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5:4
Premières

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

by 5:4 August 10, 2022 • 15:34 1 comment

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

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

20 years on: Autechre – Gantz Graf

by 5:4 August 5, 2022 • 05:00 3 comments
Premières

Proms 2022: Hildur Guðnadóttir & Sam Slater (arr. Robert Ames) – Selections...

by 5:4 August 2, 2022 • 15:59 0 comment

Proms 2022: Nicole Lizée – Blurr is the Colour of My True...

by 5:4 August 1, 2022 • 14:31 0 comment

The Dialogues: Naomi Pinnock

by 5:4 July 27, 2022 • 08:23 0 comment
Premières

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

by 5:4 July 23, 2022 • 12:54 0 comment

Proms 2022: Sally Beamish – Hive (World Première)

by 5:4 July 22, 2022 • 17:56 0 comment

Proms 2022: Hildur Guðnadóttir – The Fact of the Matter (World Première)

by 5:4 July 21, 2022 • 16:15 2 comments
ConcertsPremières

Laura Bowler – The Blue Woman; Distance

by 5:4 July 18, 2022 • 16:39 0 comment

BEAST FEaST 2022: Resonances (Part 2)

by 5:4 July 10, 2022 • 11:41 0 comment

BEAST FEaST 2022: Resonances (Part 1)

by 5:4 July 7, 2022 • 12:25 0 comment

more articles

  • Lent SeriesPremières

    Naomi Pinnock – We are (World Première)

    by 5:4 March 22, 2022 • 14:03
    March 22, 2022 • 14:03

    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

    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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  • Announcements

    Fermata Borealis

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

    i’m setting off this morning for Bergen, to attend Norway’s most discombobulating new music festival Borealis. Words to follow once i get back next week – and once i’ve begun to figure out what on earth i experienced.

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  • FestivalsPremières

    Dark Music Days 2022 (Part 2)

    by 5:4 March 14, 2022 • 19:34
    March 14, 2022 • 19:34

    As i mentioned previously, the majority of the music i heard at this year’s Dark Music Days fell somewhere between emotional allusion and full-on abstraction. In many ways it was the most abstract music that made some of the strongest and most long-lasting impressions, primarily because of the composers’ focus…

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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

    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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  • FestivalsPremières

    Dark Music Days 2022 (Part 1)

    by 5:4 March 11, 2022 • 13:15
    March 11, 2022 • 13:15

    Postponed from its usual position in late January to early March due to last-minute Covid restriction shenanigans, Iceland’s Dark Music Days festival was therefore not quite so dark as usual. All the same, it was hardly the Light Music Days, and in any case Mother Nature was seemingly more determined…

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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

    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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  • Lent Series

    Gavin Higgins – Sadly Now the Throstle Sings

    by 5:4 March 6, 2022 • 05:00
    March 6, 2022 • 05:00

    For the next work in this year’s Lent Series, i’m turning to the uniquely haunting melancholy sound of the brass band. In 2014, i wrote about Gavin Higgins‘ Three Broken Love Songs, and his more recent work Sadly Now the Throstle Sings explores the same subject matter. The title comes…

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  • Lent Series

    Aftab Darvishi – And the world stopped, lacking you…

    by 5:4 March 2, 2022 • 05:00
    March 2, 2022 • 05:00

    It’s Ash Wednesday, the traditional first day of Lent, so it’s time for my annual 5:4 Lent Series. Last year, i took nature as my theme as something of an antidote to the fact that, at the time, being able to travel and explore the natural world was difficult if…

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  • Announcements

    Fermata oscura

    by 5:4 February 28, 2022 • 05:00
    February 28, 2022 • 05:00

    This morning i’m setting off for a week and a bit in Iceland, attending the Dark Music Days festival. In my absence – starting on Wednesday – this year’s Lent Series will begin (so only half a fermata this time); words to follow about all the goings-on in Reykjavík once…

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  • CD/Digital releasesRetrospectives

    Paul Dolden – Golden Dolden Box Set

    by 5:4 February 23, 2022 • 20:57
    February 23, 2022 • 20:57

    i feel like i’m emerging from a bomb shelter. For the last two days i’ve been immersed in the Golden Dolden Box Set, a huge self-released compilation by Canadian composer Paul Dolden. Usually, the task of retrospective falls to curators and writers, but in the case of this box set,…

