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chamber music

  • FestivalsPremières

    Forum Wallis 2023 (Part 1)

    by 5:4 March 16, 2023 • 09:34
    March 16, 2023 • 09:34

    It doesn’t take long to get the measure of a new music festival – aims, outlook, characteristics – but that doesn’t mean it becomes predictable. i’ve found this to be more than usually true of Forum Wallis, which remains one of the most remote festivals i’ve had the pleasure of…

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  • FestivalsPremières

    Dark Music Days 2023 (Part 3)

    by 5:4 February 11, 2023 • 19:10
    February 11, 2023 • 19:10

    The majority of the concerts at this year’s Dark Music Days were focused on chamber music. The most leftfield of these came courtesy of Trio Isak, in a concert titled ‘Ballet on the Moon’. That title in part derived from the opening piece on the programme, Daníel Bjarnason‘s White Flags,…

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  • Advent CalendarPremières

    Justė Janulytė – Unanime (World Première, first version)

    by 5:4 December 24, 2022 • 05:00
    December 24, 2022 • 05:00

    One of my personal highlights of this year’s Huddersfield Festival was the performance of Justė Janulytė‘s 2020 work for 8 trumpets, Unanime. Composed for Marco Blaauw’s Monochrome Project, the piece exists in two versions: the first, with a single climax, lasts 15 minutes; the second, with two climaxes (one muted,…

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  • Advent CalendarPremières

    Michael Finnissy – Polskie tańce ludowe (World Première)

    by 5:4 December 21, 2022 • 05:00
    December 21, 2022 • 05:00

    Michael Finnissy’s Polskie tańce ludowe (Polish folk dances) have had multiple lives. Their origins are in a volume of Polish folk music given to Finnissy as a child by his godfather, Peter Klos. Finnissy recently recalled to me that … he served with the Polish Airforce, he was not a…

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  • Advent CalendarPremières

    Milton Babbitt – An Encore (European Première)

    by 5:4 December 11, 2022 • 05:00
    December 11, 2022 • 05:00

    There are some composers whose music i keep coming back to not out of love but with the attitude of a nutcracker, trying once again to break through its tough, tenacious surface. i don’t know Milton Babbitt‘s music well (as i admitted when noting his centenary a few years back),…

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  • Advent Calendar

    Naomi Pinnock – everything does change

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

    “Everything changes it is extraordinary how everything does change.” That short quotation from Gertrude Stein’s Everybody’s Autobiography has provided Naomi Pinnock with two separate titles for two related works. Everything changes for viola and cello was composed in 2011 as the accompaniment to a short film by Pavla Scerankova titled…

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  • 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

    Rebecca Saunders – Skin

    by 5:4 November 17, 2022 • 10:46
    November 17, 2022 • 10:46

    In 2018, when exploring the music of Rebecca Saunders in that year’s Lent Series, i made the following remark regarding recordings of her music: The fact that i’ve explored Rebecca Saunders’ recorded output over four articles suggests that she’s well represented by recordings of her work. But almost half of…

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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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  • InterviewsThe Dialogues

    The Dialogues: Naomi Pinnock

    by 5:4 July 27, 2022 • 08:23
    July 27, 2022 • 08:23

    It’s a real pleasure to be able to present another instalment in my ongoing occasional series The Dialogues. This time, my guest is UK composer Naomi Pinnock, whose music has been a persistent highlight on my radar for the last decade or so. We’d been talking about recording this for…

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  • CD/Digital releases

    Lera Auerbach – 24 Preludes for Violin and Piano & Oskolki

    by 5:4 June 15, 2022 • 16:23
    June 15, 2022 • 16:23

    Chamber music implies a particular kind of intimacy, and that’s overwhelmingly the case on a new album of music by Russian-born composer Lera Auerbach. Part of its intensity comes from the fact that the performers are Avita Duo, comprising pianist Ksenia Nosikova and her violinist daughter Katya Moeller. This in…

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  • CD/Digital releases

    New Estonian Chamber / Choral / Orchestral Music

    by 5:4 May 16, 2022 • 16:29
    May 16, 2022 • 16:29

    As an appendix to my coverage of this year’s Estonian Music Days, i want to highlight three new anthologies of Estonian contemporary music. Focusing on chamber, choral and orchestral music respectively, and featuring a diverse collection of ensembles and vocal groups, they complement and expand upon a previous series of…

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  • FestivalsPremières

    Estonian Music Days 2022 (Part 2)

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

    The smallest-scale events at this year’s Estonian Music Days were a pair of chamber concerts at each end of the festival. Irina Zahharenkova’s keyboard recital at the Arvo Pärt Centre encompassed extremes of musical invention. The most egregious were two works dating from the early 1990s by a Russian guitarist…

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  • FestivalsPremières

    Borealis 2022 (Part 1)

    by 5:4 March 31, 2022 • 14:48
    March 31, 2022 • 14:48

    Even at the first concert of the first day of Borealis 2022, i was realising how much the festival felt different from the norm. i go to a lot of festivals (notwithstanding the upheavals of the last two years), and for the most part, aside from cultural distinctions, they’re all…

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  • Lent Series

    Žibuoklė Martinaitytė – Solastalgia

    by 5:4 March 30, 2022 • 14:59
    March 30, 2022 • 14:59

    The word ‘solastalgia’ was invented in 2003 by philosopher Glenn Albrecht as a concept to describe the lived experience of negative environmental change. This indicates a variety of contexts – both actual and potential – in which one directly experiences grief and pain from the perception that one’s sense of…

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  • Lent SeriesPremières

    John Woolrich – Swan Song (World Première)

    by 5:4 March 26, 2022 • 11:34
    March 26, 2022 • 11:34

    The next work i’m featuring in this year’s Lent Series is one that, in the six years since i first heard it, has completely changed my opinion about it. At the world première of John Woolrich’s Swan Song, i felt that “the fragmented delivery of transient moments of something cantabile…

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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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  • 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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  • Advent CalendarPremières

    Rebecca Saunders – Study For Metal Bottle Necks (UK Première)

    by 5:4 December 19, 2021 • 05:00
    December 19, 2021 • 05:00

    It’s Rebecca Saunders‘ birthday, so behind today’s Advent Calendar door is a short work of hers investigating slide guitar techniques. Composed in 2018, Study For Metal Bottle Necks comes across as rather different in tone from the majority of Saunders’ work. The usual liminal balance between abstraction and emotional heft…

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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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5:4
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    • Albums and EPs reviewed on 5:4
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    • Best Albums of the Years
    • The Proms premières – Poll results
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