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).

The Slowakian composer Ľubica Čekovská has been appointed Composer in Residence by the Philharmonic Orchestra of Altenburg-Gera for the 2010/2011 season. On 15 September her violin concerto will be premiered by the Thuringian orchestra conducted by its new music director Howard Arman, and on 20 April 2011, Ľubica Čekovská’s orchestral work “Adorations” will receive its first German performance in Altenburg. In an interview Čekovská talks about her life and composing.

The desert is the intellectual focal point of Beat Furrer’s new music theatre project which received its premiere at Theater Basel – the desert as a place of the completely alien, of not-being, of absence of memory, of death. Beat Furrer opens windows on this “placeless place”.

(31.3.2014) Two prominent orchestras are performing works by Dieter Ammann as part of the Swiss Migros Percent for Culture Classics. Boost for orchestra will be played by the BBC Symphony Orchestra conducted by Sakari Oramo between 26 and 29 April in St. Gallen, Lucerne, Zurich and Geneva. The Mariinsky Orchestra conducted by Valery Gergiev performs Ammann’s Core in its concerts from 18 to 21 May in Zurich, St. Gallen, Bern and Geneva. And a look ahead to the summer. The Hitzacker Summer Music Festival is presenting a composer portrait of Dieter Ammann, featuring several of his works.

Manfred Trojahn has composed a Magnificat for the reopening of the Imperial Cathedral in Königslutter following its restoration. The work, which is scored for two sopranos and orchestra, was conceived with the specific acoustic of this famous church in mind. The composer conducted the work in a concert with the Staatsorchester Braunschweig on 25 April 2010. Shortly before this, Moderato, Sinfonischer Satz, Überschreibung II. Zustand was premiered at musica viva in Munich, an orchestral composition whose theme is musical acceleration.

Michael Jarrell’s music theatre work Le Père has been created after the text “Der Vater” from Heiner Müller’s “Germania Tod in Berlin”. It represents a focal point of musical and poetic themes which the Swiss composer has contemplated intensively over a long period. The first performance took place on 3 June 2010 at the Schwetzingen Festival. Gilles Privat played the role of the Father, and the other performers were the Neue Vocalsolisten Stuttgart and Les Percussions de Strasbourg. The director was André Wilms.