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  • FestivalsPremières

    Estonian Music Days 2022 (Interlude / Part 3)

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

    In addition to conventional acoustic and electronic music, there was the opportunity to explore a variety of audiovisual work during my time in Tallinn. This was primarily due to COMMUTE, a fringe festival run by the Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre, with late evening concerts each day, after the…

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  • 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…

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  • ConcertsFestivalsPremières

    HCMF 2021 (Part 3)

    by 5:4 November 29, 2021 • 15:46
    November 29, 2021 • 15:46

    One of my recurring trains of thought during HCMF 2021 was concerned with the notion of continuity. This was, very simply, due to the fact that all of the best things i heard at the festival had an incredibly clear, logical sense running through them that, regardless of their inner…

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  • 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…

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  • ConcertsFestivalsPremières

    HCMF 2021 (Part 1)

    by 5:4 November 26, 2021 • 16:55
    November 26, 2021 • 16:55

    Though this year it only lasted five days instead of ten, i came away from the 2021 Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival with the distinct impression that, somehow, the usual quantity of music had been compressed into a reduced time frame. That’s not, mercifully, because of any attempt to shoehorn many…

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  • 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.

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  • ConcertsFestivalsPremières

    Ultima 2021 (Part 1)

    by 5:4 September 29, 2021 • 11:24
    September 29, 2021 • 11:24

    The saying goes that you don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone, but in the case of the Ultima festival in Oslo, the latter half of which i experienced last week, i don’t think i truly realised how much i’d missed contemporary music festivals until i was back in…

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  • CD/Digital releases

    Clara Iannotta – MOULT

    by 5:4 July 8, 2021 • 16:46
    July 8, 2021 • 16:46

    What’s the difference between consistency and tautology? It’s a question i’ve returned to repeatedly over the last few years primarily in relation to the music of both Rebecca Saunders and Autechre, and it seems to be pertinent to Clara Iannotta as well. Last year, when exploring the previous album of…

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  • CD/Digital releases

    Listening, isolated: solo music by Brian Ferneyhough, Sam Hayden, Olga Neuwirth, Rebecca Saunders and Salvatore Sciarrino

    by 5:4 May 4, 2021 • 16:19
    May 4, 2021 • 16:19

    Considering that most of us have been spending the last 12 months in varying forms of isolation, it seems a fitting time to focus on music for solo instruments. German label Kairos clearly feels the same way, as they’ve recently brought out a short series of five albums, each titled…

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  • CD/Digital releases

    Deborah Walker – Starflux

    by 5:4 December 5, 2020 • 10:16
    December 5, 2020 • 10:16

    It was earlier this year that i first encountered the label Elli Records, self-described as “an independent label focused on music made by humans, for humans, with computers”. Nothing particularly unusual about that, but while i’ve only just begun to scratch the surface of their five years’ worth of releases,…

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  • CD/Digital releases

    Clara Iannotta – Earthing

    by 5:4 November 5, 2020 • 11:15
    November 5, 2020 • 11:15

    The other newly-released portrait album that’s got me thinking about polarities lately is Earthing, featuring four works for string quartet by Italian composer Clara Iannotta. The reason it provoked that particular train of thought (among many others) is due to the fact that, unlike most new music, it doesn’t so…

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  • ConcertsFestivalsPremières

    Estonian Music Days 2020 (Part 2)

    by 5:4 September 30, 2020 • 05:00
    September 30, 2020 • 05:00

    In addition to purely electronic music, this year’s Estonian Music Days once again featured many works melding instrumental and electronic elements. The most potent collision of old and new technology came at the Arvo Pärt Centre on Saturday afternoon, where Anna-Liisa Eller’s kannel (the traditional Estonian instrument, a form of…

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  • 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,…

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  • ConcertsFestivalsPremières

    HCMF 2019 (Part 2)

    by 5:4 November 28, 2019 • 15:53
    November 28, 2019 • 15:53

    It’s many, many years since i spent meaningful time in the company of music by Can, so i went to founder member Irmin Schmidt‘s HCMF piano recital last Thursday with precisely no expectations. What transpired was one of the most mesmerising, understated performances that i’ve ever witnessed in St Paul’s…

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  • Concerts

    Centrala, Birmingham: Illuminate Women’s Music

    by 5:4 October 17, 2019 • 15:23
    October 17, 2019 • 15:23

    In Birmingham last Saturday i caught the latest concert in the current season by Illuminate Women’s Music, touring six UK towns between September and November. As the name implies, the purpose of Illuminate Women’s Music is to shine a light on women composers and performers, featuring a mixture of new…

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  • ConcertsFestivalsPremières

    Forum Wallis 2019 (Part 2)

    by 5:4 June 20, 2019 • 18:53
    June 20, 2019 • 18:53

    The main focus during the five days of concerts at Forum Wallis was on ensemble and chamber music. An important and impressive feature of these concerts was their aesthetic diversity, not showing a marked preference for certain kinds of music-making. This resulted in extremely different – sometimes, practically opposite –…

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  • ConcertsFestivalsPremières

    HCMF 2018: Arditti Quartet + Jake Arditti

    by 5:4 November 26, 2018 • 13:13
    November 26, 2018 • 13:13

    My 2018 HCMF experience came to an end yesterday in what is now the traditional way, at 1pm in St Paul’s Hall in the company of the Arditti Quartet. Four years ago, they tackled the first seven quartets by James Dillon; on this occasion their concert included the next two…

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  • ConcertsFestivalsPremières

    HCMF 2018: Sciarrino: Carnaval, hcmf// mixtape

    by 5:4 November 25, 2018 • 23:11
    November 25, 2018 • 23:11

    The last couple of years have been good for one of the UK’s most impressive new music groups, Explore Ensemble. Two years ago, i first heard them at HCMF on ‘Shorts’ day, giving a gripping account of Gérard Grisey‘s Talea, and they returned to the festival last year to give a…

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  • ConcertsFestivalsPremières

    HCMF 2018: Divertimento Ensemble, Stockhausen: Oktophonie

    by 5:4 November 24, 2018 • 12:19
    November 24, 2018 • 12:19

    When writing about United Instruments of Lucilin’s concert last Tuesday i noted how the only thing the four works they played had in common was their complete dissimilarity to each other. Yesterday evening, in St Paul’s Hall, we experienced the opposite: four pieces of Italian music performed by Divertimento Ensemble…

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  • 20th CenturyCD/Digital releases

    all that dust: music by Morton Feldman, Matthew Shlomowitz, Séverine Ballon, Milton Babbitt and Luigi Nono

    by 5:4 October 12, 2018 • 11:57
    October 12, 2018 • 11:57

    The launching of a new label devoted to contemporary music is something to celebrate, and the newest kid on the block is all that dust, the brainchild of composer Newton Armstrong, soprano Juliet Fraser and pianist Mark Knoop. The label’s first five releases have recently appeared, and there are a…

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5:4
  • About
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    • The Proms premières – Poll results
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