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Know thyself: Turangalîla and me - 5:4
Self-knowledge is an ongoing, never-ending thing, isn’t it? The other evening i was streaming a performance of Messiaen’s Turangalîla-Symphonie on the Berlin Philharmonic Digital Concert Hall, and became increasingly aware of the extent to which this particular piece not only shaped me as a musician, but also revealed aspects of…
Formuls - Disorder as a function of time (from Graz to Holycross); Obsession as a function of time (inertia) - 5:4
It’s always good to hear new music from Birmingham composer James Dooley, aka Formuls. He’s recently put out two releases that are essentially siblings. It’s been a while (too long) since i last wrote about Dooley’s work, but on that occasion i was exploring music that sat in various levels…
World New Music Days 2025, Portugal (Part 2) - 5:4
The World New Music Days features a wide variety of instrumental combinations, but the majority of music featured at this year’s festival were chamber works. Some of these fell within a trio of “extraordinário” concerts, each focused on a solo instrument, clarinet, cello and saxophone. The clarinet recital, which featured…
Toivo Tulev - Dawn, Almost Dawn - 5:4
My first impression of Toivo Tulev, established nearly a decade ago during my first few sojourns to Estonia, was of a composer whose language was one of polarised extremes. The more i’ve got to know his music over the years, the more that first impression has been confirmed: Tulev’s is…
World New Music Days 2025, Portugal (Part 1) - 5:4
Contemporary music festivals often feel the need to impose a theme on the proceedings, but in the case of this year’s World New Music Days, hosted in Portugal, it was less a theme than a rallying cry. “Thirst for Change” was the phrase hanging over the festival, though as with…
Erkki-Sven Tüür / Max Bruch - Violin Concertos (Hans Christian Aavik / Odense Symphony Orchestra / Gemma New) - 5:4
Hot on the heels of the recent Estonian Music Days, there have been several interesting new releases of Estonian music. Among them is a new recording of Violin Concerto No. 2 “Angel’s Share” by one of the country’s most accessible composers, Erkki-Sven Tüür, featuring soloist Hans Christian Aavik with the…
Fermata WNMD - 5:4
This afternoon i’m packing my bags for Portugal, where i’ll be throwing myself into the non-stop sonic overload that is the World New Music Days, flitting between Lisbon and Porto. This is one of contemporary music’s most engrossing and exhausting festivals, so all being well i’ll make it through all…
Just Dropped In, Coventry: LEYA w/ Vanessa Bedoret - 5:4
Last Saturday i found myself in the salubrious confines of Just Dropped In, a small record shop in central Coventry, for a live performance by US experimental duo LEYA, comprising harpist Marilu Donovan and violin-vocalist Adam Markiewicz. In hindsight, being something of a shrine to all that’s vintage – with…
Estonian Music Days 2025 (Part 3) - 5:4
Over the last 10 years, as i’ve been immersing myself ever more deeply into Estonian contemporary music, i’ve tentatively reached a point where i feel i can be more or less confident of what certain composers will or won’t do. Yet i mentioned in Part 1 of the lingering sense…
Estonian Music Days 2025 (Part 2) - 5:4
Two concerts of special interest that happen each year during the Estonian Music Days are those focusing on works by student composers. One of these took place in Tartu, at the Heino Eller Music School, being the final concert of the 2025 Young Composer competition. The requirements on this occasion…
Estonian Music Days 2025 (Part 1) - 5:4
Anniversaries were the focus at this year’s Estonian Music Days festival. The festival’s theme, ‘Sada’ (100), celebrated the centenary of the country’s Composers’ Union. There was therefore something of a retrospective flavour to certain aspects of the festival, revisiting significant works in addition to paying tribute to various notable figures…
Only Connect 2025 - 5:4
Let’s return to one of the great maxims of not just contemporary but all music: size isn’t important. In the case of Norway’s Only Connect festival, its short, 2½-day duration belied the fact that its content was highly concentrated. As such, one event started to blur into the next, into…
Christopher McFall - Late Night Fate Directory - 5:4
