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5:4
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vocal

  • Premières

    Proms 2023: the premières (Part 3)

    by 5:4 August 30, 2023 • 16:20
    August 30, 2023 • 16:20 2 minutes read

    Staunch conservatives don’t merely hold sway over our current government but also, it seems, our concert halls, judging by the latest desolation of premières at this year’s Proms. In the case of the Prelude and Fugue in G major by Rachel Laurin, posthumously premièred in Isabelle Demers’ organ recital, i …

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  • FestivalsPremières

    Only Connect 2023 (Part 2)

    by 5:4 April 25, 2023 • 08:06
    April 25, 2023 • 08:06 2 minutes read

    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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  • Lent Series

    Galina Ustvolskaya – Symphony No. 1

    by 5:4 March 20, 2023 • 09:09
    March 20, 2023 • 09:09 1 minutes read

    None of Galina Ustvolskaya‘s five symphonies are particularly well-known. That’s also true for most of her output, but it’s particularly true of the symphonies, which are rarely performed and even more rarely recorded. Her First Symphony is perhaps the most obscure of them all. Composed in 1955, the work is …

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  • CD/Digital releasesFree music

    Seaming – Mermaid

    by 5:4 January 23, 2023 • 09:00
    January 23, 2023 • 09:00 1 minutes read

    Seaming To is an English singer and musician whose work seems to be the product of, to date, three distinct periods of activity. She was a guest vocalist on some singles in the early 2000s, followed by her own first EP, Soda Slow, in 2006. Then things went quiet until …

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  • Advent CalendarPremières

    Anna Fišere – Radices (World Première)

    by 5:4 December 16, 2022 • 05:00
    December 16, 2022 • 05:00 1 minutes read

    One of the more memorable works performed at the inaugural Baltic Music Days in 2020 was Mundus Invisibilis by Latvian composer Anna Fišere (formerly Ķirse). That piece was concerned with fungal mycelium, and her earlier work Radices for 8 singers and electronics, composed in 2018, is similarly rooted in the …

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  • FestivalsPremières

    HCMF 2022 (Part 2)

    by 5:4 December 1, 2022 • 15:24
    December 1, 2022 • 15:24 1 minutes read

    This year’s composer in residence at HCMF, Lisa Streich, was represented by an appropriately large number of performances, allowing for a pretty deep dive into her musical thinking. If i say that a lot of what i heard of Streich’s music was more intriguing than immediately enjoyable, i need to …

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  • CD/Digital releases

    Rebecca Saunders – Skin

    by 5:4 November 17, 2022 • 10:46
    November 17, 2022 • 10:46 2 minutes read

    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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  • 20th CenturyCD/Digital releases

    Michael Gielen conducts Messiaen, Szymanowski & Penderecki

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

    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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  • FestivalsPremières

    Ultima 2022 (Part 3)

    by 5:4 September 29, 2022 • 05:00
    September 29, 2022 • 05:00 2 minutes read

    i’m concluding my coverage of this year’s Ultima festival with something that – over a week since it took place – i’m still grappling with in terms of what i experienced as well as, quite simply, what to call it. On 17 September a marathon was being run through the …

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  • Premières

    Proms 2022: Matthew Kaner – Pearl (World Première)

    by 5:4 August 12, 2022 • 13:44
    August 12, 2022 • 13:44 1 minutes read

    Voices returned to contemporary music at the Proms on Wednesday evening, with the first performance of Matthew Kaner‘s new vocal work Pearl. The piece, for baritone and orchestra, takes its title from the Middle English poem Pearl, written by the anonymous Gawain Poet, setting portions of the text from Simon …

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  • InterviewsThe Dialogues

    The Dialogues: Naomi Pinnock

    by 5:4 July 27, 2022 • 08:23
    July 27, 2022 • 08:23 2 minutes read

    It’s a real pleasure to be able to present another instalment in my ongoing occasional series The Dialogues. This time, my guest is UK composer Naomi Pinnock, whose music has been a persistent highlight on my radar for the last decade or so. We’d been talking about recording this for …

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  • CD/Digital releases

    LEYA – Eyeline

    by 5:4 June 6, 2022 • 16:46
    June 6, 2022 • 16:46 6 minutes read

    One of the more beguiling albums i heard in 2020 was Flood Dream by New York duo LEYA. That being said, at the time i wasn’t at all sure what to make of it, except that it left me intrigued, fascinated and, in a way that i couldn’t really articulate, …

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  • Lent SeriesPremières

    Helena Tulve – Lament (World Première)

    by 5:4 April 16, 2022 • 05:00
    April 16, 2022 • 05:00 3 minutes read

    Curating this year’s Lent Series, focusing on death, grief and loss, has been something of a difficult experience. As i mentioned at the start of the series, this theme has felt unavoidable and inevitable at the moment, but at the same time works such as the ones i’ve featured, that …

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  • Lent SeriesPremières

    Colin Matthews – It rains (World Première)

    by 5:4 March 14, 2022 • 05:00
    March 14, 2022 • 05:00 1 minutes read

    The Lent Series continues today with a short, darkly ruminative work for baritone and ensemble by British composer Colin Matthews. It’s a setting of the poem ‘It rains’ by war poet Edward Thomas, one of two poems that Thomas composed in 1917 concerned with rain. ‘It rains’ is a wistful …

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  • FestivalsPremières

    Dark Music Days 2022 (Part 1)

    by 5:4 March 11, 2022 • 13:15
    March 11, 2022 • 13:15 1 minutes read

    Postponed from its usual position in late January to early March due to last-minute Covid restriction shenanigans, Iceland’s Dark Music Days festival was therefore not quite so dark as usual. All the same, it was hardly the Light Music Days, and in any case Mother Nature was seemingly more determined …

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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 2 minutes read

    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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  • FestivalsPremières

    Borealis 2021 (Part 2)

    by 5:4 April 9, 2021 • 11:32
    April 9, 2021 • 11:32 1 minutes read

    In addition to the various multimedia / audiovisual events at Borealis 2021, the festival included a number of more conventional concerts. Violinist Ricardo Odriozola’s recital featured a mix of Norwegian, British and US works, two of which, Dániel Péter Biró‘s blink-and-you’ll-miss-it Moshe Went Up and Tim Hodgkinson‘s The Landscape Theory …

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  • Lent SeriesPremières

    Laura Bowler – Antarctica (World Première)

    by 5:4 April 2, 2021 • 05:00
    April 2, 2021 • 05:00 2 minutes read

    To bring this year’s nature-focused Lent Series to a close, i’m turning to a major work by British composer Laura Bowler. Antarctica is a 50-minute multimedia piece for voice and orchestra that constitutes a very personal, and very passionate, response to a variety of issues affecting the natural world. As …

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  • Lent Series

    Mirjam Tally – Land of Tree Worshippers

    by 5:4 March 21, 2021 • 05:00
    March 21, 2021 • 05:00 2 minutes read

    One of the composers i’ve become most fascinated by in recent years is Mirjam Tally. Born in Estonia, but for many years based in Sweden, Tally’s work often draws on elements of folk music and is invariably imbued with allusions to the natural world. This attraction to nature extends throughout …

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  • CD/Digital releases

    John Wall & Alex Rodgers – v03b-[ds.nla]

    by 5:4 October 5, 2020 • 15:29
    October 5, 2020 • 15:29 1 minutes read

    One of the most interesting things to emerge amid the massive glut of stuff released last Friday – in order to coincide with Bandcamp’s latest fee-waiver day; interesting how this has come to dictate so many musicians’ output during 2020 – is something that, once upon a time, would have …

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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
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