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5:4
Tag:

orchestra

  • CD/Digital releases

    Neglected symphonies: Rued Langgaard

    by 5:4 October 1, 2025 • 06:25
    October 1, 2025 • 06:25

    The last time i wrote about Danish composer Rued Langgaard, it was to celebrate a new recording of his Symphony No. 1, not only one of his own best works but a symphonic masterpiece in its own right (surely the best first symphony by any young composer; he was a …

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  • CD/Digital releases

    Neglected symphonies: Lepo Sumera – Symphonies Nos. 1 & 6

    by 5:4 September 25, 2025 • 06:00
    September 25, 2025 • 06:00

    Neglect has also surrounded the symphonies of Estonian composer Lepo Sumera. He’s generally lauded, loudly, within his homeland, but Sumera’s symphonic cause – comprising six symphonies, the last completed not long before his sudden death in 2000 – has been almost entirely limited to Estonian conductors. Parvo Järvi recorded a …

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  • CD/Digital releases

    Neglected symphonies: Miloslav Kabeláč – Symphony No. 2

    by 5:4 September 20, 2025 • 11:29
    September 20, 2025 • 11:29

    The second of Czech composer Miloslav Kabeláč‘s eight symphonies has come out in a new recording by the ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra under Jakub Hrůša. i got to know his symphonies a few years ago, in the excellent Supraphon box set, and found him to be a curiously inconsistent …

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  • CD/Digital releases

    Neglected symphonies: Elsa Barraine – Symphonies Nos. 1 & 2

    by 5:4 September 16, 2025 • 10:27
    September 16, 2025 • 10:27

    One of my biggest classical music bêtes noires is the way so much significant music is allowed to be forgotten, with concert programmers snoozing on their laurels as they serve up yet another reheated season of the same old, same old. That’s especially the case where symphonies – and, more …

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  • Miscellaneous

    Seismograf Playlist

    by 5:4 August 26, 2025 • 11:41
    August 26, 2025 • 11:41

    The good people at Seismograf – one of the few really interesting sources discussing new music these days, and pretty much the only one i read – asked me recently to contribute to their “Would you like to see my playlist?” series. It’s recently been published, and i thought i’d …

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  • CD/Digital releases

    Grażyna Bacewicz – Orchestral Works, Vol. 2

    by 5:4 August 5, 2025 • 14:43
    August 5, 2025 • 14:43

    Another year, another Grażyna Bacewicz portrait CD. CPO’s series Complete Symphonic Works, begun in 2023 and featuring the WDR Symphony Orchestra, concluded after three volumes with the wildly inaccurate claim that they’d released the lot. The BBC Symphony Orchestra’s Orchestral Works series on Chandos, also begun in 2023, has only …

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  • Benefactor posts

    Know thyself: Turangalîla and me

    by 5:4 July 2, 2025 • 11:28
    July 2, 2025 • 11:28

    Self-knowledge is an ongoing, never-ending thing, isn’t it? The other evening i was streaming a performance of Messiaen’s Turangalîla-Symphonie on the Berlin Philharmonic Digital Concert Hall, and became increasingly aware of the extent to which this particular piece not only shaped me as a musician, but also revealed aspects of …

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  • CD/Digital releases

    Toivo Tulev – Dawn, Almost Dawn

    by 5:4 June 18, 2025 • 16:16
    June 18, 2025 • 16:16

    My first impression of Toivo Tulev, established nearly a decade ago during my first few sojourns to Estonia, was of a composer whose language was one of polarised extremes. The more i’ve got to know his music over the years, the more that first impression has been confirmed: Tulev’s is …

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  • FestivalsPremières

    Estonian Music Days 2025 (Part 1)

    by 5:4 May 12, 2025 • 16:17
    May 12, 2025 • 16:17

    Anniversaries were the focus at this year’s Estonian Music Days festival. The festival’s theme, ‘Sada’ (100), celebrated the centenary of the country’s Composers’ Union. There was therefore something of a retrospective flavour to certain aspects of the festival, revisiting significant works in addition to paying tribute to various notable figures …

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  • FestivalsPremières

    Musica Nova 2025 (Part 5)

    by 5:4 March 28, 2025 • 12:06
    March 28, 2025 • 12:06

    One of the most fascinating events at this year’s Musica Nova festival was LOKS – four concerts at once. Not so much a performance as a film juxtaposing and compositing four separate performances, it featured music by four composers whose initials form the title: Lauri Supponen, Oene val Geel, Krists …