The aim of this year’s 5:4 Lent Series has been twofold: first, to celebrate the work of US composer and sound artist Christopher McFall, and second, in collaboration with McFall, to re-release his work after many, many years of languishing completely unavailable. In the early stages of planning this series,…
Mads Emil Dreyer - Figure Pieces - 5:4
One of the more beguiling things to have entered my ears recently is Figure Pieces, a new 22-minute EP from Danish composer Mads Emil Dreyer. Two of Dreyer’s Forsvindere pieces were featured on his album Disappearer, released last year, and Figure Pieces demonstrates the same fascination with the permutational possibilities…
Christopher McFall - Disengaged Songs for Disenchanted Lovers - 5:4
Familiarity can go a long way to diminish the effects of ambiguity. By now, 40 days into this Lent Series, we’re accustomed to the fact that immersing oneself within Christopher McFall‘s work is to enter a dark world of shapes moving in shadows, where sounds hint, suggest and allude, but…
Christopher McFall - Epilog (Recombinant) - 5:4
After the unexpected tangibility of An Eris 23, explored last time, Christopher McFall‘s 2012 album Epilog (Recombinant) isn’t just a return to his more familiar umbral soundworld, but to a degree that is way more than usually abstract. It takes as its starting point the materials he used when creating…
Natasha Barrett - Toxic Colour - 5:4
It seems fitting that the unique acousmatic music of Natasha Barrett, a composer whose life and work have encompassed the UK (originally, for a while) and Norway (later, for much longer), should have been primarily served by labels from those two countries. In earlier times it was the Oslo-based Aurora…
Christopher McFall - An Eris 23 - 5:4
When exploring This Heat Holds Snow, i mentioned how Christopher McFall’s music features passages i call ‘in between’, states where things are more than usually elusive and / or blurred. The conclusion of that album took the three discrete elements in McFall’s work – pitch, rhythm and noise – and…
Christopher McFall - The Body As I Left It - 5:4
i often find myself thinking of the word ‘concrete’ when listening to Christopher McFall’s music. It’s because of the way that word’s meanings have a contradictory presence: many of the sounds McFall uses feel solid, firm; yet the soundworlds he creates tend toward vague, allusive and abstract environments. Concrete, yet…
Musica Nova 2025 (Part 5) - 5:4
One of the most fascinating events at this year’s Musica Nova festival was LOKS – four concerts at once. Not so much a performance as a film juxtaposing and compositing four separate performances, it featured music by four composers whose initials form the title: Lauri Supponen, Oene val Geel, Krists…
Christopher McFall - This Heat Holds Snow - 5:4
One of the defining features of Christopher McFall‘s sound art is the ambiguity with which his source materials are handled. There’s at most a liminality to it – enough clarity (or ostensible clarity) to suggest something tangible – yet more often we’re left to fend for ourselves in worlds of…
Musica Nova 2025 (Part 4) - 5:4
Some of the most memorable performances at this year’s Musica Nova festival were of vocal works. The concert given by the Vicentino Singers was powerful not simply because of the abilities of the singers, but due to their size. Being a sextet, the level of intimacy they established was considerable;…
Christopher McFall - The City of Almost - 5:4
i’ve been looking forward to this one. The City of Almost was the first of Christopher McFall‘s albums that i heard. i can’t remember what led me to it, but somehow in 2008 this CD, wrapped in a protective case of thick transparent paper, arrived at my door, and my…
Christopher McFall - Sensuality May Be Found At The Mouth Of A Snake - 5:4
i wrote previously about Christopher McFall’s tendency to construct his work via smooth fades and transitions, rather than abrupt changes. That’s overwhelmingly the case, perhaps more than anywhere else, in his 2008 album Sensuality May Be Found At The Mouth Of A Snake. Though released as one 31-minute track, the…
Musica Nova 2025 (Part 3) - 5:4
Being the risky, aspiringly cutting edge things that they are, contemporary music festivals always tend to be a bit hit and miss. Very little i heard at Musica Nova 2025 fell into the latter category, but there were a few pieces that slipped through the quality net, being memorable for…
