Jonathan Harvey, who has died at the age of 73, was one of the UK's leading composers of music in all genres, a composer as happy to be sung in a cathedral evensong as to be performed at Pierre Boulez' electro-acoustic research institute IRCAM in Paris. He was quite impossible to pigeon-hole.

(20.11.2012) With two premieres and other works which contrast compositions by Debussy and Mozart, Manfred Trojahn is the subject of a concise retrospective at the Dialogues Festival Salzburg. The premieres are Musique for soprano and ensemble after three chansons by Claude Debussy (28.11.2012), and Libera me for low strings and solo tenor (2.12.2012). A further premiere will be given by the Ensemble Modern in Frankfurt: Contrevenir for ensemble (2.12.2012) followed by first performances in Rome and Amsterdam.

(5.2.2013) Thomas Daniel Schlee’s Rufe zu mir op. 80 for organ and orchestra receives its premiere on 23 February 2013 in the Gewandhaus Leipzig, conducted by Riccardo Chailly, with Michael Schönheit as soloist. It receives its first Austrian performance shortly afterwards on 5 March in Vienna. The composition has been commissioned by Gewandhaus Orchestra Leipzig and Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde Vienna. Thomas Daniel Schlee describes his concertante music for orchestra and solo organ as a “symphonic scene”. Its title places a sentence after Isaiah at its centre, which Schlee wants to understand “as a magical power”. “Rufe zu mir, dann werde ich dir antworten” [Call to me, and I will answer you] sets both the poetic mood and the musical programme.

[10.10.2012] After her extensive composer portrait at St. Martin’s, Kassel, at which 27 works were performed, Charlotte Seither’s new projects all place a characteristic spectral sonority at their centre.

(10.2.2013) Dresden-born composer Torsten Rasch, better known in Britain and published by Faber Music London, is now attracting increasing attention in Germany. In 2010 he set The Duchess of Malfi by Shakespeare’s contemporary John Webster for English National Opera and the innovative theatre company Punchdrunk. On 23 March 2013 German opera-lovers will have the opportunity of getting to know the work, so successfully premiered in London, in a new production by Dietrich Hilsdorf for Theater Chemnitz. Music Director Frank Beermann conducts the Robert Schumann Philharmonie, which gave the premiere of Rasch’s orchestral work Wouivres in October 2011. Complementing the opera production, the orchestra premieres Das Haus der Temperamente, a suite from The Duchess of Malfi on 17 April 2013.

[10.10.2012] In his work The Absent, composed for the rainy days Festival in Luxembourg, Russian composer Vadim Karassikov develops a subtle game with perception by means of extreme reduction.

Rushing, surging, highly virtuosic contours characterise Miroslav Srnka’s Piano Concerto. It receives its Czech premiere in Prague, the composer’s native city, on 19 December 2016. The agile, glittering continuum of sound with its intense, brilliant colour values is performed by Nicolas Hodges (piano) and the Czech Radio Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Tomás Netopil.