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  • FestivalsPremières

    Musica Nova 2025 (Part 2)

    by 5:4 March 7, 2025 • 10:21
    March 7, 2025 • 10:21

    Especially prominent at this year’s Musica Nova festival was the lavish organ in Helsinki’s Musiikkitalo concert hall, unveiled at the start of 2024. The largest modern concert hall organ in the world, its construction was partly made possible by one of Finland’s greatest composers, the late Kaija Saariaho, who in …

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  • CD/Digital releases

    Grażyna Bacewicz – Complete Orchestral Works Vol. 3

    by 5:4 February 19, 2025 • 06:00
    February 19, 2025 • 06:00

    Two years ago i wrote that a composer i’d been “trying to get the measure of” was Grażyna Bacewicz. Since then, CPO have helped that process with a series of albums exploring her orchestral music, the latest of which, Complete Orchestral Works Vol. 3, has recently been released. It’s clear …

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  • CD/Digital releases

    Outi Tarkiainen – Midnight Sun Variations

    by 5:4 February 14, 2025 • 06:00
    February 14, 2025 • 06:00

    Continuing my short survey of recent portrait discs, a different kind of surprise came from Midnight Sun Variations, a collection of orchestral works by Finnish composer Outi Tarkiainen. The world première of Midnight Sun Variations, performed at the 2019 Proms by the BBC Philharmonic conducted by John Storgårds, left me …

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  • Best of the Year

    Best Albums of 2024 (Part 2)

    by 5:4 December 31, 2024 • 00:00
    December 31, 2024 • 00:00

    And finally we reach the zenith, the apex of this year’s best albums, each and every one of them a bewilderment of shock, awe and wonder.

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  • Best of the Year

    Best Albums of 2024 (Part 1)

    by 5:4 December 30, 2024 • 00:00
    December 30, 2024 • 00:00

    It was 16 years ago that my first Best Albums of the Year list was published, and for most of the years since there have been 40 entries on the list. However, there were many times when recommending 40 as genuinely ‘best’ felt like a struggle, and a few years …

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  • Advent Calendar

    Hugh Wood – Variations for Orchestra

    by 5:4 December 25, 2024 • 05:00
    December 25, 2024 • 05:00

    HAPPY HOLIDAYS! Behind the final door on this year’s Advent Calendar is a short but exciting work by one of England’s more curiously neglected composers, Hugh Wood. The Variations for Orchestra began life 30 years ago, apparently composed over a three-year period from 1994 to 1997. That seems a surprisingly …

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  • Advent CalendarPremières

    Elis Hallik – The Firehearted (World Première)

    by 5:4 December 19, 2024 • 06:00
    December 19, 2024 • 06:00

    As i’ve often remarked here (usually in connection with yet another Proms commission) i’m not a fan of contemporary works that seek to ‘respond’ to earlier music. It’s a lazy commissioning approach, usually producing dismal musical results, with the only successes emanating from composers who aren’t particularly fussed about how …

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  • Advent CalendarPremières

    Elnaz Seyedi – A Mark of Our Breath (World Première)

    by 5:4 December 17, 2024 • 06:00
    December 17, 2024 • 06:00

    There are times when it can feel like all contemporary music is split down the middle, with half the composers concerned with frantic activity and movement, and the other half obsessed with the opposite, stillness and immobility. That’s an exaggeration, but there’s more than a little truth to it, and …

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  • Advent CalendarPremières

    Sasha Scott – Humans May Not Apply (World Première)

    by 5:4 December 16, 2024 • 06:00
    December 16, 2024 • 06:00

    Behind today’s Advent Calendar door is a quick bit of fun from British composer Sasha Scott. In 2019, Scott won the Senior category in the BBC Young Composer of the Year Competition with a four-minute orchestral-electronic hybrid titled Humans May Not Apply. It’s a work that both pits the acoustic …

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  • Advent Calendar

    Georg Friedrich Haas – ein kleines symphonisches Gedicht

    by 5:4 December 10, 2024 • 06:00
    December 10, 2024 • 06:00

    The piece lurking behind today’s Advent Calendar door is something of an amuse-bouche by Austrian composer Georg Friedrich Haas, titled ein kleines symphonisches Gedicht [a little symphonic poem]. Composed in 2017, its 7-minute duration is occupied with one of Haas’ typically focused behavioural-timbral explorations, looking at the way both transformation …

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5:4
  • About
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    • Best Albums of the Years
    • The Proms premières – Poll results
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    • Mixtapes
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