• About
  • Patrons
  • The Lists
    • Listening History
    • Complete List of Ratings
    • Compositions reviewed on 5:4
    • Composer Map
    • Albums and EPs reviewed on 5:4
    • Festivals reviewed on 5:4
    • Best Albums of the Years
    • The Proms premières – Poll results
  • The Dialogues
  • Mixtapes
    • Mixtapes
    • The Isolation Mixtapes
    • Mystery Mixtapes
    • Podcasts
  • Contact
    • Contact Form
    • Submission Contact Form
5:4
Tag:

Germany

  • FestivalsPremières

    Forum Wallis 2023 (Part 2)

    by 5:4 March 22, 2023 • 08:23
    March 22, 2023 • 08:23

    The most entertaining event at Forum Wallis 2023 was ‘Adventurous Sounds’, a concert billed as being “New Music for and with children” as part of a project aimed at introducing contemporary music to young people, which also extends to in-school activities. One of the most hilarious compositions i’ve ever heard,…

    Read more
    0 FacebookTwitterPinterestRedditEmail
  • 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,…

    Read more
    0 FacebookTwitterPinterestRedditEmail
  • Advent Calendar

    Helmut Lachenmann – Marche Fatale

    by 5:4 December 25, 2022 • 05:00
    December 25, 2022 • 05:00

    SEASONS GREETINGS! For Christmas Day i’m bringing my Advent Calendar to a close with one of the most wonderfully perverse orchestral works i’ve heard in recent years, Helmut Lachenmann‘s Marche Fatale. It began life as a piece for solo piano, premièred in 2017, and the orchestral version followed a year…

    Read more
    1 FacebookTwitterPinterestRedditEmail
  • Advent CalendarPremières

    Pierre Boulez (orch. Schöllhorn) – Notations Nos. 2, 10 & 11; La treizième (UK Première)

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

    Pierre Boulez composed his piano work Douze Notations in 1945. After its première in February of that year (by Yvette Grimaud), the piece was subsequently withdrawn by Boulez (evidently already regarding it as outdated), who only relented and allowed it to be published in the mid-1980s. Despite this, in 1946…

    Read more
    0 FacebookTwitterPinterestRedditEmail
  • 20th CenturyCD/Digital releases

    Michael Gielen Edition Vol. 10: Music after 1945

    by 5:4 February 18, 2022 • 13:21
    February 18, 2022 • 13:21

    i’m really not a conductor fanboy. Composers are always getting me excited; performers too, from time to time; but conductors, in general, not so much. There are some special cases: Bernard Haitink and Riccardo Chailly have both stunned me on countless occasions; i’ve always had a lot of time for…

    Read more
    0 FacebookTwitterPinterestRedditEmail
  • Advent Calendar

    Arne Gieshoff – STANZA

    by 5:4 December 2, 2021 • 05:00
    December 2, 2021 • 05:00

    The second piece i’m featuring in this year’s 5:4 Advent Calendar is STANZA, a short orchestral work by German composer Arne Gieshoff. The work’s title is a two-fold reference, to poetic structure (which in Gieshoff’s programme note seems to point toward Italian forms derived from the ‘strambotto‘, comprising eight lines…

    Read more
    0 FacebookTwitterPinterestRedditEmail
  • ConcertsFestivalsPremières

    HCMF 2021 (Part 4)

    by 5:4 November 30, 2021 • 11:18
    November 30, 2021 • 11:18

    There’s not a lot left to say about HCMF 2021. In previous instalments i mentioned how continuity, often in tandem with lyricism, played a major role in the music that made the deepest and most long-lasting impression. But from a listening perspective, every piece in every concert at this year’s…

    Read more
    0 FacebookTwitterPinterestRedditEmail
  • ConcertsFestivalsPremières

    HCMF 2021 (Part 2)

    by 5:4 November 28, 2021 • 13:13
    November 28, 2021 • 13:13

    HCMF always has its fair share of unconventional, genre-defying performances, and this year was no exception. Among the more unusual was Eupepsia/Dyspepsia devised by Austrian composer Eva Reiter. Taking the form of a concert-cum-lecture (or possibly lecture-cum-concert), the focus of the work was on the socio-cultural effects wrought on Bolivia…

    Read more
    0 FacebookTwitterPinterestRedditEmail
  • ConcertsFestivalsPremières

    Ultima 2021 (Part 3)

    by 5:4 October 4, 2021 • 15:59
    October 4, 2021 • 15:59

    In addition to the soundwalks, installations, music theatre, performance art and electroacoustic shenanigans, Ultima 2021 also had its fair share of more conventional ensemble concerts, which took place in two Oslo churches. The beautiful Tøyen Kirke played host to two of Norway’s most prominent new music ensembles, asamisimasa and Cikada.

    Read more
    0 FacebookTwitterPinterestRedditEmail
  • CD/Digital releases

    Enno Poppe – Filz

    by 5:4 June 29, 2021 • 15:53
    June 29, 2021 • 15:53

    In my last article i explored a CD featuring an overview of the string music of Penderecki, and it’s been interesting to reflect further on aspects of that in relation to Filz, a new album devoted to German composer Enno Poppe – featuring Ensemble Resonanz, and conducted by Poppe – which…

    Read more
    2 FacebookTwitterPinterestRedditEmail
  • Lent Series

    Carola Bauckholt – Zugvögel

    by 5:4 February 17, 2021 • 05:00
    February 17, 2021 • 05:00

    For the majority of us, throughout much of the last 12 months we’ve been largely unable or forbidden from travelling far from home. Personally, i’ve become increasingly aware of how fortunate i am to live somewhere rural, enabling me to enter the countryside by, literally, crossing the road. But many…

