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,…
Tag:
flute
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The other recent release of Icelandic music that i’ve been spending time with lately is Ethereality, by flautist Berglind María Tómasdóttir (whose Icelandic Flute Music album i explored at the start of the year). When writing about Anna Þorvaldsdóttir’s Enigma i commented on the way the distinction between the different…
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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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For the last two years, in the final week of January i’ve been heading off to Iceland for the annual Dark Music Days festival. Like pretty much all festivals at the moment, DMD has been postponed for a few months, but as a small consolation i’m going to conclude this…
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This week marks the 90th birthday of Pierre Boulez, and to mark the occasion i’m going to explore three of his concerto-esque works, beginning with Mémoriale, composed in 1985. Well, that’s not strictly accurate; one of the characteristic traits of Boulez’s output is an ongoing tendency to rethink and recompose previous…
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From the recorder to the flute, and a typically dramatic concerto for the instrument by Australian composer Brett Dean. Composed in 2007, The Siduri Dances, for flute and string orchestra, began life three years earlier in Dean’s work for solo flute Demons. The inspirational scope here is broader, drawing on…
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FestivalsPremières
Proms 2014: Simon Holt – Morpheus Wakes (UK Première); Jonathan Dove – Gaia Theory; Gabriel Prokofiev – Violin Concerto ‘1914’ (World Premières)
by 5:4The three Proms premières given at the end of last month make for an interesting comparison, with regard to the relationship between material and intention. There was no little weight being hefted around; Jonathan Dove‘s Gaia Theory aspired to James Lovelock’s hypothesis of the same name, concerning ideas of ‘self regulation’ in…
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Many’s the time in the last few years when, both in the concert hall and at home, i’ve found myself listening to yet more music for random-acoustic-instrument plus electronics—and been absolutely bored off my face. The quest for novelty seems to have ruled the electroacoustic roost for years and years,…
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FestivalsPremières
Proms 2011: Marc-André Dalbavie & Elliott Carter – Flute Concertos (UK Première)
by 5:4Yesterday evening’s Prom concert brought not one but two flute concertos, performed by Swiss virtuoso Emmanuel Pahud, together with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, again under Thierry Fischer’s direction. The two pieces are nearly five and three years old respectively, the first from Marc-André Dalbavie, who turned 50 earlier…