Following the premieres of early piano works and the string quartet by Jean Barraqué at Musica Strasbourg, in January 2012 the Ultraschall Berlin Festival devotes an extensive portrait to the French composer, with premieres of further previously unperformed works and German premieres. The programme includes the Sonate pour violon seul (1949) with Carolin Widmann, the Quatuor à cordes with the Quatuor Diotima, early piano pieces with Nicolas Hodges and the Sonate pour piano using the new critical-practical edition. There will be a special focus on premieres of early vocal works given by the RIAS Kammerchor and Christiane Iven, including the Trois mélodies (1950), which formed a “nucleus” for the work Séquence later published by the composer.

An essay on the shared amidst the different is the starting point for Charlotte Seither for Equal ways of difference, her composition for the tenth anniversary of the elole piano trio. Seither has worked with the ensemble since its founding. Her composition takes as its theme the counterplay between the concerted creation of sound, the merging in ensemble playing and individuality. It receives its premiere on 5 October in the Festspielhaus Hellerau, near Dresden. More reasons for reality (2011) for bass flute, bass clarinet, violin, cello and piano was commissioned by the E-Mex ensemble Dortmund. The composition will be premiered on 21 October as part of the “Mit den Augen hören” project at the Museum Folkwang, Essen.

Miroslav Srnka’s Jakub Flügelbunt ... and Magdalena Rotenband. Or: Wie tief ein Vogel singen kann [How low a bird can sing] is a fairy tale for three singers and orchestra, commissioned by the Semperoper Dresden. Srnka has composed a piece which is both an entertaining story and a fable. The cast is bright-eyed and bushy-tailed and has the potential for great tragedy, as found in the heroes of comics: from the little bird Jakub, who wants to learn to fly, breaks a wing and learns that you can also achieve things with other strengths. Srnka, who also wrote the libretto, tells the tale in a concise, laconic language and an unsentimental style. The premiere on 15 December at the Semperoper is conducted by Tomáš Hanus.

(7.4.2013) The Berner Symphonieorchester performs the 2nd movement of Andrea Lorenzo Scartazzini’s Viaggiatori after Dante’s Divina Commedia on 16 and 17 May, conducted by Mario Venzago with the chorus and soloists of the Theatre in the Kultur-Casino Bern. In Viaggiatori for soloists, chorus and orchestra, Andrea Lorenzo Scartazzini has set to music “situations of being in transit, travel stories from places which, as it were, no (longer) exist – noisy and quiet places of imagination and philosophical conjecture”. The second movement is an elegy, an introverted mourning on words from Canto IV of Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy.

By a happy coincidence, works by three composers from the renowned British music publisher Faber Music are being premiered on three consecutive evenings. The first of these takes place on 11 October 2011 in Leipzig, when the Gewandhaus Orchestra and its music director Riccardo Chailly perform Colin Matthews’ Grand Barcarolle. This is followed on 12 October by the Robert Schumann Philharmonie Chemnitz, who gives the premiere of the orchestral work Wouivres by the Dresden composer Torsten Rasch. The orchestra’s music director Frank Beermann conducts. Jonathan Harvey evokes nothing less than a global ethic in his new full-length choral-orchestral work Weltethos. This receives its premiere on 13 October in the Berlin Philharmonie with the Rundfunkchor Berlin and Berliner Philharmoniker, conducted by Sir Simon Rattle.

The Bregenz Festival features the Czech composer Miroslav Srnka this year: his chamber opera Make No Noise (World Premiere Munich 2011) will be performed on 17 and 19 August 2016 in a new production by Johannes Erath, with Dirk Kaftan conducting. The roles of the two protagonists Hannah and Joseph, who meet on an oil platform and find each other through their speechlessness, will be sung by soprano Measha Brueggergosman and baritone Holger Falk in the first Austrian performance. Ensemble Modern plays the orchestral part. On 21 August Srnka’s Eighteen Agents for 19 Strings will be performed by the Vorarlberg Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Gérard Korsten. (Photo: Vojtěch Havlík)