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Tag:

string quartet

  • CD/Digital releases

    Rebecca Saunders – Skin

    by 5:4 November 17, 2022 • 10:46
    November 17, 2022 • 10:46

    In 2018, when exploring the music of Rebecca Saunders in that year’s Lent Series, i made the following remark regarding recordings of her music: The fact that i’ve explored Rebecca Saunders’ recorded output over four articles suggests that she’s well represented by recordings of her work. But almost half of…

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  • CD/Digital releases

    New Estonian Chamber / Choral / Orchestral Music

    by 5:4 May 16, 2022 • 16:29
    May 16, 2022 • 16:29

    As an appendix to my coverage of this year’s Estonian Music Days, i want to highlight three new anthologies of Estonian contemporary music. Focusing on chamber, choral and orchestral music respectively, and featuring a diverse collection of ensembles and vocal groups, they complement and expand upon a previous series of…

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  • FestivalsPremières

    Borealis 2022 (Part 1)

    by 5:4 March 31, 2022 • 14:48
    March 31, 2022 • 14:48

    Even at the first concert of the first day of Borealis 2022, i was realising how much the festival felt different from the norm. i go to a lot of festivals (notwithstanding the upheavals of the last two years), and for the most part, aside from cultural distinctions, they’re all…

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  • CD/Digital releases

    Anna Thorvaldsdottir – Enigma

    by 5:4 October 11, 2021 • 14:23
    October 11, 2021 • 14:23

    i’ve been spending quite a bit of time lately with two interesting recent releases of Icelandic music. The first is a short album (an EP really) featuring a string quartet by Anna Thorvaldsdottir titled Enigma. The first thing that struck me, long before actually listening to the music, is that it’s…

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  • AnniversariesPremières

    Éliane Radigue – Occam Delta XV (UK Première)

    by 5:4 January 26, 2020 • 06:00
    January 26, 2020 • 06:00

    To conclude my Éliane Radigue birthday weekend, i’m returning to a work in the Occam series that i’ve briefly written about previously, Occam Delta XV. The piece dates from 2018 and results from a collaboration between Radigue and Quatuor Bozzini. In a way that i hope isn’t too fanciful, the overall…

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  • CD/Digital releases

    Quatuor Bozzini – Phill Niblock: Baobab

    by 5:4 March 5, 2019 • 11:47
    March 5, 2019 • 11:47

    One of the more memorable events at last year’s Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival was the late night concert at Bates Mill given by Quatuor Bozzini, featuring music by Éliane Radigue and Phill Niblock. A few weeks ago, the Bozzinis released an album featuring two works by Niblock, including the one…

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  • FestivalsPremières

    Proms 2018: Simon Holt – Quadriga; Suzanne Farrin – Hypersea (World Premières)

    by 5:4 August 21, 2018 • 10:12
    August 21, 2018 • 10:12

    Last Monday at Cadogan Hall, percussionist Colin Currie and the JACK Quartet combined forces to perform two works from the ’80s by Xenakis and two world premières, by Simon Holt and Suzanne Farrin. The points of inspirational origin of these pieces were somewhat different from what one usually encounters in new music,…

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  • FestivalsPremières

    Proms 2017: Laurent Durupt – Grids for Greed (World Première)

    by 5:4 July 26, 2017 • 12:31
    July 26, 2017 • 12:31

    Last Sunday afternoon, French composer Laurent Durupt‘s new work Grids for Greed was given its first performance by the Van Kuijk Quartet at the second Proms Chamber Music concert, in Cadogan Hall. In his answers to my pre-première questions, Durupt made two remarks that are clearly most important to the…

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  • ConcertsFestivalsPremières

    Cheltenham Music Festival 2017: 21st Century String Quartet, The Hallé

    by 5:4 July 19, 2017 • 16:26
    July 19, 2017 • 16:26

    Here’s a suggestion: if a composer can’t summarise their programme note in fewer than a couple of hundred words, that’s a problem. Is that terribly controversial? Judging by what we were given at the Cheltenham Music Festival last Saturday, it is. This is not a local problem, though, it’s something…

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  • ConcertsPremières

    Wittener Tage für neue Kammermusik 2017 (Part 2)

    by 5:4 May 14, 2017 • 12:05
    May 14, 2017 • 12:05

    In the late evening of the Wittener Tage für neue Kammermusik‘s opening day, inside the town’s small but elegantly decorated Johanniskirche, the JACK Quartet gave the world premières of a pair of works of an entirely different disposition from that of Ferneyhough and Birtwistle, heard earlier that afternoon. Italian-Swiss composer Oscar Bianchi‘s Pathos…

