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concerto

  • FestivalsPremières

    Musica Nova 2025 (Part 5)

    by 5:4 March 28, 2025 • 12:06
    March 28, 2025 • 12:06

    One of the most fascinating events at this year’s Musica Nova festival was LOKS – four concerts at once. Not so much a performance as a film juxtaposing and compositing four separate performances, it featured music by four composers whose initials form the title: Lauri Supponen, Oene val Geel, Krists …

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  • FestivalsPremières

    Musica Nova 2025 (Part 3)

    by 5:4 March 13, 2025 • 12:32
    March 13, 2025 • 12:32

    Being the risky, aspiringly cutting edge things that they are, contemporary music festivals always tend to be a bit hit and miss. Very little i heard at Musica Nova 2025 fell into the latter category, but there were a few pieces that slipped through the quality net, being memorable for …

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  • CD/Digital releases

    Rolf Wallin – Five Seasons / Whirld / Stride / Spirit

    by 5:4 October 14, 2024 • 09:53
    October 14, 2024 • 09:53

    i recently had cause to remark on the pro / con nature of portrait discs, and here we are again, with a new album of music by Norwegian composer Rolf Wallin. i’ve often been impressed by Wallin’s work, never more so than in his large scale collaborative work The Otheroom, …

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  • Festivals

    World New Music Days 2024, Faroe Islands (Part 4)

    by 5:4 July 23, 2024 • 08:55
    July 23, 2024 • 08:55

    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 …

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  • CD/Digital releasesLent Series

    Allan Pettersson – Complete Edition: Symphony No. 13, Violin Concerto No. 2, 1976-77

    by 5:4 March 22, 2024 • 06:00
    March 22, 2024 • 06:00

    Symphony No. 13 (1976) In the first part of this Lent Series, i remarked on the sorry fact that most of the admittedly sparse commentary on Pettersson’s music has invariably adopted the stance that it is all bleak, tragic and full of despair. Several of the preceding works i’ve explored …

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  • CD/Digital releasesLent Series

    Allan Pettersson – Complete Edition: Concertos Nos. 2 & 3 for String Orchestra, 1956-57

    by 5:4 February 29, 2024 • 06:00
    February 29, 2024 • 06:00

    Following on from his first three symphonies, in the mid-1950s Allan Pettersson’s compositional interest returned to strings, writing two more concertos, one small, one large.

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  • CD/Digital releasesLent Series

    Allan Pettersson – Complete Edition: First major works, 1949-51

    by 5:4 February 21, 2024 • 06:00
    February 21, 2024 • 06:00

    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 …

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  • CD/Digital releases

    Berlin Philharmonic – The Unsuk Chin Edition

    by 5:4 December 20, 2023 • 14:40
    December 20, 2023 • 14:40

    Like many institutions, the Berlin Philharmonic set up their own record label some years ago, and for much of the last decade has been putting out lavish box sets, featuring not only audio recordings but also blu-rays drawn from their enormous video archive (accessible via the orchestra’s Digital Concert Hall). …

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  • FestivalsPremières

    Sacrum Profanum 2023 (Part 2)

    by 5:4 November 22, 2023 • 12:23
    November 22, 2023 • 12:23

    As well as the intimacy demonstrated in several concerts at this year’s Sacrum Profanum festival in Kraków, many of the other performances provided opportunities for immersive listening, often within the context of large-scale durations. Two of these, both examples of primary colour, bargain basement minimalism, may well have been striving …

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  • CD/Digital releases

    Per Nørgård – Symphony No. 8

    by 5:4 October 23, 2023 • 14:06
    October 23, 2023 • 14:06

    The other conductor filling in the blanks in a symphony cycle is John Storgårds. With the Oslo Philharmonic, Storgårds has previously recorded four of Per Nørgård‘s eight symphonies (numbers 2, 4, 5 and 6) on a couple of discs released by DaCapo in 2016, which i explored at the time. …

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  • FestivalsPremières

    Ultima 2023 (Part 3)

    by 5:4 October 10, 2023 • 12:53
    October 10, 2023 • 12:53

    The experience of Christina Kubisch‘s electromagnetic walk around Oslo’s library had a counterpart in her new vocal work, Strømsanger (“electrical singers”), premièred by Trondheim Voices. The piece originated in the electromagnetic sounds made by Trondheim’s tram system; these became the basis for transcriptions that Kubisch developed further. Lasting around 40 …

