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5:4
Tag:

cello

  • 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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  • CD/Digital releases

    Deborah Walker – Starflux

    by 5:4 December 5, 2020 • 10:16
    December 5, 2020 • 10:16

    It was earlier this year that i first encountered the label Elli Records, self-described as “an independent label focused on music made by humans, for humans, with computers”. Nothing particularly unusual about that, but while i’ve only just begun to scratch the surface of their five years’ worth of releases,…

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  • CD/Digital releases

    Various – Epicycle II

    by 5:4 August 27, 2020 • 14:08
    August 27, 2020 • 14:08

    Released tomorrow is a new album of eight works by Icelandic composers, all of which have been curated by – and in some cases created in collaboration with – cellist and vocalist Gyða Valtýsdóttir. The general tone of these works, all of which are quite brief, is meditative in nature,…

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  • CD/Digital releases

    Sæunn Thorsteinsdóttir – Vernacular; Siggi String Quartet – South of the Circle; Iceland Symphony Orchestra – Concurrence

    by 5:4 January 17, 2020 • 11:17
    January 17, 2020 • 11:17

    In just over a week’s time Iceland’s premier new music festival, the Dark Music Days, will be up and running again, and once again i’ll be heading off to Reykjavík to immerse myself in some of the goings-on. Details about the festival can be found here, and for any UK…

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  • CD/Digital releases

    Esa-Pekka Salonen – Cello Concerto

    by 5:4 July 15, 2019 • 16:27
    July 15, 2019 • 16:27

    One of my highlights from last year came at the end of the summer, during the final concert at the Baltic Sea Festival in Stockholm. An occasion given over to celebrating composer and conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen (which i reviewed elsewhere), the concert included a performance of Salonen’s Cello Concerto given…

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  • ConcertsFestivalsPremières

    Dark Music Days 2019: Zoë Martlew

    by 5:4 February 6, 2019 • 14:00
    February 6, 2019 • 14:00

    One of the plagues that continues to afflict most contemporary music festivals is ‘première-itis’, an acute obsession with presenting loudly-trumpeted world premières at the expense of providing opportunities for second, third or indeed nth performances. It was a relief, therefore, that this year’s Dark Music Days (which was otherwise similarly…

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  • FestivalsPremières

    Proms 2017: Brian Elias – Cello Concerto (World Première)

    by 5:4 August 11, 2017 • 21:14
    August 11, 2017 • 21:14

    Around a month ago, i bumped into Brian Elias at the Cheltenham Music Festival, and we had a brief chat about his forthcoming Cello Concerto, premièred a couple of nights ago at the Proms. As i mentioned in my article with his pre-première questions, he expressed some reservations about including…

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  • FestivalsPremières

    Proms 2017: Pascal Dusapin – Outscape (UK Première)

    by 5:4 July 22, 2017 • 11:08
    July 22, 2017 • 11:08

    Concertos are a regular occurrence among Proms premières. Usually – too often – they’re for violin, but last year bucked this trend by featuring a pair of cello concertos (by Huw Watkins and Charlotte Bray). The 2017 season is bucking it some more, again featuring two of them, the first…

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  • AnniversariesBlasts from the Past

    Blasts from the Past: Dmitri Shostakovich – Cello Concerto No. 2

    by 5:4 September 25, 2016 • 11:12
    September 25, 2016 • 11:12

    On this day, in 1966, Dmitri Shostakovich turned 60, and the evening brought a birthday concert including the world première of his Cello Concerto No. 2. The piece is well worth singling out for celebration, partly because to my mind it starts to resolve the very real difficulties that confront…

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  • FestivalsPremières

    Proms 2016: Malcolm Hayes – Violin Concerto; Huw Watkins – Cello Concerto; Charlotte Bray – Falling in the Fire (World Premières)

    by 5:4 August 16, 2016 • 10:25
    August 16, 2016 • 10:25

    Three Proms, three world premières, three concertos, one for violin, two for cello, all lasting around 25 minutes. The similarities between them go little deeper than these most basic facts, though, each occupied with a very particular soundworld, aesthetic, and relationship between soloist and orchestra. The results were similarly mixed.