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  • 20th CenturyCD/Digital releases

    Michael Gielen Edition Vol. 10: Music after 1945

    by 5:4 February 18, 2022 • 13:21
    February 18, 2022 • 13:21

    i’m really not a conductor fanboy. Composers are always getting me excited; performers too, from time to time; but conductors, in general, not so much. There are some special cases: Bernard Haitink and Riccardo Chailly have both stunned me on countless occasions; i’ve always had a lot of time for…

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  • Announcements

    Gigs, gigs, gigs: Dark Music Days, Birmingham Contemporary Music Group, Riot Ensemble, BBC Symphony Orchestra

    by 5:4 February 17, 2022 • 15:53
    February 17, 2022 • 15:53

    It’s tempting to hope that 2022 might finally bring an end to the widespread disruption that has plagued concerts and festivals for the last two years. With that optimism in mind, there are some interesting events to look forward to in the coming weeks.

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  • CD/Digital releases

    Octavi Rumbau – Pendular Motion

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

    It’s just over a decade since Spanish label Neu Records was established, and as i’ve explored each new release from them through the intervening years, every single one has seemed not remotely like a regular album, but a special edition. That’s in no small part due to the presentation. From…

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  • CD/Digital releasesFree music

    Nikita Golyshev update

    by 5:4 February 9, 2022 • 09:27
    February 9, 2022 • 09:27

    In my series of articles focusing on free music last year, i explored Nikita Golyshev‘s remarkable album 15 Songs from Glass, Oil and Other Sources. Originally released in 2007, and long since vanished from the web, at time of writing i was only able to share the MP3 version of…

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  • CD/Digital releases

    Berglind María Tómasdóttir – The Lokkur Project

    by 5:4 February 7, 2022 • 17:04
    February 7, 2022 • 17:04

    Among the plethora of releases i’ve received in recent times there’s been a number of especially noteworthy items, either in the form of sizeable box sets or otherwise ‘unusual’ editions, so throughout the course of this month, alongside other things, i’ll be exploring some of them. Surely the strangest (and,…

    Read more
  • CD/Digital releasesFree music

    Joanne Pollock – Optimist

    by 5:4 January 28, 2022 • 12:01
    January 28, 2022 • 12:01

    It was in 2014 that i first discovered Canadian musician Joanne Pollock, thanks to her superb collaboration with Aaron Funk (Venetian Snares), Poemss. It’s an album i still return to regularly, due to its unique blend of disarmingly naturalistic vocals and sleek but distinctly bedroom pop-type electronica. It’s not a…

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  • CD/Digital releasesFree music

    Christopher McFall – A Starved-Strafe Lancing Machine; Siren

    by 5:4 January 25, 2022 • 16:38
    January 25, 2022 • 16:38

    US sound artist Christopher McFall first started putting out work in 2005, on a variety of netlabels, and his output since then has consisted of a pretty equal split between CD releases and a generous quantity of free music. However, the last decade has seen McFall’s output reduce considerably: just…

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  • InterviewsThe Dialogues

    The Dialogues: Natasha Barrett

    by 5:4 January 24, 2022 • 11:27
    January 24, 2022 • 11:27

    i’m delighted to present the latest instalment in my occasional long-form conversation series The Dialogues. My guest this time is UK-born, Norway-based composer Natasha Barrett, whose music i’ve deeply admired for at least 20 years. Barrett is both a veteran and a pioneer of electronic music, utilising a convoluted mixture…

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  • CD/Digital releasesFree music

    Man:Sha – Kakugo / 覚悟; Moon Eater / 鮮綠色龍

    by 5:4 January 21, 2022 • 15:10
    January 21, 2022 • 15:10

    The next freely-available music i want to explore in this series is by Man:Sha, an artist whose work suggests them to be Japanese, and based in France. i’ve not been able to find out any meaningful additional information about them, and only discovered their work in the first place due…

    Read more
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5:4
  • About
  • Patrons
  • The Lists
    • Complete list of ratings
    • 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
  • Contact
    • Contact Form
    • Submission Contact Form