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Proms 2012

  • 20th CenturyBlasts from the Past

    Blasts from the Past: György Ligeti – Poème symphonique

    by 5:4 June 14, 2014 • 16:05
    June 14, 2014 • 16:05

    A couple of days ago marked the eighth anniversary of the death of Hungarian composer György Ligeti. To mark the event, and also begin a new occasional series on 5:4, i’d like to take a brief look back at one of the more enigmatic works of Ligeti’s career. Poème symphonique…

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  • CommentFestivalsPremières

    Proms 2012: the premières – how you voted

    by 5:4 September 23, 2012 • 15:02
    September 23, 2012 • 15:02

    Two weeks have passed since the Proms 2012 season came to an end, so today i’ve closed the polls for each of the works premièred this year. This was the first year that i included polls, and in total 615 votes were cast; thanks to all of you who took…

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  • FestivalsPremières

    Proms 2012: Mark Simpson – sparks (World Première)

    by 5:4 September 9, 2012 • 08:59
    September 9, 2012 • 08:59

    Last Night, almost two months after it began, the 2012 Proms season closed with its traditional cross between a concert and a piss-up. A relatively new addition to its arcane traditions is beginning proceedings with the première of a new work, and this year the mantle fell to Mark Simpson. One can…

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  • FestivalsPremières

    Proms 2012: Eric Whitacre – Higher, Faster, Stronger; Imogen Heap – The Listening Chair (World Premières)

    by 5:4 August 30, 2012 • 19:57
    August 30, 2012 • 19:57

    Yesterday’s late night Prom focused on the USA’s most popular manufacturer of choral music, Eric Whitacre. Featuring his own choir joining forces with the BBC Singers and ensemblebash, the concert included two world premières, a new work of Whitacre’s own plus an arrangement by him of a new song by…

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  • FestivalsPremières

    Proms 2012: Helen Grime – Night Songs (World Première)

    by 5:4 August 28, 2012 • 10:47
    August 28, 2012 • 10:47

    Partway through last Saturday’s Proms world première of Night Songs, the new work from Helen Grime, conductor Oliver Knussen dropped his glasses. To listen to the performance, one would hardly have noticed; yet, at the end, Knussen announced the mishap to the audience and remarked how he thought it had…

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  • FestivalsPremières

    Proms 2012: Emily Howard – Calculus of the Central Nervous System (UK Première)

    by 5:4 August 27, 2012 • 17:55
    August 27, 2012 • 17:55

    Last Tuesday saw the first UK performance of Emily Howard‘s Calculus of the Central Nervous System, an orchestral work inspired by the thinking of the English mathematician Ada Lovelace. Premièred at last year’s Wien Modern Festival by the ORF Radio Symphony Orchestra Vienna, it was performed on this occasion by…

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  • FestivalsPremières

    Proms 2012: Simon Bainbridge – The Garden of Earthly Delights (World Première)

    by 5:4 August 26, 2012 • 23:26
    August 26, 2012 • 23:26

    The final Proms Matinee last Saturday week featured one of the more substantial and aspirational of this season’s new works. Simon Bainbridge has turned for inspiration to one of art’s most well-known and -loved works, Hieronymus Bosch‘s The Garden of Earthly Delights (image), seeking to bring it alive as a…

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  • FestivalsPremières

    Proms 2012: Olga Neuwirth – Remnants of Songs … an Amphigory (UK Première)

    by 5:4 August 26, 2012 • 15:30
    August 26, 2012 • 15:30

    i’ve commented before on the number of contemporary concertos that crop up during the Proms, and we were treated to another one from Olga Neuwirth, a 20-minute viola concerto bearing the intriguing title Remnants of Songs … an Amphigory. It was composed in 2009 and premièred that year by its…

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  • FestivalsPremières

    Proms 2012: Gavin Higgins – Der Aufstand; Gavin Bryars – After the Underworlds (World Premières)

    by 5:4 August 25, 2012 • 10:33
    August 25, 2012 • 10:33

    Almost two weeks ago, the Royal Albert Hall was filled with the timbrally distinctive strains of Great Britain’s National Youth Wind Orchestra and National Youth Brass Band. From a new music perspective, the concert seemed dominated by pairs: two orchestras and two conductors (James Gourlay and Bramwell Tovey), performing world…

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  • FestivalsPremières

    Proms 2012: Michael Finnissy – Piano Concerto No. 2, Harrison Birtwistle – Gigue Machine (UK Premières) & Brian Elias – Electra Mourns (World Première)

    by 5:4 August 19, 2012 • 16:31
    August 19, 2012 • 16:31

    Last weekend’s Proms Matinee, given by the Britten Sinfonia conducted by Clark Rundell, was the concert i had been most eagerly awaiting in this year’s season, featuring as it did some of my favourite composers and three premières. Back in April i opined that this concert “may just turn out to…

