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Premières

  • Advent CalendarPremières

    Maurice Ravel (arr. Boulez) – Frontispice (UK Première)

    by 5:4 December 18, 2021 • 05:00
    December 18, 2021 • 05:00

    Today’s Advent Calendar work is another fascinating miniature oddity. Maurice Ravel composed Frontispice – his shortest work, consisting of just 15 bars – in June 1918. It was commissioned by the writer and poet Ricciotto Canudo, intended to act as a preface to Canudo’s S.P. 503, Le Poème du Vardar,…

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  • Advent CalendarPremières

    Linda Catlin Smith – Adagietto (European Première)

    by 5:4 December 17, 2021 • 05:00
    December 17, 2021 • 05:00

    i want to make a bold, seemingly absurd statement about the orchestral work behind today’s Advent Calendar door. The more time i’ve spent with Adagietto by Linda Catlin Smith, the more i’ve perceived it as having no movement in it whatsoever. Let me explain. What i don’t mean is that…

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  • Advent CalendarPremières

    Zoë Martlew – Broad St. Burlesque (World Première)

    by 5:4 December 16, 2021 • 05:00
    December 16, 2021 • 05:00

    Behind yesterday’s Advent Calendar door was an angel bathed in glory; today, characters and a context rather less salubrious. Broad St. Burlesque is an homage to the street in Birmingham that its composer, Zoe Martlew, not inaccurately describes as “the city’s principal party slag drag”. The piece was commissioned by…

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  • Advent CalendarPremières

    Deborah Pritchard – The Angel Standing in the Sun (World Première)

    by 5:4 December 15, 2021 • 05:00
    December 15, 2021 • 05:00

    Today’s Advent Calendar piece is a short orchestral work by Deborah Pritchard that takes its inspiration, and its title, from a painting by J. M. W. Turner. The Angel Standing in the Sun dates from relatively late in Turner’s life, being exhibited in 1846 (he died five years later). It’s…

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  • Advent CalendarPremières

    Helena Tulve – Nächtliche Gesänge (World Première)

    by 5:4 December 14, 2021 • 05:00
    December 14, 2021 • 05:00

    Behind today’s Advent Calendar door is one of the most stunning choral works i’ve heard in the last few years. i was fortunate enough to experience the first performance of Helena Tulve’s Nächtliche Gesänge [Night Songs] at the World Music Days in 2019. The two songs use texts from German…

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  • Advent CalendarPremières

    Aphex Twin (arr. Patrick Nunn) – Nannou (World Première)

    by 5:4 December 11, 2021 • 05:00
    December 11, 2021 • 05:00

    Though at first glance the music of Aphex Twin might not seem a likely subject for instrumental arrangement, the fact is that his work has attracted this treatment on a number of occasions, usually with surprising success. As far back as 1995, Philip Glass created an outstanding orchestration of the…

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  • Advent CalendarPremières

    Max de Wardener – Untitled (World Première)

    by 5:4 December 7, 2021 • 05:00
    December 7, 2021 • 05:00

    Today’s Advent Calendar piece is a beautiful curiosity from 2014 by British composer Max de Wardener. This particular piece, which is untitled, came as the last of three new works by de Wardener performed live at the Southbank Centre in 2014, the first of which was also untitled, while the…

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  • Advent CalendarPremières

    John Cage – Variations I for Stephen Montague (World Première)

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

    Something of an oddity behind today’s Advent Calendar door, and a real rarity too. Some decades ago, US composer Stephen Montague, who had developed a close relationship with John Cage, had asked Cage for a piano piece. Nothing came of this until 1990 when, in Montague’s words, He borrowed a…

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  • Advent CalendarPremières

    Gerta Raidma – je suis (World Première)

    by 5:4 December 3, 2021 • 05:00
    December 3, 2021 • 05:00

    Today’s Advent Calendar featured work is a choral piece i’ve returned to many, many times since first hearing it in 2018, at the Estonian Music Days. Gerta Raidma‘s je suis sets a text of her own devising, words that are achingly personal and intimate, mingling fragility and disorientation with faint…

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  • ConcertsFestivalsPremières

    HCMF 2021 (Part 4)

    by 5:4 November 30, 2021 • 11:18
    November 30, 2021 • 11:18

    There’s not a lot left to say about HCMF 2021. In previous instalments i mentioned how continuity, often in tandem with lyricism, played a major role in the music that made the deepest and most long-lasting impression. But from a listening perspective, every piece in every concert at this year’s…

