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.

Three new chamber music works by Miroslav Srnka receive their first performances: Srnka wrote the solo piece Coronae for Saar Berger, the horn player in the Ensemble Modern, who performed it on 16 March in the Alte Oper Frankfurt. Escapes Routine for clarinet, string trio and harp receives its first performance in Boston on 26 September, a commission from the Terezín Chamber Music Foundation. The Kovacic-Dann-Karttunen Trio will play Tree of Heaven for violin, viola and cello at Konzerthaus Vienna on 24 January 2011. 

Thomas Adès’ setting of Shakespeare’s The Tempest, his second music theatre work following the internationally-successful chamber opera Powder Her Face, is shortly to receive its first performances on the German stage; on 10 January 2010 at the Oper Frankfurt (conductor: Johannes Debus, director: Keith Warner), followed on 12 March 2010 at the Oper Lübeck (conductor: Philippe Bach, director: Reto Nickler). On 11 January, the Ensemble Modern performs Thomas Adès’ The Origin of the Harp in a concert in the series "Happy New Ears" in the Holzfoyer at the Oper Frankfurt, conducted by the composer.

Manfred Trojahn, who celebrated his 60th birthday on 22 October 2009, has been awarded the Deutscher Musikautorenpreis in the symphonic category; the prize was awarded for the very first time on 28 May in Berlin by GEMA, the German performing rights society. To mark the composer’s birthday, the Henschel Quartett is releasing a CD with Trojahn’s String Quartets I, III and IV, and gave the premiere of String Quartet IV in Düren on 10 November. Zwei Sätze für Orchester received their premiere in the Leipzig Gewandhaus, performed by the Symphony Orchestra of the Hochschule für Musik und Theater Leipzig conducted by Ulrich Windfuhr.

“People are on a journey through present-day Egypt; whilst searching for its origins, they encounter their own wilderness as an absence of memory...” Thus Beat Furrer describes the plot of Wüstenbuch. His new music theatre piece after texts by Händl Klaus, Ingeborg Bachmann and others receives its first performance at the Theater Basel in a production by Christoph Marthaler on 15 March. The first German performance takes place at Maerzmusik Berlin on 27 March. Before then, on 12 February, at Eclat 2010 in Stuttgart, Begehren was performed in a staged production by the Ensemble Modern and the SWR Stuttgart Vocal Ensemble conducted by Beat Furrer, with sets designed by rosalie. At the Konzerthaus Wien Xenos III for Percussion and Chamber Orchestra was premiered on 1 March by Ensemble Resonanz and Dirk Rothbrust (percussion).  

Beschriftung der Tiefe von innen (Inscribing the depths from inside), Charlotte Seither’s new composition for ensemble, received its world premiere on 11 December given by the Ensemble Modern in Rome (in the Auditorio del Parco della Musica). The composer is spending a year in the Italian capital on a scholarship at the Deutsche Akademie Villa Massimo. She has composed a work in which, she writes, “the low register takes centre stage”. “The merging of sounds, although they are always highly individually shaped and remain ‘subjectivized’, takes place in the process, especially in the low registers. Here, the ‘grey areas’ of deformity also always lead into the undefinable.”