studying for his PhD at Durham University. …

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  • Lent SeriesPremières

    Arash Yazdani – Nakba (World Première)

    by 5:4 April 9, 2022 • 16:36
    April 9, 2022 • 16:36 2 minutes read

    The Arabic word ‘nakba’ (النكبة), which translates as “disaster” or “cataclysm”, is used to refer to the suffering, displacement and destruction wrought on the Palestinians from 1948 (with the wartime exodus) to the present day. It’s a term that has been in use right from the outset of the Israeli-Palestinian …

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  • Lent Series

    Chaya Czernowin – Black Flowers

    by 5:4 April 5, 2022 • 05:00
    April 5, 2022 • 05:00 1 minutes read

    i’m turning to music that’s more abstract, though no less powerfully evocative, for the next work in this year’s Lent Series. The title of Chaya Czernowin‘s short 2018 guitar piece Black Flowers comes from a text by French philosopher Gaston Bachelard: In the depths of matter there grows an obscure …

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  • Lent Series

    Žibuoklė Martinaitytė – Solastalgia

    by 5:4 March 30, 2022 • 14:59
    March 30, 2022 • 14:59 1 minutes read

    The word ‘solastalgia’ was invented in 2003 by philosopher Glenn Albrecht as a concept to describe the lived experience of negative environmental change. This indicates a variety of contexts – both actual and potential – in which one directly experiences grief and pain from the perception that one’s sense of …

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  • Lent SeriesPremières

    John Woolrich – Swan Song (World Première)

    by 5:4 March 26, 2022 • 11:34
    March 26, 2022 • 11:34 1 minutes read

    The next work i’m featuring in this year’s Lent Series is one that, in the six years since i first heard it, has completely changed my opinion about it. At the world première of John Woolrich’s Swan Song, i felt that “the fragmented delivery of transient moments of something cantabile …

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  • Lent SeriesPremières

    Naomi Pinnock – We are (World Première)

    by 5:4 March 22, 2022 • 14:03
    March 22, 2022 • 14:03 1 minutes read

    The next piece i’m featuring in this year’s Lent Series, focusing on grief and loss, is probably the shortest i’ve ever explored on 5:4. Naomi Pinnock’s We are consists of a mere 12 bars of music, lasting around 60 seconds. The piece was part of BBC Radio 3’s ‘Postcards from …

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  • Lent SeriesPremières

    Elis Hallik – Some Paths Will Always Lead Through the Shadows (World Première)

    by 5:4 March 18, 2022 • 05:00
    March 18, 2022 • 05:00 1 minutes read

    The next piece in my Lent Series is concerned with not just the possibility but the occasional necessity of having to progress through darkness. Some Paths Will Always Lead Through the Shadows was composed by Elis Hallik in 2021, and takes as inspiration words by poet Doris Kareva: Bitter and …

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  • Lent SeriesPremières

    Colin Matthews – It rains (World Première)

    by 5:4 March 14, 2022 • 05:00
    March 14, 2022 • 05:00 1 minutes read

    The Lent Series continues today with a short, darkly ruminative work for baritone and ensemble by British composer Colin Matthews. It’s a setting of the poem ‘It rains’ by war poet Edward Thomas, one of two poems that Thomas composed in 1917 concerned with rain. ‘It rains’ is a wistful …

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  • Lent SeriesPremières

    Lauri Jõeleht – A Prayer in Darkness (World Première)

    by 5:4 March 10, 2022 • 05:00
    March 10, 2022 • 05:00 1 minutes read

    For the next work in this year’s 5:4 Lent Series, i’m turning to a work for oboe and three organs by Estonian composer Lauri Jõeleht. A Prayer in Darkness dates from 2017, and its title is drawn from an eponymous poem by G. K. Chesterton, the final verse of which …

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5:4
  • About
    • Other writings
  • Patrons
  • The Lists
    • Listening History
    • Complete List of Ratings
    • 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
    • Podcasts
  • Contact
    • Contact Form
    • Submission Contact Form