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  • FestivalsPremières

    Proms 2012: Per Nørgård – Symphony No. 7 (UK Première)

    by 5:4 August 18, 2012 • 11:17
    August 18, 2012 • 11:17

    Despite the understandable reluctance on the part of contemporary composers to use the word, there’s nothing quite like seeing ‘symphony’ on a concert programme to get one’s blood and expectations pumping. When the composer in question is Per Nørgård, as it was last week at the Proms, then the excitement…

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  • FestivalsPremières

    Proms 2012: Richard Dubugnon – Battlefield Concerto (UK Première)

    by 5:4 August 17, 2012 • 12:23
    August 17, 2012 • 12:23

    Concertos are a regular feature among the new works heard at the Proms, but it’s rare to hear one for two pianos; Richard Dubugnon’s Battlefield Concerto, composed for those most characterful and quirky of siblings, Katia and Marielle Labèque, was therefore a refreshing break from the norm. It was given…

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  • FestivalsPremières

    Proms 2012: James MacMillan – Credo (World Première)

    by 5:4 August 9, 2012 • 18:54
    August 9, 2012 • 18:54

    Wednesday’s Prom concert featured a new work from James MacMillan, a setting of the Creed from the liturgy of the Mass. Composers rarely set the Creed to music, not, i think, simply because it’s such a long and convoluted text (although it is, and this may also in part account…

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  • FestivalsPremières

    Proms 2012: Thea Musgrave – Loch Ness – a Postcard from Scotland (World Première)

    by 5:4 August 8, 2012 • 21:53
    August 8, 2012 • 21:53

    The Proms weekend devoted to youth orchestras concluded with that of Scotland, and fittingly the concert’s new work came from Edinburgh-born Thea Musgrave. She extended the theme further, choosing for her subject that most evocative of places, Loch Ness, known the world over for the mythological leviathan once purported to…

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  • FestivalsPremières

    Proms 2012: Bob Chilcott – The Angry Planet (World Première)

    by 5:4 August 6, 2012 • 11:09
    August 6, 2012 • 11:09

    The most ambitious of this year’s Proms premières took place yesterday afternoon: Bob Chilcott‘s 45-minute ‘environmental cantata’ The Angry Planet. Teaming up with poet Charles Bennett, Chilcott’s work was performed by the vast combined forces of three children’s choirs (from the London boroughs of Harrow, Kensington, and Chelsea and Westminster)…

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  • FestivalsPremières

    Proms 2012: Elaine Agnew – Dark Hedges (World Première)

    by 5:4 August 5, 2012 • 10:19
    August 5, 2012 • 10:19

    Yesterday afternoon’s Prom brought the first performance of Dark Hedges, by the Northern Irish composer Elaine Agnew. It was given by the combined forces of the Ulster Youth Orchestra of Northern Island and the Ulster Orchestra, conducted by JoAnna Falletta, with a solo flute part played by housewives’ favourite, James…

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  • 20th CenturyFestivalsPremières

    Proms 2012: Rued Langgaard – Symphony No. 11 ‘Ixion’; Pelle Gudmundsen-Holmgreen – Incontri (UK Premières)

    by 5:4 August 4, 2012 • 08:10
    August 4, 2012 • 08:10

    In a change to the planned schedule (due to Benedict Mason not having finished his new work meld), last Saturday’s Prom featured two UK premières, both by composers rarely heard on these shores. Difficult pieces—but for different reasons—they were given marvellously lucid performances by the BBC Symphony Orchestra, conducted by…

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  • FestivalsPremières

    Proms 2012: Charlotte Bray – At the Speed of Stillness (World Première)

    by 5:4 July 30, 2012 • 10:16
    July 30, 2012 • 10:16

    Perhaps one of the more highly anticipated premières at this year’s Proms was Charlotte Bray‘s At the Speed of Stillness, which received its first performance last night by the Aldeburgh World Orchestra, conducted by Mark Elder. Bray’s name has been growing in significance particularly in the last year or so;…

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  • FestivalsPremières

    Proms 2012: Nicole Lizée – The Golden Age of the Radiophonic Workshop (Fibre-Optic Flowers) (World Première); Omar Souleyman (arr. Jacob Garchik) – La sidounak sayyada (UK Première)

    by 5:4 July 25, 2012 • 20:07
    July 25, 2012 • 20:07

    Yesterday’s late evening Prom with the Kronos Quartet technically contained two premières, although one of them hardly qualified. Jacob Garchik’s string quartet arrangement of ‘La sidounak sayyada’, by the great Syrian pop enigma Omar Souleyman, systematically undermined the fundamentals that make Souleyman’s music so weirdly irresistible. Kronos executed the music…

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  • FestivalsPremières

    Proms 2012: Julian Philips – Sorowfull Songes (World Première)

    by 5:4 July 24, 2012 • 00:14
    July 24, 2012 • 00:14

    Yesterday afternoon saw the first new work to be featured in the Proms Chamber Music series. Sorowfull Songes is a small choral song cycle by English composer Julian Philips, setting five texts by the great Thomas Wyatt. Don’t be fooled by the title, though, as there’s nothing remotely Dowlandesque about…

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