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Russia

  • CD/Digital releases

    Lera Auerbach – 24 Preludes for Violin and Piano & Oskolki

    by 5:4 June 15, 2022 • 16:23
    June 15, 2022 • 16:23

    Chamber music implies a particular kind of intimacy, and that’s overwhelmingly the case on a new album of music by Russian-born composer Lera Auerbach. Part of its intensity comes from the fact that the performers are Avita Duo, comprising pianist Ksenia Nosikova and her violinist daughter Katya Moeller. This in…

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  • FestivalsPremières

    Estonian Music Days 2022 (Part 2)

    by 5:4 May 2, 2022 • 05:00
    May 2, 2022 • 05:00

    The smallest-scale events at this year’s Estonian Music Days were a pair of chamber concerts at each end of the festival. Irina Zahharenkova’s keyboard recital at the Arvo Pärt Centre encompassed extremes of musical invention. The most egregious were two works dating from the early 1990s by a Russian guitarist…

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  • CD/Digital releasesFree music

    Nikita Golyshev update

    by 5:4 February 9, 2022 • 09:27
    February 9, 2022 • 09:27

    In my series of articles focusing on free music last year, i explored Nikita Golyshev‘s remarkable album 15 Songs from Glass, Oil and Other Sources. Originally released in 2007, and long since vanished from the web, at time of writing i was only able to share the MP3 version of…

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  • CD/Digital releases

    Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir – music by Schnittke and Pärt; Latvian Radio Choir – Ramon Humet: Light

    by 5:4 July 21, 2021 • 17:43
    July 21, 2021 • 17:43

    This week i’ve been spending time with a couple of new albums that could each be described as being “devotional”. By that i don’t simply mean ‘religious’, although both of them are fundamentally informed by that attitude, one explicitly, the other implicitly. Listening to them has been a thought-provoking experience,…

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  • CD/Digital releasesFree musicThematic series

    Nikita Golyshev – 15 Songs from Glass, Oil and Other Sources

    by 5:4 January 18, 2021 • 11:18
    January 18, 2021 • 11:18

    NB. At the time when this article was published i only had access to the lossy version of this album; this situation has now changed – click here for an update. [February 2022] We tend to assume nowadays that, once something is put online, it’ll never disappear. But in the…

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  • FestivalsPremières

    Proms 2019: Jocelyn Pook – You Need to Listen to Us; Alissa Firsova – Red Fox; Ryan Wigglesworth – Piano Concerto (World Premières)

    by 5:4 August 29, 2019 • 16:53
    August 29, 2019 • 16:53

    A few weeks back, when critiquing Hans Zimmer’s short work Earth, i almost held back from writing about the piece as it was taking place in a concert for children. i couldn’t help wondering to what extent it was fair to hold up something so intentionally superficial to critical scrutiny.…

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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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  • CD/Digital releases

    Alexander Knaifel – Lukomoriye

    by 5:4 September 13, 2018 • 12:43
    September 13, 2018 • 12:43

    What is it that holds music together? How loosely can it be structured and/or organised, and at what point does its integrity irrevocably break down? When does intense earnestness become perceived as affectation? When does patience cease being a virtue and become a problem, even a handicap? i found myself…

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  • CD/Digital releases

    Erkki-Sven Tüür – Illuminatio/Whistle and Whispers from Uluru/Symphony No. 8, Arvo Pärt & Alfred Schnittke – Choral Works, Arvo Pärt – The Symphonies

    by 5:4 August 24, 2018 • 16:35
    August 24, 2018 • 16:35

    Returning to one of my occasional themes, there have been some interesting releases of Estonian music in the last few months. In February, i wrote about the Ninth Symphony by one of the country’s most dynamic composers, Erkki-Sven Tüür, so it’s nice timing that the Ondine label has brought out…

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  • Miscellaneous

    Ivan Wyschnegradsky – Manual of Quarter-Tone Harmony

    by 5:4 January 17, 2018 • 13:06
    January 17, 2018 • 13:06

    If composers have generally lost a lot of the romanticised mystique and puffery that used to surround them (no bad thing), there remains one area where compositional intent is still likely to raise eyebrows and/or hackles, and confine the composer to a box labelled ‘weirdo’: non-standard tunings. Due to the…

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  • FestivalsPremières

    Proms 2015: Anders Hillborg – Beast Sampler (UK Première); Raymond Yiu – Symphony; Alissa Firsova – Bergen’s Bonfire (World Premières)

    by 5:4 August 30, 2015 • 15:42
    August 30, 2015 • 15:42

    The latest spate of Proms premières have made for an interesting contrast in terms of abstract versus concrete ideas. At the former end of the continuum—where else would you find him?—was Anders Hillborg and his latest orchestral piece Beast Sampler; at the latter end was Raymond Yiu‘s Symphony, a large-scale…

