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5:4
Tag:

orchestra

  • FestivalsPremières

    Only Connect 2023 (Part 2)

    by 5:4 April 25, 2023 • 08:06
    April 25, 2023 • 08:06

    Very few performances at Only Connect 2023 failed to impress. Among the exceptions was Caminante by Michael Pisaro, premièred on the opening night by Trondheim Sinfonietta with bassist Michael Francis Duch. Though the work began well, establishing a nicely darkened texture that became almost gritty and dirty, as soon as…

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  • 20th CenturyAnniversariesBlasts from the Past

    Blasts From the Past: Rued Langgaard – Symphony No. 1

    by 5:4 April 10, 2023 • 08:58
    April 10, 2023 • 08:58

    110 years ago today, something extraordinary took place in Berlin. During the previous few years, the young Danish composer Rued Langgaard had been working on his first symphony. He began it in early 1908, at the age of 14, and completed it the following year, though he continued revising the…

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  • Lent SeriesPremières

    Gloria Coates – Symphony No. 11 “Philemon und Baucis” (World Première)

    by 5:4 April 7, 2023 • 09:37
    April 7, 2023 • 09:37

    i’m bringing this year’s Lent Series to a close with another of Gloria Coates‘ remarkable symphonies. Symphony No. 11 was completed in 1999, being a response to a commission from Baron von Freyberg for the Festspiele Europäische Wochen, with the stipulation that the work should be related to Ovid’s recounting…

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  • Lent SeriesPremières

    Peter Maxwell Davies – Antarctic Symphony (Symphony No. 8) (World Première)

    by 5:4 April 3, 2023 • 10:18
    April 3, 2023 • 10:18

    On 14 January 1953, Vaughan Williams’ Sinfonia Antartica – a symphony derived from his 1948 film score for Scott of the Antarctic – was premièred in Manchester. In the audience that evening was Peter Maxwell Davies who, in 1997, was commissioned by the British Antarctic Survey to create a 50th…

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  • Lent SeriesPremières

    Luc van Hove – Symphony No. 4 (World Première)

    by 5:4 March 29, 2023 • 09:06
    March 29, 2023 • 09:06

    Belgian composer Luc van Hove has, to date, completed four symphonies. The first two (available on a double CD from Megadisc Classics) present a musical attitude that doesn’t just embrace extremes of aggression and tenderness but also moves between them quickly. The first movement of Symphony No. 1 (1989) is…

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  • Lent Series

    Ester Mägi – Symphony

    by 5:4 March 24, 2023 • 05:00
    March 24, 2023 • 05:00

    Despite being one of Estonia’s foremost composers, Ester Mägi‘s reputation is pretty negligible outside the borders of her native land. It’s a situation that, thus far, hasn’t changed since her death in 2021, at the age of 99. My own contact with her music, despite the extent to which i’ve…

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  • Lent SeriesPremières

    Gloria Coates – Symphony No. 7 (UK Première)

    by 5:4 March 14, 2023 • 07:48
    March 14, 2023 • 07:48

    Gloria Coates‘ Symphony No. 7 was composed from 1989 to 1990, a highly politically-charged time for those (as Coates was) living in Germany. The Berlin Wall would subsequently fall (on 9 November 1989), but while this promised to usher in a new era of peace, the profound uncertainty that suffused…

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  • Lent SeriesPremières

    Peter Maxwell Davies – Symphony No. 7 (World Première)

    by 5:4 March 9, 2023 • 07:07
    March 9, 2023 • 07:07

    Do you now see the possibility of several symphonies? Yes, yes, I do, which just five years ago I would not have seen at all. But I do now feel … that it’s perhaps not too far-fetched to think that possibly I might be able to develop that. Paul Griffiths,…

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  • ConcertsPremières

    Symphony Hall, Birmingham: CBSO Youth Orchestra

    by 5:4 February 28, 2023 • 15:47
    February 28, 2023 • 15:47

    i headed up the M5 to Birmingham last Sunday for a concert given by the CBSO Youth Orchestra at Symphony Hall. For many people in the audience, i suppose the highlight would have been two works by Berlioz: the concert opened with the Roman Carnival Overture and closed with the…

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  • 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…

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  • Advent CalendarPremières

