Jetzt und in der Stunde des Todes is the subtitle of Heinz Winbeck’s monumental Symphony No. 5, his composition based on Bruckner lasting almost an hour. The three movements using motifs, especially from the Finale of Anton Bruckner’s 9th Symphony, are not in fact one of the many speculative attempts to complete the magnificent torso, but a musical paraphrase on material from the sketches. Without quoting from it literally, Bruckner’s music is constantly present. The work receives its German premiere at the 2017 Ultraschall Festival in Berlin on 22 January, performed by the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester under Dennis Russell Davies. – In the same concert Marisol Montalvo will sing in „tríptico vertical“ by Philipp Maintz.

The combination of clarinet and string quartet, epitomised by such famous predecessors as Mozart, Brahms and others, is explored afresh by Beat Furrer: “A temporality stretched to the extremes – the clarinet is integrated into the sound of the string quartet. In a constant accelerando, different aspects of the sound of the clarinet are brought into focus, with the clarinettist speaking vowels into the instrument, producing an inharmonious, complex, speech-like sound.”

The first run of performances has taken place, and what remains are memories of two magnificent hours of contemporary music theatre. Miroslav Srnka’s South Pole was widely acclaimed. A look back.

Dieter Ammann’s glut for orchestra takes an energetic extreme state as the theme of the composition. “A world whose inner glow, shaped into sound, drives towards the external.” This is how the Swiss composer describes his orchestral work which was premiered in 2016. Now two performances are lined up in Zurich and Vienna on 25 and 26 January 2018 with a specialist in the extreme: Teodor Currentzis conducts the Philharmonia Zurich, followed by the  Austrian premiere in the Konzerthaus Wien – tension is pre-programmed.

Just a year after its successful premiere at the Bayerische Staatsoper, Miroslav Srnka’s double opera South Pole receives its first performance in a reduced and revised version at the Staatstheater Darmstadt. The theatre’s artistic director Karsten Wiegand directs the legendary race between Robert Falcon Scott and the Norwegian Roald Amundsen in the Antarctic, which Srnka’s composition realizes as a musical conflict between two teams in a tremendous arc of tension. The conductor is Johannes Harneit. The first performance takes place on 27 May 2017. Further performances are planned for 10, 18 and 21 June. (Photo: Vojtěch Havlik)

Premieres of two works by Manfred Trojahn will be given in Salzburg and Paris on two consecutive days in March 2016:  in Four Women from Shakespeare for soprano and ensemble at the Salzburg Easter Festival on 22 and 26 March 2016, the composer continues with his intensive study of Shakespeare, and pays homage to a “favourite instrument”, the female voice. The interpreter of the four portraits is Juliane Banse with soloists from the Staatskapelle Dresden conducted by the composer. The new ensemble work Nocturne – Minotauromachie, with its references to Picasso, will be premiered in Paris by the Ensemble intercontemporain under Matthias Pintscher on 23 March 2016.

Matthias Pintscher’s new cello concerto, Un despertar for violoncello and orchestra, develops out of a “continuous slow, soft, tender and intimate song in the lower register of the cello”. It was written for the cellist Alisa Weilerstein and is inspired by the dark, warm tone of her playing. – (Photo Alisa Weilerstein: Jamie Jung)