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strings

  • 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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  • Advent Calendar

    Justė Janulytė – Apnea

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

    One of contemporary music’s most stunningly, and consistently, original voices is Lithuanian composer Justė Janulytė. Her works, which she describes as ‘monochrome’, each restrict themselves to one basic timbre, which becomes the basis for the entire unfolding narrative. In the case of Apnea, composed in 2021, the sound of strings …

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  • Festivals

    World New Music Days 2024, Faroe Islands (Part 3)

    by 5:4 July 17, 2024 • 11:04
    July 17, 2024 • 11:04

    i wrote before about the way the World New Music Days acts like a hadron collider, smashing together diverse stylistic and aesthetic ideas from around the world. One of the startling truths to emerge from this violent eclecticism is that, what makes bad music bad, wherever it comes from in …

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  • CD/Digital releases

    Gloria Coates – Time Frozen – Works for Chamber Orchestra

    by 5:4 April 19, 2024 • 16:34
    April 19, 2024 • 16:34

    This time last year I was deeply immersed in the music of Gloria Coates. preparing for the Dialogue we were planning to record in July. It still fills me with deep sadness that Gloria’s cancer got to her before we could get together, but it’s been nice to see a …

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  • CD/Digital releasesLent Series

    Allan Pettersson – Complete Edition: Concertos Nos. 2 & 3 for String Orchestra, 1956-57

    by 5:4 February 29, 2024 • 06:00
    February 29, 2024 • 06:00

    Following on from his first three symphonies, in the mid-1950s Allan Pettersson’s compositional interest returned to strings, writing two more concertos, one small, one large.

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  • FestivalsPremières

    Sacrum Profanum 2023 (Part 2)

    by 5:4 November 22, 2023 • 12:23
    November 22, 2023 • 12:23

    As well as the intimacy demonstrated in several concerts at this year’s Sacrum Profanum festival in Kraków, many of the other performances provided opportunities for immersive listening, often within the context of large-scale durations. Two of these, both examples of primary colour, bargain basement minimalism, may well have been striving …

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  • Lent Series

    Huw Watkins – Little Symphony

    by 5:4 February 27, 2023 • 08:43
    February 27, 2023 • 08:43

    The idea of a symphony can tend to suggest grandiosity and an epic sense of scale or significance, exemplified by those of Bruckner, Mahler, Scriabin and Pettersson, among others. But it needn’t be anything of the kind, working just as well at the opposite end of the continuum, greatly reduced …

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  • Lent SeriesPremières

    Gloria Coates – Symphony No. 1 “Music on Open Strings” (UK Première)

    by 5:4 February 20, 2023 • 17:12
    February 20, 2023 • 17:12

    For this year’s Lent Series i’m turning to a subject that’s one of my personal passions: symphonies. It’s interesting to hear how the word ‘symphony’ has, over time, been defined, consolidated, expanded, elevated, deconstructed, redefined, and along the way become sufficiently loaded that many contemporary composers choose to avoid both …

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  • Advent CalendarPremières

    Elaine Agnew – Hold (World Première)

    by 5:4 December 3, 2022 • 05:00
    December 3, 2022 • 05:00

    Today’s Advent Calendar piece is an example of what may well prove to be a substantial body of work that we might call ‘Covid music’, composed during the pandemic. Hold, by Northern Irish composer Elaine Agnew, is a short work for string orchestra responding to the experience of lockdown in …

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  • Advent CalendarPremières

    Galina Grigorjeva – Molitva (World Première, theremin & strings version)

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

    Today marks the 60th birthday of Ukraine-born, Estonia-based composer Galina Grigorjeva. Her music over the last decade or so has progressively moved more closely in both character and ideology to that of Arvo Pärt, rooted in musical simplicity, articulating aspects of Orthodox religious belief. In the case of her 2005 …

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  • Seasonal

    Peter Maxwell Davies – The Fall of the Leafe

    by 5:4 September 23, 2022 • 02:03
    September 23, 2022 • 02:03

    Today, at 1:03am GMT (the same moment this article is published, in fact), is the equinox, when day and night become equal at the midpoint between light and dark, and the season of autumn begins. i’ve always been especially fond of this season, with its split connotations of positive and …