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  • Premières

    Per Nørgård – Three Nocturnal Movements (World Première)

    by 5:4 June 5, 2016 • 16:04
    June 5, 2016 • 16:04

    It’s Constitution Day (Grundlovsdag) in Denmark today, the closest the country gets to a national day, so i thought i’d mark the occasion with a piece by one of the country’s best-known composers that i’ve been spending time with lately. It’s a re-thinking by Per Nørgård of one of his earlier works, Remembering Child,…

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  • FestivalsPremières

    Proms 2015: Betsy Jolas – Wanderlied (UK Première), Shiori Usui – Ophiocordyceps unilateralis s.l. & Joanna Lee – Hammer of Solitude (World Premières)

    by 5:4 July 31, 2015 • 13:59
    July 31, 2015 • 13:59

    Last Saturday’s Proms Matinee concert given by Birmingham Contemporary Music Group, conducted by Franck Ollu, featured several world and UK premières, which together gave one pause for thought with regard to the relationship between surface materials and their deeper impulsion. Their respective points of inspirational departure were extremely varied, encompassing…

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  • Lent Series

    Pierre Boulez – Messagesquisse

    by 5:4 March 24, 2015 • 21:17
    March 24, 2015 • 21:17

    The second concerto-esque work by Pierre Boulez that i want to explore this week is Messagesquisse for cello solo and six cellos. The gestation of this piece was very much more straightforward than that of Mémoriale, being composed in 1976 as a 70th birthday present for that great champion of…

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  • Lent SeriesPremières

    Davíð Brynjar Franzson – on Matter and Materiality (World Première)

    by 5:4 February 26, 2015 • 17:50
    February 26, 2015 • 17:50

    Without wishing to appear too biased towards the cello, the next concerto in my Lent series is another work that features that instrument at its epicentre. A few months back, i was enthusing about Davíð Brynjar Franzson‘s radical treatment of the piano; in his new work on Matter and Materiality,…

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  • Lent Series

    Patrick Nunn – Fata Morgana

    by 5:4 February 22, 2015 • 12:44
    February 22, 2015 • 12:44

    The next concerto in my Lent series is another involving solo cello, Fata Morgana by British composer Patrick Nunn. Composed in 2007, this short work—for cello, chamber ensemble and live electronics—takes its title primarily from the character of Morgan le Fay (known among many other names as Fata Morgana), who…

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  • Lent Series

    Alvin Lucier – Slices

    by 5:4 February 18, 2015 • 11:28
    February 18, 2015 • 11:28

    It’s Ash Wednesday, and therefore the start of my annual Lent Series, which this year i’m devoting to contemporary concertos. i’m going to treat the term ‘concerto’ with a certain amount of latitude, focusing primarily on works where one or more soloists act in relation to a larger body of players.…

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  • Lent Series

    Liza Lim – Invisibility

    by 5:4 April 17, 2014 • 17:25
    April 17, 2014 • 17:25

    i was surprised to realise recently that, apart from a CD review last year, the penultimate composer in my Lent Series, Liza Lim, has not yet been featured on 5:4. That’s a pretty serious omission, one that i hope will be mitigated by celebrating her 2009 work for solo cello,…

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  • ConcertsFestivalsPremières

    HCMF 2012: Ensemble Resonanz

    by 5:4 November 22, 2012 • 22:14
    November 22, 2012 • 22:14

    The first day of my weekend at HCMF ended back where it had begun, in St Paul’s Hall, for a late-night concert by Ensemble Resonanz, conducted by Peter Rundel. The concert was broadcast live on Radio 3 and comprised just three pieces, all focusing on strings, two of which featured…

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  • CD/Digital releases

    The concerto reinvented: Jakob Kullberg – Momentum: Nordic Cello Concertos

    by 5:4 October 19, 2012 • 23:15
    October 19, 2012 • 23:15

    i’ve commented in the past about the number of contemporary composers drawn to writing violin concertos—they’ve been a regular fixture among the works premièred at the Proms in the last few years—but personally, i’ve always been more drawn to the cello concerto. Composers exploring this medium seem, almost unavoidably, to…

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  • FestivalsPremières

    Proms 2011: Graham Fitkin – L; Cello Concerto (World Première)

    by 5:4 August 31, 2011 • 21:10
    August 31, 2011 • 21:10

    The music of Graham Fitkin has been featured twice this week at the Proms, both occasions in the hands of cellist Yo-Yo Ma. First came L, a work for cello and piano composed for Ma’s 50th birthday (commissioned by Kathryn Stott, who accompanied the performance), while this evening’s Prom brought…

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5:4
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