    Read more
    0 FacebookTwitterPinterestRedditEmail
  • CD/Digital releases

    Gunnar Geisse – TRIPTYCH

    by 5:4 November 19, 2020 • 13:47
    November 19, 2020 • 13:47

    Coincidentally, another project i’ve been involved with also materialised last week. For Gunnar Geisse‘s new CD TRIPTYCH, released on the NEOS label, i’ve contributed an essay to the liner notes. Titled ‘Liminal (un)reality’, my text explores the music’s complex amalgam of reproduced and recreated, supposedly real and actually real sounds,…

    Read more
    0 FacebookTwitterPinterestRedditEmail
  • ConcertsFestivalsPremières

    Forum Wallis 2020 (Part 2)

    by 5:4 August 24, 2020 • 16:37
    August 24, 2020 • 16:37

    As was the case at last year’s festival, most of the concerts at Forum Wallis 2020 focused on works for ensemble. However, while in 2019 the majority of performances involved larger numbers of players, due to the pandemic almost all of the pieces this year were for small chamber groupings,…

    Read more
    0 FacebookTwitterPinterestRedditEmail
  • CD/Digital releases

    Remixed, remastered, revised, reissued: Roland Kayn

    by 5:4 July 14, 2020 • 05:00
    July 14, 2020 • 05:00

    A noticeable musical side-effect of the lockdown has been to take the opportunity to reissue composers’ earlier work, usually in some newly-polished or otherwise revised form. Four artists in particular – Roland Kayn, The Hafler Trio [Andrew M. McKenzie], Paul Dolden and irr. app. (ext.) [Matthew Waldron] have reissued work…

    Read more
    0 FacebookTwitterPinterestRedditEmail
  • CD/Digital releases

    Michel Roth – Im Bau; Decoder Ensemble – Big Data

    by 5:4 April 20, 2020 • 16:42
    April 20, 2020 • 16:42

    Two discs from the Wergo label have lately been getting me thinking a lot about the relationship between content and meaning. Im Bau is the title of an electroacoustic monodrama by Swiss composer Michel Roth that takes its starting point from a short story by Franz Kafka (Der Bau). Quite…

    Read more
    0 FacebookTwitterPinterestRedditEmail
  • CD/Digital releases

    Roland Kayn – Scanning

    by 5:4 December 14, 2019 • 22:25
    December 14, 2019 • 22:25

    There aren’t many new releases that require you to free up huge chunks of time in your schedule, but then Roland Kayn isn’t like many composers. Two years ago, 14 hours were required to explore the vast expanse of his A Little Electronic Milky Way of Sound, which i ended…

    Read more
    0 FacebookTwitterPinterestRedditEmail
  • CD/Digital releases

    Gunnar Geisse – The Wannsee Recordings

    by 5:4 December 3, 2019 • 12:18
    December 3, 2019 • 12:18

    The Wannsee Recordings is a double album by German composer and improviser Gunnar Geisse, released on the NEOS label earlier this year. In some ways, that sentence is about as certain as i can be about the album because, to be honest, i was as impressed by it as i…

    Read more
    0 FacebookTwitterPinterestRedditEmail
  • CD/Digital releases

    Jakob Ullmann – Fremde Zeit Addendum 5; Stefan Fraunberger – Quellgeister #3 Bussd

    by 5:4 October 30, 2019 • 12:27
    October 30, 2019 • 12:27

    i’ve been spending time lately with new releases from two composers towards whose work i’ve hitherto felt almost universally positive. There’s something a little nerve-racking about this, inducing anxiety – and, to an extent, incredulity – that the unfamiliar new will be able to live up to the marvellous old.…

    Read more
    0 FacebookTwitterPinterestRedditEmail
  • ConcertsFestivalsPremières

    Ultima 2019 (Part 2)

    by 5:4 September 20, 2019 • 17:35
    September 20, 2019 • 17:35

    A golden rule in cinema is “show, don’t tell”, reminding the director it’s invariably more subtle and effective to avoid directly stating the things you want the audience to consider and instead to incorporate them into the medium itself, in the process allowing for a more subtle, rich and wide-ranging…

    Read more
    0 FacebookTwitterPinterestRedditEmail
  • FestivalsPremières

    Proms 2019: Pictured Within: Birthday Variations for M. C. B. (World Première)

    by 5:4 August 20, 2019 • 19:22
    August 20, 2019 • 19:22

    A week ago, the Proms saw the world première of a new work by no fewer than 14 composers. Conceived by conductor Martyn Brabbins as a 60th birthday present to himself, the piece is inspired by, and modelled on, the structure and character of Elgar’s Enigma Variations. For this new…

    Read more
    0 FacebookTwitterPinterestRedditEmail
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4

Join 2,149 other subscribers.

Nils Henrik Asheim: Lydkilder Sound and Image: Aesthetics and Practices Music Beyond Airports: appraising ambient music Simon Cummings | 間 Studies vol. 6

  • Twitter
  • Instagram
  • Rss
  • Mixcloud
Footer Logo

© 2008-2023 Simon Cummings

5:4
  • About
  • Patrons
  • The Lists
    • Listening History
    • Complete List of Ratings
    • Compositions reviewed on 5:4
    • Composer Map
    • Albums and EPs reviewed on 5:4
    • Festivals reviewed on 5:4
    • Best Albums of the Years
    • The Proms premières – Poll results
  • The Dialogues
  • Mixtapes
    • Mixtapes
    • The Isolation Mixtapes
    • Mystery Mixtapes
    • Podcasts
  • Contact
    • Contact Form
    • Submission Contact Form