Christopher McFall - Four Feels for Fire - 5:4
Four Feels For Fire was Christopher McFall‘s first physical release, put out on CD by renowned Belgian label Entr’acte in 2007. At 50 minutes’ duration, it was also his longest work so far, structured in five sections, the first four titled after the points of the compass, with a closing…
Musica Nova 2025 (Part 2) - 5:4
Especially prominent at this year’s Musica Nova festival was the lavish organ in Helsinki’s Musiikkitalo concert hall, unveiled at the start of 2024. The largest modern concert hall organ in the world, its construction was partly made possible by one of Finland’s greatest composers, the late Kaija Saariaho, who in…
Christopher McFall - A Little Rouge - 5:4
20 years ago, US sound artist Christopher McFall quietly emerged via a Spanish netlabel with his first release, A Starved-Strafe Lancing Machine, an album i wrote about in 2022. Throughout his career, McFall’s output has deeply and consistently impressed me, and his releases have featured in many of my Best…
Musica Nova 2025 (Part 1) - 5:4
i’ve commented before on my general disinterest, and usual disregard, for music festival themes. Musica Nova, Helsinki’s biennial new music extravaganza, opted for ‘together’ as its theme this year, and while that word is sufficiently vague as to have almost no meaning, there were numerous times when that word insinuated…
Žibuoklė Martinaitytė - Aletheia - 5:4
Of the four portrait discs i’ve been spending time with lately, the most successful overall is Aletheia, a new album of choral works by Lithuanian composer Žibuoklė Martinaitytė, performed by the Latvian Radio Choir conducted by Sigvards Kļava. The title work is one of the growing number of contemporary pieces…
Fermata Musica Nova - 5:4
First thing this morning i’m setting off for Helsinki, to attend this year’s Musica Nova festival. It’s my first time at Musica Nova, and my first time in Finland, so lots to explore and discover. Rest assured there’s more coming up on 5:4 during my absence, and there’ll be words…
Outi Tarkiainen - Midnight Sun Variations - 5:4
Continuing my short survey of recent portrait discs, a different kind of surprise came from Midnight Sun Variations, a collection of orchestral works by Finnish composer Outi Tarkiainen. The world première of Midnight Sun Variations, performed at the 2019 Proms by the BBC Philharmonic conducted by John Storgårds, left me…
Grażyna Bacewicz - Complete Orchestral Works Vol. 3 - 5:4
Two years ago i wrote that a composer i’d been “trying to get the measure of” was Grażyna Bacewicz. Since then, CPO have helped that process with a series of albums exploring her orchestral music, the latest of which, Complete Orchestral Works Vol. 3, has recently been released. It’s clear…
Kenneth Kirschner - April 27, 2023 and more - 5:4
Notions of continuity are often complicated in Kenneth Kirschner‘s music. That’s just as true for the connections between material in his compositions as it is between the compositions themselves, as Kirschner has been exploring various parallel and interconnected trains of thought throughout his career, regularly returning to ideas that he…
Kristine Tjøgersen - Between Trees - 5:4
There were a couple of occasions last year when i commented on the potential hit-or-miss quality of portrait albums, in relation to the music of Bára Gísladóttir and Rolf Wallin. i’ve been reflecting on this further while listening to four other recent portrait discs, which i’ll be exploring in the…
Yarn/Wire - Currents Vol. 8 - 5:4
To conclude this month’s focus on post-festive free(down)loading, i’m turning to one of the Currents albums released by two-piano, two-percussion ensemble Yarn/Wire. Over the last decade, the quartet has released 10 albums in the Currents series, showcasing an array of works composed for them. Not surprisingly, with such a diversity…
Hakushi Hasegawa - iPhone 6 Plus - 5:4
While it didn’t end up in my Best Albums of 2024, one of the releases that almost made it into the list was Mahōgakkō by Japanese musician Hakushi Hasegawa [長谷川白紙]. It’s an insanely, gleefully over-the-top cavalcade of pure pop extroversion, exhausting yet irresistible, mind-melting in its complete stylistic and artistic…