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  • ConcertsPremières

    Wittener Tage für neue Kammermusik 2017 (Part 1)

    by 5:4 May 13, 2017 • 17:57
    May 13, 2017 • 17:57

    i’ve recently got back from the annual Wittener Tage für neue Kammermusik (Witten Days for New Chamber Music), Germany’s annual three-day blow out celebrating the newest iterations of the idiom. It was my first experience of the festival, and i have to say my initial impressions were overwhelmingly positive. The…

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  • Lent SeriesPremières

    György Kurtág – Clov’s last monologue (a fragment) (World Première)

    by 5:4 March 5, 2017 • 11:06
    March 5, 2017 • 11:06

    For about as long as many people can remember, Romanian composer György Kurtág has been working on his first opera, based on Samuel Beckett’s Endgame. It’s been announced, postponed, re-announced and re-postponed to the point where one begins to wonder if it will ever become a reality, but if all goes…

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  • FestivalsPremières

    Proms 2015: Colin Matthews – String Quartet No. 5 (European Première); James MacMillan – Symphony No. 4 (World Première)

    by 5:4 August 14, 2015 • 08:00
    August 14, 2015 • 08:00

    At the start of last week, the Proms saw important premières from two veterans of new music, Colin Matthews and James MacMillan. Both composers have a demonstrative relationship with music from earlier times, producing work that often seeks to find a comfortable marriage of old and new, looking back and…

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  • Lent SeriesPremières

    Harrison Birtwistle – Tree of Strings (UK Première)

    by 5:4 March 30, 2013 • 21:04
    March 30, 2013 • 21:04

    A couple of summers ago, the Beloved and i could be found on a small boat offshore from the idyllic town of Portree, on the east coast of the Isle of Skye. Taking in caves and sea eagles, we sailed along the edge of the smaller island of Raasay, a…

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  • Lent SeriesPremières

    James Dillon – String Quartets No. 5 (World Première) and No. 6 (UK Première)

    by 5:4 March 26, 2013 • 17:08
    March 26, 2013 • 17:08

    Despite their official numbering, the last two string quartets written by Scotland’s most brilliantly inventive composer, James Dillon, were actually composed the opposite way round to how they appear. His String Quartet No. 5 was originally begun as a gift for the Arditti Quartet, to celebrate their 30th anniversary. However,…

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  • Lent Series

    John Cage – String Quartet in Four Parts

    by 5:4 March 21, 2013 • 21:05
    March 21, 2013 • 21:05

    In addition to intimacy, the string quartet is a medium capable of remarkable levels of austerity. It’s no surprise, then, that John Cage turned to the quartet as the vehicle for a work in which, “without actually using silence, I should like to praise it” (as Cage wrote to his…

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  • Lent SeriesPremières

    Christopher Fox – Chambre privée (World Première)

    by 5:4 March 14, 2013 • 19:33
    March 14, 2013 • 19:33

    Imagine a culture in which the string quartet has no history. No Haydn, no late-Beethoven, no Bartok, no Eleanor Rigby. How would a group of four string players – why four? why not? why two violins? maybe the bass player couldn’t get up the stairs… How would a group of…

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  • Lent Series

    Jörg Widmann – String Quartet No. 2 (Chorale Quartet)

    by 5:4 March 8, 2013 • 13:43
    March 8, 2013 • 13:43

    One of the greatest gifts of the string quartet is its ability to explore the most intimate of soundworlds. The second of Jörg Widmann‘s string quartets (he’s composed a series of five), subtitled the ‘Chorale Quartet’, is a striking example of this, spending much of its time at the threshold…

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  • Lent Series

    Simon Holt – Two movements for string quartet

    by 5:4 February 28, 2013 • 15:38
    February 28, 2013 • 15:38

    My Lent string quartet series continues with a most unusual work from Simon Holt. Its title, Two movements for string quartet, seems uncharacteristically abstract for Holt, but its content is rooted in the evocative imagery of Emily Dickinson’s poetry (the piece is, in fact, the second in Holt’s five-part ‘a…

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  • Lent SeriesPremières

    Simon Steen-Andersen – String Quartet No. 2 (UK Première)

    by 5:4 February 21, 2013 • 22:45
    February 21, 2013 • 22:45

    If there’s one thing practically guaranteed every year at the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, it’s the presence of a string quartet that approaches the medium from a radical perspective, one that does away, almost entirely, with its traditions and connotations. The next work in my Lent series focusing on new…

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    • The Proms premières – Poll results
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    • Mixtapes
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