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  • FestivalsPremières

    Estonian Music Days 2022 (Part 4)

    by 5:4 May 9, 2022 • 09:52
    May 9, 2022 • 09:52

    A disconcerting aspect of some of the pieces performed at this year’s Estonian Music Days was the extent to which their material, language and / or behaviour was obviously begged, borrowed and / or stolen from heavily-worn musical conventions, to the point of outright cliché. This was especially apparent in …

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  • CD/Digital releases

    Xiaogang Ye – Mount E’mei; Winter; The Song of the Earth

    by 5:4 August 20, 2021 • 00:00
    August 20, 2021 • 00:00

    Five years ago i was getting excited by an album of orchestral music by a Chinese composer previously unknown to me, Xiaogang Ye. That excitement has been rekindled recently by the coincidentally-timed release of three new albums of Ye’s music in the last few weeks, which together provide an excellent …

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  • CD/Digital releases

    Enno Poppe – Filz

    by 5:4 June 29, 2021 • 15:53
    June 29, 2021 • 15:53

    In my last article i explored a CD featuring an overview of the string music of Penderecki, and it’s been interesting to reflect further on aspects of that in relation to Filz, a new album devoted to German composer Enno Poppe – featuring Ensemble Resonanz, and conducted by Poppe – which …

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  • PremièresThematic series

    Maria Kõrvits – Darkness and Deeper Dark (World Première)

    by 5:4 December 22, 2019 • 05:00
    December 22, 2019 • 05:00

    This morning (at 4:19am to be precise) saw the winter solstice, making this the northern hemisphere’s shortest day and the start of not only the season of winter but also a host of traditional festive periods. Being the day when we’re dominated most by night, it’s an ideal moment to …

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  • FestivalsPremières

    Proms 2019: Jonny Greenwood – Horror vacui (World Première)

    by 5:4 September 11, 2019 • 19:08
    September 11, 2019 • 19:08

    Any kind of sound processing – human, mechanical, digital – is a response of some kind: taking a signal, possibly analysing it, before doing something with it or to it. The latest new work at the Proms, Jonny Greenwood‘s Horror vacui, takes this as its starting point and modus operandi. …

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  • ConcertsFestivalsPremières

    World Music Days 2019, Estonia (Part 1)

    by 5:4 May 13, 2019 • 18:18
    May 13, 2019 • 18:18

    At the northernmost edge of Tallinn, looking out over the Baltic Sea towards Finland, is a huge concrete edifice called the Linnahall. Built during the Soviet occupation, it was constructed as part of the USSR’s hosting of the 1980 Olympic Games, as a coastal hub for the boating events. It’s …

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  • ConcertsFestivals

    Cheltenham Music Festival 2018: The Strings of the BBC NOW; Hansel & Gretel

    by 5:4 July 9, 2018 • 12:11
    July 9, 2018 • 12:11

    Sitting in Cheltenham Town Hall last Saturday for a concert of music by the strings of the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, was a boilingly hot, practically overheating, experience. This was nothing whatsoever to do with the endless waves of sunshine with which we’re currently being treated, and everything to do with …

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  • FestivalsPremières

    Proms 2017: Erkki-Sven Tüür – Flamma (UK Première)

    by 5:4 August 4, 2017 • 11:46
    August 4, 2017 • 11:46

    i’ve written a fair bit about Estonian music this year, and in many ways composer Erkki-Sven Tüür breaks the mould. There’s not, of course, just one approach to be found in contemporary music in Estonia, yet significant evidence of outside musical influences (as i’ve noted previously) can be difficult to find. …

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  • FestivalsInterviews

    Proms 2017: pre-première questions with Erkki-Sven Tüür

    by 5:4 August 3, 2017 • 05:00
    August 3, 2017 • 05:00

    One of Estonian’s best-known composers, Erkki-Sven Tüür, makes his second visit to the Proms this evening, for the UK première of his work for strings Flamma by the Australian Chamber Orchestra (he was last heard at the Royal Albert Hall in 2003, with the Concerto for Violin). Like most of his fellow Estonians, …

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5:4
  • About
    • Other writings
  • Patrons
  • The Lists
    • Listening History
    • Complete List of Ratings
    • Compositions explored on 5:4
    • Albums and EPs reviewed on 5:4
    • Festivals reviewed on 5:4
    • Best Albums of the Years
    • The Proms premières – Poll results
  • The Dialogues
  • Mixtapes
    • Mixtapes
    • The Isolation Mixtapes
    • Mystery Mixtapes
    • Podcasts
  • Contact
    • Contact Form
    • Submission Contact Form