chamber music

Lysis is the name of Canadian composer Amy Brandon‘s latest album, featuring eight works for various chamber, ensemble and electroacoustic groupings. The word ‘lysis’ is a word with several meanings, mostly biological, primarily referring to the breakdown of cells. There’s something very apt in that choice of word for Brandon’s …

Waiting for me on my doormat when i returned from Vienna a few days ago was a new CD of music by the Estonian composer Age Veeroos. i’ve been doubly excited waiting for it to arrive, partly because i was honoured to be asked to write the liner notes for …

This year’s World New Music Days was, not surprisingly, an excellent opportunity to experience that most rare and unknown quantity: Faroese contemporary music. i’ve already mentioned how a significant proportion of composers from the Faroe Islands based their work on extant musical ideas and materials, usually folk-related. However, this wasn’t …

i wrote before about the way the World New Music Days acts like a hadron collider, smashing together diverse stylistic and aesthetic ideas from around the world. One of the startling truths to emerge from this violent eclecticism is that, what makes bad music bad, wherever it comes from in …

Two of the events at this year’s Baltic & Estonian Music Days were especially memorable. The first was given by one of the finest choirs in the world, the Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir. Conducted by Mai Simson in the somewhat simple, functional interior of Tartu’s otherwise imposing St Paul’s Church, …

As i mentioned previously, this year’s combined Baltic & Estonian Music Days took place in the southern city of Tartu, due to it being one of the three 2024 European Capitals of Culture. To mark the occasion, Märt-Matis Lill composed an elaborate fanfare to herald the start of the festival, …

i’m thrilled to be presenting the latest instalment in my occasional series The Dialogues. On this occasion, i’m sitting down with Estonian composer Tatjana Kozlova-Johannes, whose music i’ve been marvelling at ever since first contact at the 2017 Estonian Music Days. We got together at my rented apartment in Tallinn’s …

I want to flag up two recent albums for which i’ve contributed liner notes, both of which focus on music from Norway, and both of which have coincidentally been released around the same time.

Concerto No. 1 for Violin and String Quartet (1949) Arriving at Allan Pettersson’s first violin concerto comes as something of a shock. On the one hand, it continues the composer’s focus on chamber music that dates back to his earliest pieces, as well as his exploration of counterpoint, which was …

In the second part of this year’s Lent Series, focusing on the recently released BIS Complete Edition of Allan Petterson’s music, i’m continuing to explore the earliest compositions, which include his first large-scale work.

About a year-and-a-half ago, in the summer of 2022, i emailed the Swedish label BIS to ask whether they might at some point box up all of their individual releases of Allan Pettersson‘s symphonies. (At the time i was immersed in the box set released by CPO, featuring all of …

Sacrum Profanum is a festival that has taken place in Kraków, Poland, since 2003. As its name suggests, the original purpose of the festival was to juxtapose sacred and secular music, from the 18th and 19th centuries, but since 2008 it’s been focused on music from the 20th and 21st …

Perhaps the most compelling example of the kind of disorientation that border states can engender came in the concert given by Polish ensemble Spółdzielnia Muzyczna, appropriately titled ‘The Borders of Identity’. Here, more than anywhere else during AFEKT 2023, was a concert where none of the five works on the …

Borders are places of confusion, uncertainty and, often, danger, and in this context concerts such as the ones previously discussed at AFEKT 2023 – where most works had strong similarities while one or two were markedly different – raised related questions. Is such similarity attractive and important because it suggests …

Elis Hallik is probably the most interesting Estonian composer who, thus far, i haven’t written much about. During my annual trips to the Estonian Music Days in recent years, she has rarely been featured, so until recently, all i knew of her music were two chamber works, To Become A …

Even as i start to write this opening sentence i feel uncertain about exactly where it’s going to lead. This is, i suppose, a provisional response to the latest release on the Neu label, Madrigal, featuring music by Catalan composer Joan Magrané. i’ve previously encountered Magrané’s work on just one …

Today marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of György Ligeti, one of the 20th century’s most significant and consistently engaging composers. i’ve been spending time lately with three new releases that together present an excellent overview of Ligeti’s output, from the perspectives of his music for piano, choir and …

In previous accounts of my annual pilgrimage to Eesti Muusika Päevad, the Estonian Music Days, i’ve tended to remark on the festival’s insistence on a theme, usually in regard to how innocuous or irrelevant it seemed in relation to the actual concerts. This year, the Tallinn portion of the festival …

You would think, by now, i’d be getting the hang of this piece. Éliane Radigue‘s Occam Delta XV, conceived for the Bozzini Quartet, has crossed my path on a couple of occasions, first at its UK première in Huddersfield in 2018, a performance that i subsequently explored in more depth, …

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 …