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  • CD/Digital releases

    Grażyna Bacewicz – Complete Symphonic Works Vol. 1; Piano Concertos

    by 5:4 July 5, 2023 • 11:59
    July 5, 2023 • 11:59

    A composer i’ve been trying to get the measure of lately is Grażyna Bacewicz. Bacewicz died in 1969, but her output seems to be going through something of a rediscovery of late, with concert performances and new recordings now emerging with increasing regularity. It’s a generalisation, i know, but over …

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  • ConcertsPremières

    Symphony Hall, Birmingham: CBSO Youth Orchestra

    by 5:4 February 28, 2023 • 15:47
    February 28, 2023 • 15:47

    i headed up the M5 to Birmingham last Sunday for a concert given by the CBSO Youth Orchestra at Symphony Hall. For many people in the audience, i suppose the highlight would have been two works by Berlioz: the concert opened with the Roman Carnival Overture and closed with the …

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  • Premières

    Proms 2022: Betsy Jolas – bTunes (World Première)

    by 5:4 September 6, 2022 • 14:16
    September 6, 2022 • 14:16

    In an artistic context, there’s an obvious world of difference between observation, taking inspiration from and / or seeking to emulate or analogise aspects of the natural world and human culture, and critique, taking issue with and / or seeking to highlight problems arising from or endemic within those same …

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  • Premières

    Proms 2022: Missy Mazzoli – Violin Concerto (Procession) (European Première)

    by 5:4 August 16, 2022 • 13:53
    August 16, 2022 • 13:53

    Sunday evening’s Prom included the European première (so nice to see Britain still regarded as being in Europe) of Missy Mazzoli‘s new Violin Concerto. Parenthetically subtitled ‘Procession’, the work is something of a response to the time of lockdown, examining, in Mazzoli’s words “how we use music and ritual to …

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  • Premières

    Proms 2022: Nicole Lizée – Blurr is the Colour of My True Love’s Eyes (European Première)

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

    Canadian composer Nicole Lizée‘s new percussion concerto, premièred last month in Ottowa, received its first European performance at the Proms last Friday evening. Its title, Blurr is the Colour of My True Love’s Eyes, though somewhat strange at first, perhaps suggests the two main aspects of the work. The first …

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  • Premières

    Proms 2022: Sally Beamish – Hive (World Première)

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

    Yesterday evening’s Prom concert wasn’t specifically aimed at children, but you’d be forgiven for thinking it was while listening to Sally Beamish‘s new harp concerto, Hive. The work’s narrative is structured in a simple four-movement form, corresponding to the seasons of the year, beginning in winter. This opening movement isn’t …

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  • CD/Digital releases

    Annelien Van Wauwe – Flow

    by 5:4 June 20, 2022 • 15:59
    June 20, 2022 • 15:59

    Flow is the title of a new album featuring Belgian clarinettist Annelien Van Wauwe wielding the less common basset clarinet. Invented in the 1770s by Theodor Lotz (who had previously created the basset horn), the purpose of the instrument was in part to extend the lower range of the clarinet. …

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  • CD/Digital releases

    Xiaogang Ye – Mount E’mei; Winter; The Song of the Earth

    by 5:4 August 20, 2021 • 00:00
    August 20, 2021 • 00:00

    Five years ago i was getting excited by an album of orchestral music by a Chinese composer previously unknown to me, Xiaogang Ye. That excitement has been rekindled recently by the coincidentally-timed release of three new albums of Ye’s music in the last few weeks, which together provide an excellent …

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  • CD/Digital releases

    The Brandenburg Project

    by 5:4 June 7, 2021 • 11:21
    June 7, 2021 • 11:21

    Three years ago, the Proms festival featured the first complete performance of The Brandenburg Project, a large-scale undertaking by the Swedish Chamber Orchestra, who commissioned six composers to write a work responding to one of J. S. Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos, with the aim that they should ideally also use the …

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Eesti Muusika Paevad / Estonian Music Days 2025 World New Music Days 2025 Nils Henrik Asheim: Lydkilder Sound and Image: Aesthetics and Practices Music Beyond Airports: appraising ambient music Simon Cummings | 間 Studies vol. 6

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5:4
  • About
    • Other writings
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    • Listening History
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    • Compositions explored on 5:4
    • Albums and EPs reviewed on 5:4
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    • Best Albums of the Years
    • The Proms premières – Poll results
  • The Dialogues
  • Mixtapes
    • Mixtapes
    • The Isolation Mixtapes
    • Mystery Mixtapes
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