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Haukur Tómasson

  • FestivalsPremières

    Dark Music Days 2023 (Part 2)

    by 5:4 February 7, 2023 • 16:34
    February 7, 2023 • 16:34

    Larger-scale works featured in several Dark Music Days events. One of the toughest to engage with was given by Caput Ensemble, a concert marred by the yawningly awful Polo by Simon Mawhinney, a quarter of an hour’s worth of relentless, faceless, arbitrary blarney. Veronique Vaka‘s Holos was marginally more interesting, …

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  • FestivalsPremières

    Dark Music Days 2022 (Part 2)

    by 5:4 March 14, 2022 • 19:34
    March 14, 2022 • 19:34

    As i mentioned previously, the majority of the music i heard at this year’s Dark Music Days fell somewhere between emotional allusion and full-on abstraction. In many ways it was the most abstract music that made some of the strongest and most long-lasting impressions, primarily because of the composers’ focus …

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  • CD/Digital releases

    Iceland Symphony Orchestra – Occurrence

    by 5:4 February 3, 2021 • 09:56
    February 3, 2021 • 09:56

    One of the first new releases of 2021 to catch my attention is Occurrence featuring the Iceland Symphony Orchestra. According to conductor Daníel Bjarnason, this is “the third and last album of the ISO project” which, if true, is a shame in both a positive and a negative sense. Positive: …

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  • ConcertsFestivalsPremières

    Dark Music Days 2020 (Part 2)

    by 5:4 February 9, 2020 • 08:01
    February 9, 2020 • 08:01

    As i mentioned previously, allusions to or evocations of nature were few and far between at this year’s Dark Music Days, indicating the strength and diversity of Iceland’s more searching, abstract approach to composition. This seemed to be precisely the point of Sigurður Árni Jónsson’s Illusion of Explanatory Depth, premièred …

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  • CD/Digital releases

    Sæunn Thorsteinsdóttir – Vernacular; Siggi String Quartet – South of the Circle; Iceland Symphony Orchestra – Concurrence

    by 5:4 January 17, 2020 • 11:17
    January 17, 2020 • 11:17

    In just over a week’s time Iceland’s premier new music festival, the Dark Music Days, will be up and running again, and once again i’ll be heading off to Reykjavík to immerse myself in some of the goings-on. Details about the festival can be found here, and for any UK …

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  • ConcertsFestivals

    Summartónar 2019 (Part 2)

    by 5:4 August 12, 2019 • 15:56
    August 12, 2019 • 15:56

    As i previously remarked, one of the most (and one of the only) disappointing things about my first experience of the Faroe Islands’ Summartónar festival was the almost complete lack of music by Faroese composers. The inclusion of Kristian Blak – artistic director of the festival – mitigated that to …

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  • ConcertsFestivalsPremières

    Dark Music Days 2019: Caput Ensemble; Nordic Affect & Maja S K Ratkje

    by 5:4 February 8, 2019 • 14:58
    February 8, 2019 • 14:58

    Last Friday evening at the Dark Music Days we were back within Harpa’s Kaldalón hall (the cube-shaped space of which was disconcertingly impressive every time i entered it) for a concert given by a group new to me, Caput Ensemble, directed by Guðni Franzson. Having been bemused the previous day at …

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  • ConcertsFestivalsPremières

    Dark Music Days 2019: Schola Cantorum, Kúbus

    by 5:4 January 28, 2019 • 23:58
    January 28, 2019 • 23:58

    The most taxing challenge facing Reykjavík on Sunday was not, surprisingly, the -9°C temperatures permeating the city that day, but the evening chamber recital at the Fríkirkjan given by the group Kúbus. The day before, Georg Friedrich Haas had made 70 minutes feel like less than half of that; on this occasion, Kolbeinn …

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  • FestivalsPremières

    Proms 2014: Haukur Tómasson – Magma; Jukka Tiensuu – Voice verser (UK Premières)

    by 5:4 September 3, 2014 • 20:57
    September 3, 2014 • 20:57

    Nothing remotely ordinary, it often seems, can come from Scandinavia. This notion was emphatically corroborated at the Proms in the recent pair of UK premières from Iceland’s Haukur Tómasson and Finland’s Jukka Tiensuu. i can’t help wondering whether they succeeded as strongly as they did in part for essentially the …

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