Germany

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 …

i’ve commented before on my general disinterest, and usual disregard, for music festival themes. Musica Nova, Helsinki’s biennial new music extravaganza, opted for ‘together’ as its theme this year, and while that word is sufficiently vague as to have almost no meaning, there were numerous times when that word insinuated …

One of the most incredible – and entirely unexpected – performances i’ve heard this year took place in Tartu University Museum in April, at a recital given by Estonian duo Anna-Liisa Eller and Taavi Kerikmäe. These two, in their combinations of kannel, keyboard instruments and electronics, exploring both contemporary and …

As i mentioned previously, the majority of this year’s AFEKT was focused on solo performers – primarily members of Ensemble Musikfabrik – with or without electronics, and these proved to be the strongest events of the festival.

Delayed gratification is one thing, but i realise that i’ve been putting off listening to one of this year’s releases that i’ve been most looking forward to. When i first encountered Enno Poppe‘s epic Prozession, performed by Ensemble Musikfabrik at HCMF 2021 (and conducted by Poppe), it was all i …

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 …

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 …

Two of my favourite elements of the Ultima festival are its sound walks and installations. To explore Trevor Mathison‘s From Signal to Decay Vol. 6 i walked across town to Atelier Nord, one of Oslo’s most chameleonic spaces. On this occasion its usually bright, open interior had been partitioned, with …

The most overwhelming event at this year’s Estonian Music Days festival was a concert at the Arvo Pärt Centre given by soprano Iris Oja, percussionists Vambola Krigul and Lauri Metsvahi, and Tammo Sumera on electronics. In some respects it feels difficult to write about this concert, as the scope, depth …

There can’t be many festivals that have as their name a direct command to the audience: Only Connect. This was my third time at Norway’s Only Connect festival, held this year in Trondheim, and each time i’ve attended there’s been a keen emphasis on the importance and necessity, from compositional, …

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, …

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, …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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.

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 …