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Premières

  • FestivalsPremières

    HCMF 2022 (Part 2)

    by 5:4 December 1, 2022 • 15:24
    December 1, 2022 • 15:24

    This year’s composer in residence at HCMF, Lisa Streich, was represented by an appropriately large number of performances, allowing for a pretty deep dive into her musical thinking. If i say that a lot of what i heard of Streich’s music was more intriguing than immediately enjoyable, i need to…

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  • FestivalsPremières

    HCMF 2022 (Part 1)

    by 5:4 November 30, 2022 • 14:27
    November 30, 2022 • 14:27

    People doing interesting things to objects doesn’t necessarily create interesting music. Can we agree on that? i don’t think that’s a particularly outrageous thing to say, though there were a number of times during my six days at this year’s Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival when i found myself wondering otherwise.…

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  • CD/Digital releasesPremières

    Shiva Feshareki – Turning World

    by 5:4 November 2, 2022 • 11:26
    November 2, 2022 • 11:26

    Concerts of contemporary music have a tendency to be obsessed with presenting premières, yet it’s all too common for those performances to be dazzling one-offs that are all too soon lost to oblivion. So there’s some serious kudos due to NMC for saving two such performances, both electroacoustic, both showcasing…

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  • PremièresRetrospectives

    The 10 Symphonies of Erkki-Sven Tüür – Part 4: Symphony No. 10 ‘ÆRIS’

    by 5:4 October 16, 2022 • 05:00
    October 16, 2022 • 05:00

    This text is an expanded version of the article originally published (in Estonian translation) by Sirp, 16 September 2022. Looking back through Erkki-Sven Tüür’s first nine symphonies, they exhibit a great deal of consistency, primarily with regard to the use of contrasting musical ideas, often presented as bold juxtapositions, sometimes…

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  • PremièresRetrospectives

    The 10 Symphonies of Erkki-Sven Tüür – Part 1: Symphony No. 1

    by 5:4 October 7, 2022 • 05:00
    October 7, 2022 • 05:00

    This text is an expanded version of the article originally published (in Estonian translation) by Sirp, 16 September 2022. It’s surely true that no composers today – and very few composers historically – would give any credence whatever to the so-called “curse of the ninth”, the absurd superstition that, having…

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  • FestivalsPremières

    Ultima 2022 (Part 3)

    by 5:4 September 29, 2022 • 05:00
    September 29, 2022 • 05:00

    i’m concluding my coverage of this year’s Ultima festival with something that – over a week since it took place – i’m still grappling with in terms of what i experienced as well as, quite simply, what to call it. On 17 September a marathon was being run through the…

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  • FestivalsPremières

    Ultima 2022 (Part 2)

    by 5:4 September 26, 2022 • 10:26
    September 26, 2022 • 10:26

    It’s reasonable to expect extreme variety and diversity at Ultima, though many of the more conventional concert events i experienced at this year’s festival were a surprisingly mixed bag, qualitatively speaking. The most taxing was unfortunately a concert celebrating the award of this year’s Arne Nordheim prize to Jan Martin…

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  • CommentFestivalsPremières

    Proms 2022: the premières – how you voted

    by 5:4 September 24, 2022 • 10:19
    September 24, 2022 • 10:19

    It’s been a little over two weeks since the BBC bafflingly decided, rather than to channel the Last Night of the Proms (the UK’s most shamelessly jingoistic occasion) into an evening both celebrating the life and commemorating the death of the Queen, that they would instead simply pull the plug.…

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  • Premières

    Proms 2022: Betsy Jolas – bTunes (World Première)

    by 5:4 September 6, 2022 • 14:16
    September 6, 2022 • 14:16

    In an artistic context, there’s an obvious world of difference between observation, taking inspiration from and / or seeking to emulate or analogise aspects of the natural world and human culture, and critique, taking issue with and / or seeking to highlight problems arising from or endemic within those same…

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  • Premières

    Proms 2022: Thomas Adès – Märchentänze (UK Première)

    by 5:4 August 30, 2022 • 11:01
    August 30, 2022 • 11:01

    A few weeks back in this year’s Proms season, Sally Beamish’s Hive gave the impression that the occasion was aimed at children, and it was much the same listening to Thomas Adès‘ Märchentänze, given its UK première last Friday. Adès is such a strangely unpredictable composer, capable of extremes of…

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  • Premières

    Proms 2022: Mark-Anthony Turnage – Time Flies (UK Première)

    by 5:4 August 17, 2022 • 15:50
    August 17, 2022 • 15:50

    i’m not sure whether to interpret the Proms’ decision to place Mark-Anthony Turnage‘s new orchestral piece in a concert alongside Vaughan Williams and Elgar as an attempt to imply some kind of genteel, ‘establishment figure’ status. Yet – would that be wrong? Now in his early 60s, Turnage’s music has…

