(30.4.2015) On 10 May Beat Furrer’s new opera la bianca notte / die helle nacht after Dino Campana will be premiered in Hamburg. The poet, who narrates in order to survive, becomes the inspiration for a music theatre work which deals with the question of identity. The textual basis are the Canti orfici by Dino Campana, who allowed the futuristic ideas of his time to flow into poetic texts full of suggestive power. The conductor at the Hamburg Staatsoper is Simone Young.

(5.5.2015) Miroslav Srnka has composed moves for the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra – orchestral studies on physical, musical and motor movement. Matthias Pintscher conducts the premiere on 8 May as part of “musica viva“. – South Pole (libretto: Tom Holloway), Miroslav Srnka’s major opera project about the conquest of the South Pole, will be premiered at the Bayerische Staatsoper in Munich on 31 January 2016, with a top-class line-up including Rolando Villazón and Thomas Hampson. The conductor is Kirill Petrenko, and the director is Hans Neuenfels. A blog https://suedpol.staatsoper.de contains information about everything to do with the production. (Photo: Miroslav Srnka and Tom Holloway in Munich)

Rudolf Kelterborn’s Ensemble-Buch V, a composition for six instruments, receives its premiere in Zurich. His series of “Books” for differently-scored ensembles explore a multifaceted variety of forms.

Johannes Brahms composed some works in the summer holidays. Dvorák, Honegger and Krenek were railway enthusiasts. Charlotte Seither also travels a lot. She has just recently returned from a stay at the Fondazione Bogliasco in Italy. Is there an art to being creative whilst you’re on your travels? Michael Töpel put some questions to the composer.

(27.4.2015) Lucia Ronchetti develops a surreal nocturnal scene in Esame di mezzanotte, written as a commission for the Nationaltheater Mannheim. The opera is the first full-length music theatre work by Ronchetti, who lives in Rome. Written for large-scale forces of actors, solo voices, vocal ensemble, chorus and orchestra, this is her largest score to date. In fifteen scenes, the libretto by Ermanno Cavazzoni tells of the torments of Giro Lamenti in the night before his school-leaving examination, the nightmare of generations of Italian students. From midnight to the morning, a bizarre search in a library for a book full of abstruse encounters unfolds. For the premiere on 29 May 2015 the director is Achim Freyer, and the musical director is Johannes Kalitzke.

The English composer Thomas Adès is fascinated by depictions of the dance of death The famous ‘Totentanz’ in Lübeck, destroyed in the war, is the starting point for his largest symphonic work to date.

(1.10.2014) For the Ensemble intercontemporain and the Festival Musica Strasbourg Dieter Ammann has composed Le réseau des reprises, a brillant and colourful study about repetition and memory in music. The world premiere has been conducted by Matthias Pintscher.