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.
vocal
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It was 16 years ago that my first Best Albums of the Year list was published, and for most of the years since there have been 40 entries on the list. However, there were many times when recommending 40 as genuinely ‘best’ felt like a struggle, and a few years …
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Everybody needs more Galina Ustvolskaya in their life. Especially at this time of year, which so easily and so unthinkingly tends to the traditional, the saccharine and the stupid. i’ve explored Ustvolskaya’s bracingly refreshing, invariably mesmerising music on several occasions, including her first and third symphonies. i remarked before about …
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When words emerge in Naomi Pinnock‘s music, that’s precisely what they do: emerge. This is achieved partly by paring down the text to a bare essential minimum (The writings of Jakob Br. uses just two words, for example), but more due to the manner in which the words are articulated. …
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In my 2022 Advent Calendar, i included Milton Babbitt‘s An Encore, a work i likened to a nut that i kept returning to in order to try new ways to crack it. It’s a similar situation with the work of his i’m featuring today, Autobiography of the Eye for soprano …
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Advent CalendarPremières
Gloria Coates – Rainbow Across the Night Sky (World Première, a cappella version)
by 5:4In due course, when her music has finally been disseminated and explored properly, and begun to be understood, i’m convinced Gloria Coates will be revealed not only as one of the most fascinating and unique musical voices of modern times, but also as one its most prolific recyclers. In the …
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At the more serious end of the expressive spectrum, there was a lot to take in during my long weekend at this year’s HCMF. It was disappointing to witness, in Ann Cleare‘s TERRARIUM, yet another example of that which has become so prevalent at HCMF in recent years, a multimedia …
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As i mentioned previously, the majority of this year’s AFEKT was focused on solo performers – primarily members of Ensemble Musikfabrik – with or without electronics, and these proved to be the strongest events of the festival.
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It was only a few weeks ago that i was exploring music that took its inspirational origin from grandparental reminiscences. Then, the subject matter was dead fishermen, whereas this time it’s … cows. That might not seem a particularly promising starting point for a new song cycle, and yet Laulut …
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Wow, what a shitshow. Something occurred to me, while spending time with the first cluster of noxious specimens being given world, European or UK premières at this year’s Proms. In contrast to the notion of lying by omission, conveying a falsehood via things we don’t say, i realised that to …
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Several events that i’d had high hopes for at this year’s World New Music Days turned out to be disappointingly underwhelming. Among them was the concert given by Danish choir ARS NOVA which, overall, featured surprisingly unadventurous repertoire, mostly standard text settings with almost nothing really exploring the voice as …
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As i mentioned previously, this year’s combined Baltic & Estonian Music Days took place in the southern city of Tartu, due to it being one of the three 2024 European Capitals of Culture. To mark the occasion, Märt-Matis Lill composed an elaborate fanfare to herald the start of the festival, …
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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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As an accompaniment to my Dialogue with composer Tatjana Kozlova-Johannes, the following is an essay written for the Estonian journal Sirp, originally published in Estonian translation last year. When I first heard the music of Tatjana Kozlova-Johannes, its effect was almost too much to take. It was in 2017, during …
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i’m thrilled to be presenting the latest instalment in my occasional series The Dialogues. On this occasion, i’m sitting down with Estonian composer Tatjana Kozlova-Johannes, whose music i’ve been marvelling at ever since first contact at the 2017 Estonian Music Days. We got together at my rented apartment in Tallinn’s …
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CD/Digital releases
Sanae Yoshida – My Microtonal Piano; Henrik Hellstenius – Public Behaviour
by 5:4I want to flag up two recent albums for which i’ve contributed liner notes, both of which focus on music from Norway, and both of which have coincidentally been released around the same time.
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CD/Digital releasesLent Series
Allan Pettersson – Complete Edition: Symphony No. 12, Vox Humana, 1973-74
by 5:4Symphony No. 12 “De döda på torget” (1973-1974) When Allan Pettersson began work on his Twelfth Symphony, it had been nearly 30 years since he had set text to music (in the 24 Barfotasånger, completed in 1945). He turned to the Chilean poet Pablo Neruda, selecting nine poems that would …
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In recent years the Swiss music festival Forum Wallis has broken up its elements into three parts – instrumental, electronic and folk – taking place separately, in different parts of the Valais region. As last year, i just attended the instrumental performances, which took place over two days in Schloss …
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In the second part of this year’s Lent Series, focusing on the recently released BIS Complete Edition of Allan Petterson’s music, i’m continuing to explore the earliest compositions, which include his first large-scale work.
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About a year-and-a-half ago, in the summer of 2022, i emailed the Swedish label BIS to ask whether they might at some point box up all of their individual releases of Allan Pettersson‘s symphonies. (At the time i was immersed in the box set released by CPO, featuring all of …