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Premières

  • FestivalsPremières

    Warsaw Autumn 2025 (Part 1)

    by 5:4 October 7, 2025 • 06:00
    October 7, 2025 • 06:00

    This year’s Warsaw Autumn festival didn’t so much have a theme as a keyword: “clearing”. Referencing Heidegger’s use of the term (lichtung), the idea was that it “symbolises a new stage, a new opening and chance, in both the social and individual dimension. The word carries the hope that we wish to …

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  • FestivalsPremières

    World New Music Days 2025, Portugal (Part 4)

    by 5:4 July 10, 2025 • 10:49
    July 10, 2025 • 10:49

    Alongside chamber and electroacoustic music, the 2025 World New Music Days included a diverse range of ensemble and orchestral works.

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  • FestivalsPremières

    World New Music Days 2025, Portugal (Part 2)

    by 5:4 June 24, 2025 • 15:11
    June 24, 2025 • 15:11

    The World New Music Days features a wide variety of instrumental combinations, but the majority of music performed at this year’s festival were chamber works. Some of these fell within a trio of “extraordinário” concerts, each focused on a solo instrument, clarinet, cello and saxophone.

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  • FestivalsPremières

    World New Music Days 2025, Portugal (Part 1)

    by 5:4 June 15, 2025 • 08:15
    June 15, 2025 • 08:15

    Contemporary music festivals often feel the need to impose a theme on the proceedings, but in the case of this year’s World New Music Days, hosted in Portugal, it was less a theme than a rallying cry. “Thirst for Change” was the phrase hanging over the festival, though as with …

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  • FestivalsPremières

    Estonian Music Days 2025 (Part 3)

    by 5:4 May 22, 2025 • 09:14
    May 22, 2025 • 09:14

    Over the last 10 years, as i’ve been immersing myself ever more deeply into Estonian contemporary music, i’ve tentatively reached a point where i feel i can be more or less confident of what certain composers will or won’t do. Yet i mentioned in Part 1 of the lingering sense …

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  • FestivalsPremières

    Estonian Music Days 2025 (Part 2)

    by 5:4 May 17, 2025 • 10:01
    May 17, 2025 • 10:01

    Two concerts of special interest that happen each year during the Estonian Music Days are those focusing on works by student composers. One of these took place in Tartu, at the Heino Eller Music School, being the final concert of the 2025 Young Composer competition. The requirements on this occasion …

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  • FestivalsPremières

    Estonian Music Days 2025 (Part 1)

    by 5:4 May 12, 2025 • 16:17
    May 12, 2025 • 16:17

    Anniversaries were the focus at this year’s Estonian Music Days festival. The festival’s theme, ‘Sada’ (100), celebrated the centenary of the country’s Composers’ Union. There was therefore something of a retrospective flavour to certain aspects of the festival, revisiting significant works in addition to paying tribute to various notable figures …

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  • FestivalsPremières

    Only Connect 2025

    by 5:4 April 22, 2025 • 14:30
    April 22, 2025 • 14:30

    Let’s return to one of the great maxims of not just contemporary but all music: size isn’t important. In the case of Norway’s Only Connect festival, its short, 2½-day duration belied the fact that its content was highly concentrated. As such, one event started to blur into the next, into …

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  • FestivalsPremières

    Musica Nova 2025 (Part 5)

    by 5:4 March 28, 2025 • 12:06
    March 28, 2025 • 12:06

    One of the most fascinating events at this year’s Musica Nova festival was LOKS – four concerts at once. Not so much a performance as a film juxtaposing and compositing four separate performances, it featured music by four composers whose initials form the title: Lauri Supponen, Oene val Geel, Krists …

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  • FestivalsPremières

    Musica Nova 2025 (Part 4)

    by 5:4 March 22, 2025 • 09:26
    March 22, 2025 • 09:26

    Some of the most memorable performances at this year’s Musica Nova festival were of vocal works. The concert given by the Vicentino Singers was powerful not simply because of the abilities of the singers, but due to their size. Being a sextet, the level of intimacy they established was considerable; …

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  • FestivalsPremières

    Musica Nova 2025 (Part 3)

    by 5:4 March 13, 2025 • 12:32
    March 13, 2025 • 12:32

    Being the risky, aspiringly cutting edge things that they are, contemporary music festivals always tend to be a bit hit and miss. Very little i heard at Musica Nova 2025 fell into the latter category, but there were a few pieces that slipped through the quality net, being memorable for …

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  • FestivalsPremières

    Musica Nova 2025 (Part 2)

    by 5:4 March 7, 2025 • 10:21
    March 7, 2025 • 10:21

    Especially prominent at this year’s Musica Nova festival was the lavish organ in Helsinki’s Musiikkitalo concert hall, unveiled at the start of 2024. The largest modern concert hall organ in the world, its construction was partly made possible by one of Finland’s greatest composers, the late Kaija Saariaho, who in …

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  • FestivalsPremières

    Musica Nova 2025 (Part 1)

    by 5:4 February 26, 2025 • 10:08
    February 26, 2025 • 10:08

    i’ve commented before on my general disinterest, and usual disregard, for music festival themes. Musica Nova, Helsinki’s biennial new music extravaganza, opted for ‘together’ as its theme this year, and while that word is sufficiently vague as to have almost no meaning, there were numerous times when that word insinuated …

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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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  • 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 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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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
  • 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
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