Soprano Marisol Montalvo and Markus Bellheim (piano) gave the first performance of septemberalbum. lieder für sopran und klavier after texts by Ron Winkler on 7 November at the Kasseler Musiktage. The composer describes Winkler’s lyric poetry as “unagitated, fragile, sometimes rather laconic – simply beautiful”. He has striven to create a music which “should be tender and unassuming, and reflects the vital lightness of these almost wafted words.” septemberalbum received its Swiss Premiere on 15 November in the Gare du Nord in Basel. Philipp Maintz’s opera Maldoror was performed at the Theater Basel until 22 November.

L’ubica Čekovská’s orchestral piece Adorations receives its first German performance on 24 April in Gera conducted by Howard Arman. The Slovakian composer is Composer-in-residence with the Philharmonic Orchestra of Altenburg-Gera in the 2010/11 season. Čekovská’s most important future project is her opera Dorian Gray after the novel by Oscar Wilde. It will be premiered at the Slovak National Opera in Bratislava in a production by David Pountney on 22 November 2013. The libretto is by the British writer Kate Pullinger, and the conductor is Lukasz Borowicz.

Following the premiere of Miroslav Srnka’s Coronae for solo horn, which was commissioned for the thirtieth anniversary of the Ensemble Modern, the composer has now written a new work for the ensemble. Assembly for ensemble will be premiered on 15 January 2011 in the Alte Oper Frankfurt, and is a veritable ensemble concerto – a “virtuoso machine”, a fast, dynamic, rhythmically intense piece. Further projects by Srnka include a new string quartet for the Quatuor Diotima and the chamber opera Make No Noise, which will be premiered on 28 Juni 2011 at the Bavarian State Opera as part of their opera festival. 

Charlotte Seither, who has just received the highest music award from the State of Lower Saxony, the Praetorius Musikpreis 2010 for composition, has been commissioned to write a work for the beginning of the Kleist Year 2011 in Heilbronn. Schatten und Klarsein. Verse für Heinrich von Kleist für Sopran und Kammerorchester [Shadows and clarity. Verses for Heinrich von Kleist for soprano and chamber orchestra] is intended as a “portrait in sound of the beauty of Kleist’s poetry”. The composition received its first performance on 15 December, given by the Wurttemberg Chamber Orchestra and soprano Dorothy Mields, conducted by Ruben Gazarian.

Matthias Pintscher’s Songs from Solomon’s garden have been performed several times since their premiere in New York. Scored for baritone and ensemble, the work receives its French premiere on 15 December in the Cité de la musique Paris, given by the Ensemble Intercontemporain and soloist Leigh Melrose, conducted by the composer.
Matthias Pintscher has been Artist-in-Association with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra since autumn 2010, working with the orchestra as composer and conductor. He conducts four concerts with the orchestra in January 2012. His Ex nihilo for small orchestra will be premiered in Glasgow on 19 January 2012. His composition is about the beginning from total darkness, about the creation from nothing.

Manfred Trojahn has composed Cinque sogni per Eusebius for the Düsseldorf Symphony Orchestra under conductor Andrey Boreyko, which has been premiered in the Tonhalle Düsseldorf together with an orchestration of Schumann’s Träumerei. The composition for the Schumann anniversary year picks up on the characteristic short form of the Romantic period. Trojahn’s Sinfonischer Satz. Allegro has been premiered by the Niedersächsisches Staatsorchester conducted by Wolfgang Bozic in Hannover.

The Italian composer Lucia Ronchetti has attempted the impossible for a commissioned work: the evocation of the afterlife through music, despite the impossibility of escaping the metaphysical cycle. In her piece “Prosopopeia”, Ronchetti makes reference to the “Musikalische Exequien” by Heinrich Schütz. A suggestion for the Schütz anniversary year 2022 (350th anniversary of the composer’s death on 6 November).