    Maurice Ravel (orch. Colin Matthews) – Oiseaux tristes (World Première)

    by 5:4 December 23, 2022 • 05:00
    December 23, 2022 • 05:00

    In last year’s Advent Calendar i featured an arrangement of one of Ravel’s piano works by Boulez; this year i’m exploring one by UK composer Colin Matthews. Ravel completed his five-movement piano suite Miroirs in 1905. He subsequently orchestrated two of the movements himself, Une barque sur l’océan and Alborada…

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  • Advent CalendarPremières

    Elizabeth Ogonek – Sleep & Unremembrance (World Première)

    by 5:4 December 22, 2022 • 05:00
    December 22, 2022 • 05:00

    For today’s Advent Calendar work i’m returning to one of the composers who stood out most prominently among the premières at last year’s Proms festival. Elizabeth Ogonek‘s Cloudline wasn’t just one of my own favourites, you evidently felt exactly the same way, as the work almost came top of the…

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  • Advent CalendarPremières

    Linda Catlin Smith – Wilderness (European Première)

    by 5:4 December 20, 2022 • 05:00
    December 20, 2022 • 05:00

    Behind today’s Advent Calendar door is a beautiful, contemplative orchestral work by Canada-based composer Linda Catlin Smith. Wilderness was composed in 2005, and while it would be inaccurate to call it a work for violin and orchestra (still less a concerto), a solo violin has a role distinct from the…

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  • Advent Calendar

    Rolf Wallin – Soundspeed

    by 5:4 December 18, 2022 • 05:00
    December 18, 2022 • 05:00

    i’m returning to the world of the miniature today, with Rolf Wallin‘s 60-second orchestral piece Soundspeed. There’s only so much you can expect from a minute’s worth of music, but i like what Wallin manages to cram into this tiny piece.

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  • Advent CalendarPremières

    Shiori Usui – Particles (World Première)

    by 5:4 December 15, 2022 • 05:00
    December 15, 2022 • 05:00

    Particles by Japanese composer Shiori Usui consists of four minutes of wild textural mayhem. The title suggests it’s all going to be about light, tiny impacts, and that is how the work begins. However, this opening chorus of skitterings is soon supplanted by the significant heft of what sound like…

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  • Advent CalendarPremières

    Britta Byström – Der Vogel der Nacht (World Première)

    by 5:4 December 13, 2022 • 05:00
    December 13, 2022 • 05:00

    The work i’m featuring today in my Advent Calendar is one that takes its starting point from one of my favourite pieces of music, Mahler’s Symphony No. 3. One of Mahler’s most epic symphonies, in the fourth movement the music turns inward, into a place of mystery, darkness, night and…

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  • Advent CalendarPremières

    Sasha Scott – Nerve (World Première)

    by 5:4 December 12, 2022 • 05:00
    December 12, 2022 • 05:00

    In 2019, Sasha Scott won the senior category of the BBC Young Composer of the Year, with an electroacoustic work titled Humans May Not Apply. The following year she composed a new work for the BBC Concert Orchestra, Nerve, though due to the pandemic its performance was delayed until August…

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  • Advent Calendar

    Betsy Jolas – Just A Minute!

    by 5:4 December 1, 2022 • 05:00
    December 1, 2022 • 05:00

    It’s 1 December, so it’s time to begin the second annual 5:4 Advent Calendar. During the next few weeks i’ll be briefly exploring a diverse selection of curiosities, oddities and wonderments. The majority will be short pieces, but i’ll also be featuring larger works occasionally.

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  • 20th CenturyCD/Digital releases

    Michael Gielen conducts Messiaen, Szymanowski & Penderecki

    by 5:4 November 4, 2022 • 16:10
    November 4, 2022 • 16:10

    Twentieth century music is at an interesting point in its history from the perspective of recordings. Contemporary music, for obvious reasons, is always the most under-represented, whereas works from the last hundred years are beginning to reach the stage where’s there’s a more meaningful range of recordings available. In the…

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  • CD/Digital releases

    Brett Dean – Testament / Beethoven – Symphony No. 2

    by 5:4 October 18, 2022 • 13:59
    October 18, 2022 • 13:59

    The last time i wrote about Australian composer Brett Dean was exploring his response to the music of J. S. Bach, as part of The Brandenburg Project. This time it’s Beethoven’s music that Dean is responding to, in his orchestral work Testament, which has recently been released in a performance…

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5:4
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