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  • Premières

    Proms 2022: Missy Mazzoli – Violin Concerto (Procession) (European Première)

    by 5:4 August 16, 2022 • 13:53
    August 16, 2022 • 13:53

    Sunday evening’s Prom included the European première (so nice to see Britain still regarded as being in Europe) of Missy Mazzoli‘s new Violin Concerto. Parenthetically subtitled ‘Procession’, the work is something of a response to the time of lockdown, examining, in Mazzoli’s words “how we use music and ritual to…

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  • Premières

    Proms 2022: Hannah Eisendle – Heliosis (UK Première)

    by 5:4 August 15, 2022 • 16:48
    August 15, 2022 • 16:48

    Does it matter if the way a composition sounds doesn’t bear any meaningful resemblance to the composer’s stated inspiration? That’s a question that often suggests itself when listening to contemporary music, and it has completely dominated my listening to Austrian composer Hannah Eisendle‘s new work Heliosis, which received its first…

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  • Premières

    Proms 2022: Anna Thorvaldsdottir – ARCHORA (World Première)

    by 5:4 August 13, 2022 • 05:00
    August 13, 2022 • 05:00

    The relationship between Anna Thorvaldsdottir‘s music and nature has always been, to put it mildly, complicated. Far from being a composer merely setting out (as far too many have claimed far too often) to evoke the wildness of her native Iceland, Thorvaldsdottir has tended to be much more concerned with…

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  • Premières

    Proms 2022: Matthew Kaner – Pearl (World Première)

    by 5:4 August 12, 2022 • 13:44
    August 12, 2022 • 13:44

    Voices returned to contemporary music at the Proms on Wednesday evening, with the first performance of Matthew Kaner‘s new vocal work Pearl. The piece, for baritone and orchestra, takes its title from the Middle English poem Pearl, written by the anonymous Gawain Poet, setting portions of the text from Simon…

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  • Premières

    Proms 2022: Gavin Higgins – Concerto Grosso (World Première)

    by 5:4 August 10, 2022 • 15:34
    August 10, 2022 • 15:34

    Finally. Following six premières of, to say the least, wildly varying quality, this year’s Proms season finally struck gold on Monday evening in the form of Gavin Higgins‘ new large-scale work for brass band and orchestra, Concerto Grosso. First things first: it’s a bit of an odd title, as the…

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  • Premières

    Proms 2022: Julian Anderson – Symphony No. 2 ‘Prague Panoramas’ (World Première)

    by 5:4 August 8, 2022 • 11:20
    August 8, 2022 • 11:20

    Almost exactly 10 years ago, i coined a new adjective, ‘Faberian’, in reference to Faber Music, to summarise what i later described as “the kind of thing one hears all too often in works from the more mainstream protagonists of that particular publishing house”. On that first occasion i elaborated…

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  • Premières

    Proms 2022: Hildur Guðnadóttir & Sam Slater (arr. Robert Ames) – Selections from Battlefield 2042 (European Première)

    by 5:4 August 2, 2022 • 15:59
    August 2, 2022 • 15:59

    As part of the Proms’ inexorable slide away from concert works in an attempt to remain relevant, yesterday evening’s event was given over to orchestral arrangements and reworkings of music from videogames. They included the European première (following a performance by the LA Philharmonic late last year) of Robert Ames‘…

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  • Premières

    Proms 2022: Nicole Lizée – Blurr is the Colour of My True Love’s Eyes (European Première)

    by 5:4 August 1, 2022 • 14:31
    August 1, 2022 • 14:31

    Canadian composer Nicole Lizée‘s new percussion concerto, premièred last month in Ottowa, received its first European performance at the Proms last Friday evening. Its title, Blurr is the Colour of My True Love’s Eyes, though somewhat strange at first, perhaps suggests the two main aspects of the work. The first…

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  • Premières

    Proms 2022: Cheryl Frances-Hoad – Your Servant, Elizabeth (World Première)

    by 5:4 July 23, 2022 • 12:54
    July 23, 2022 • 12:54

    Last night’s Prom was a monarchist’s paradise, waxing lyrical in the Queen’s platinum jubilee year with an evening of music composed for royal occasions. Nestling among all the sonic bowing and scraping and forelock-tugging from the usual early 20th century shower was a short new choral work from Cheryl Frances-Hoad,…

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5:4
  • About
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  • The Lists
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    • 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
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