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  • FestivalsPremières

    Proms 2013: Sofia Gubaidulina – The Rider on the White Horse (UK Première)

    by 5:4 August 19, 2013 • 20:42
    August 19, 2013 • 20:42

    The beauty and diversity of nature has been a recurring theme in this year’s new music at the Proms, whereas religious sentiment has been entirely absent—until, that is, last Tuesday’s performance of Sofia Gubaidulina‘s The Rider on the White Horse. Culled and reworked from her 2002 oratorio St John Easter…

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  • AnniversariesPremièresThematic series

    Schnittke Week – Hommage à Edvard Grieg, Symphony No. 8 (UK Première), Concerto Grosso No. 2 & (K)ein Sommernachtstraum

    by 5:4 November 26, 2010 • 07:53
    November 26, 2010 • 07:53

    The fifth and final concert featured in this Schnittke Week was broadcast on 15 January 2001, and featured the BBC Symphony Orchestra conducted by Eri Klaas. The first part of the concert opened with something of an oddity: Hommage à Edvard Grieg, composed for the 150th anniversary of Grieg’s birth…

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  • AnniversariesThematic series

    Schnittke Week – Cello Concerto No. 2 & Symphony No. 5 (Concerto Grosso No. 4)

    by 5:4 November 25, 2010 • 07:46
    November 25, 2010 • 07:46

    Today’s featured Alfred Schnittke concert was broadcast on 14 January 2001, and comprised two monumental pieces, the Cello Concerto No. 2, with Torleif Thedéen taking the solo role, and the dual-named Symphony No. 5 (Concerto Grosso No. 4); Vassily Sinaisky directs the BBC Philharmonic. More than the others, this recording…

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  • AnniversariesThematic series

    Schnittke Week – Concerto Grosso No. 6, Monologue, String Trio & Concerto for Three

    by 5:4 November 24, 2010 • 07:58
    November 24, 2010 • 07:58

    Day three of my celebration of the music of Alfred Schnittke features music from a concert focusing on works involving solo strings, broadcast on 14 January 2001. Taking centre stage are soloists Ula Ulijona (viola), Marta Sudraba (cello), and the great violinist Gidon Kremer; they’re joined by the London Sinfonietta, directed…

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  • AnniversariesPremièresThematic series

    Schnittke Week – Concerto Grosso No. 1, Fragments (World Première) & Symphony No. 4

    by 5:4 November 23, 2010 • 08:29
    November 23, 2010 • 08:29

    The second concert being featured in this week of music by Alfred Schnittke comprised two of his major compositions plus the world première of a work unfinished at his death. It took place on 13 January 2001, and was given by the London Sinfonietta, conducted by Martyn Brabbins. The concert…

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  • AnniversariesThematic series

    Schnittke Week – String Quartets Nos. 2 & 3, Piano Quintet

    by 5:4 November 22, 2010 • 10:19
    November 22, 2010 • 10:19

    The coming week sees the anniversary of the birth of one of Russia’s most outstanding composers, Alfred Schnittke, born on 24 November 1934. 5:4 is therefore devoting this week to his music, focusing on works that were included in the Barbican’s ‘Seeking the Soul’ festival, in January 2001. Having kicked…

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  • FestivalsPremières

    Proms 2010: Arvo Pärt – Symphony No. 4 ‘Los Angeles’ (UK Première) plus Mosolov

    by 5:4 August 26, 2010 • 18:07
    August 26, 2010 • 18:07

    Last Friday evening’s Prom concert, given by the Philharmonia Orchestra conducted by Esa-Pekka Salonen, brought to the UK Arvo Pärt‘s first symphony in almost four decades: his fourth, subtitled (with both geographical and theological connotations) ‘Los Angeles’. However, before Pärt’s work—in an imaginative, even provocative bit of concert programming—came a short…

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  • FestivalsPremières

    Proms 2010: Tarik O’Regan – Latent Manifest; Alissa Firsova – Bach Allegro (World Premières)

    by 5:4 August 23, 2010 • 10:20
    August 23, 2010 • 10:20

    For this year’s Proms, Saturday 14 August was designated “Bach Day”, and buried beneath all the BWVs were two new works, by Tarik O’Regan and Alissa Firsova, both works described as ‘arrangements’. O’Regan’s approach, as he saw it, was to tease out ‘hidden’ musical lines within the opening movement of…

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  • Concerts

    Live in Prospect Park: Metropolis Ensemble and Deerhoof

    by 5:4 September 5, 2008 • 13:14
    September 5, 2008 • 13:14

    i’m surprised there’s not more comment on the web about the recent concert given jointly by the Metropolis Ensemble and Deerhoof, which took place in July in Brooklyn as part of the Wordless Music series. This had been hyped up a fair bit beforehand, partly because it was bringing together…

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