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 …

Of the four portrait discs i’ve been spending time with lately, the most successful overall is Aletheia, a new album of choral works by Lithuanian composer Žibuoklė Martinaitytė, performed by the Latvian Radio Choir conducted by Sigvards Kļava.

Two years ago i wrote that a composer i’d been “trying to get the measure of” was Grażyna Bacewicz. Since then, CPO have helped that process with a series of albums exploring her orchestral music, the latest of which, Complete Orchestral Works Vol. 3, has recently been released. It’s clear …

Continuing my short survey of recent portrait discs, a different kind of surprise came from Midnight Sun Variations, a collection of orchestral works by Finnish composer Outi Tarkiainen. The world première of Midnight Sun Variations, performed at the 2019 Proms by the BBC Philharmonic conducted by John Storgårds, left me …

There were a couple of occasions last year when i commented on the potential hit-or-miss quality of portrait albums, in relation to the music of Bára Gísladóttir and Rolf Wallin. i’ve been reflecting on this further while listening to four other recent portrait discs, which i’ll be exploring in the …

First thing this morning i’m setting off for Helsinki, to attend this year’s Musica Nova festival. It’s my first time at Musica Nova, and my first time in Finland, so lots to explore and discover. Rest assured there’s more coming up on 5:4 during my absence, and there’ll be words …

Notions of continuity are often complicated in Kenneth Kirschner‘s music. That’s just as true for the connections between material in his compositions as it is between the compositions themselves, as Kirschner has been exploring various parallel and interconnected trains of thought throughout his career, regularly returning to ideas that he …

To conclude this month’s focus on post-festive free(down)loading, i’m turning to one of the Currents albums released by two-piano, two-percussion ensemble Yarn/Wire. Over the last decade, the quartet has released 10 albums in the Currents series, showcasing an array of works composed for them. Not surprisingly, with such a diversity …

While it didn’t end up in my Best Albums of 2024, one of the releases that almost made it into the list was Mahōgakkō by Japanese musician Hakushi Hasegawa [長谷川白紙]. It’s an insanely, gleefully over-the-top cavalcade of pure pop extroversion, exhausting yet irresistible, mind-melting in its complete stylistic and artistic …

The assorted members of Australian experimental group Ektoise are involved in a plethora of other musical outlets, one of which is Subsea, the solo project of Jim Grundy. Untitled V is an album released in 2017, and while the title suggests otherwise, doesn’t appear to be the fifth in a …

One of the most exciting – and, typically, underappreciated – pop acts of the 2010s was Man Without Country, the welsh duo of Tomas Greenhalf and Ryan James. Beginning in 2011, they released a series of truly outstanding singles – including King Complex, Inflammable Heart, Puppets, Migrating Clay Pigeon, Closet …

An interesting album that came out quite late last year is San Servolo Registri Festival Concert, featuring assorted organ-based electroacoustic works performed by Lauren Redhead and Alistair Zaldua. It’s a curious mixture of music, yet while the pieces demonstrate a certain amount of diversity, several of them share aspects in …

The most immersive Icelandic music i’ve encountered is by Þóranna Björnsdóttir, whose collaborative work LUCID blew my mind a few years back (becoming by Best Album of 2019), and who has consistently captivated me on the various occasions i’ve heard her performing live. Released in 2022, Þyrpingar [convergences – the …

It’s January, when we take time to recover from the repercussions of our festive financial shenanigans, and i once again turn my attention to some of the best music available that doesn’t require – but no doubt deserves, if you can – any kind of payment. i originally cottoned on …

And finally we reach the zenith, the apex of this year’s best albums, each and every one of them a bewilderment of shock, awe and wonder.

It was 16 years ago that my first Best Albums of the Year list was published, and for most of the years since there have been 40 entries on the list. However, there were many times when recommending 40 as genuinely ‘best’ felt like a struggle, and a few years …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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.