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  • ConcertsFestivalsPremières

    HCMF 2021 (Part 3)

    by 5:4 November 29, 2021 • 15:46
    November 29, 2021 • 15:46

    One of my recurring trains of thought during HCMF 2021 was concerned with the notion of continuity. This was, very simply, due to the fact that all of the best things i heard at the festival had an incredibly clear, logical sense running through them that, regardless of their inner…

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  • ConcertsFestivalsPremières

    HCMF 2021 (Part 2)

    by 5:4 November 28, 2021 • 13:13
    November 28, 2021 • 13:13

    HCMF always has its fair share of unconventional, genre-defying performances, and this year was no exception. Among the more unusual was Eupepsia/Dyspepsia devised by Austrian composer Eva Reiter. Taking the form of a concert-cum-lecture (or possibly lecture-cum-concert), the focus of the work was on the socio-cultural effects wrought on Bolivia…

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  • ConcertsFestivalsPremières

    HCMF 2021 (Part 1)

    by 5:4 November 26, 2021 • 16:55
    November 26, 2021 • 16:55

    Though this year it only lasted five days instead of ten, i came away from the 2021 Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival with the distinct impression that, somehow, the usual quantity of music had been compressed into a reduced time frame. That’s not, mercifully, because of any attempt to shoehorn many…

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  • ConcertsFestivalsPremières

    Ultima 2021 (Part 3)

    by 5:4 October 4, 2021 • 15:59
    October 4, 2021 • 15:59

    In addition to the soundwalks, installations, music theatre, performance art and electroacoustic shenanigans, Ultima 2021 also had its fair share of more conventional ensemble concerts, which took place in two Oslo churches. The beautiful Tøyen Kirke played host to two of Norway’s most prominent new music ensembles, asamisimasa and Cikada.

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  • ConcertsFestivalsPremières

    Ultima 2021 (Part 2)

    by 5:4 October 1, 2021 • 14:29
    October 1, 2021 • 14:29

    Not everything i heard at Ultima 2021 was bound up in convolutions of meaning. Ryoji Ikeda‘s forays into the world of percussion (which i previously explored in 2018) are a sidestep away from his more central work in multi-layered representations and interpretations of data, instead concerned much more directly with…

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  • ConcertsFestivalsPremières

    Ultima 2021 (Part 1)

    by 5:4 September 29, 2021 • 11:24
    September 29, 2021 • 11:24

    The saying goes that you don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone, but in the case of the Ultima festival in Oslo, the latter half of which i experienced last week, i don’t think i truly realised how much i’d missed contemporary music festivals until i was back in…

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  • CommentFestivalsPremières

    Proms 2021: the premières – how you voted

    by 5:4 September 28, 2021 • 11:22
    September 28, 2021 • 11:22

    Two weeks have passed since this year’s Proms season came to an end, so it’s time to take a look at how you responded to each of the new works in the annual 5:4 Proms première polls. i want to thank all of you who voted; there was a healthy-sized…

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  • ConcertsPremières

    CBSO Centre, Birmingham: BCMG – Mark-Anthony Turnage Concertino

    by 5:4 September 15, 2021 • 14:09
    September 15, 2021 • 14:09

    The last time i wrote about a Birmingham Contemporary Music Group concert, i began the article with an observation, a complaint and a plea; this time, i’m starting with a shock and a nice surprise. The shock comes from the realisation that that previous concert took place no fewer than…

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  • FestivalsPremières

    Proms 2021: Gity Razaz – Mother (World Première)

    by 5:4 September 12, 2021 • 12:38
    September 12, 2021 • 12:38

    What is there left to say about the Last Night of the Proms, a.k.a “Now That’s What I Call Classical Music”? Less a concert than a party, for many years now the occasion has begun with a première, presumably intended to act as a champagne cork ‘pop’ to get things…

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  • FestivalsPremières

    Proms 2021: Unsuk Chin – Subito con forza (UK Première)

    by 5:4 September 8, 2021 • 15:27
    September 8, 2021 • 15:27

    The penultimate première of this year’s Proms took place yesterday evening, in the form of a short, entertaining concert-opener courtesy of South Korean composer Unsuk Chin. Composed last year as part of the commemorations marking the 250th anniversary of Beethoven’s birth, Chin’s Subito con forza flirts with a number of…

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