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)

Ľubica Čekovská has written a large-scale symphonic work for the Essen Philharmonic, an extremely multi-faceted piece of music. The title Palingenia is the scientific name for the mayfly.

The Bamberg Symphony conducted by Manfred Honeck perform Thomas Daniel Schlee’s Rufe zu mir for orchestra and solo organ with Christian Schmitt as soloist. Schlee describes his concertante music as a “symphonic scene”. It begins with an invocation, a “De profundis” in the orchestra, which symbolizes mankind, the world. Its eloquent title reveals the sacred allusion which acts “as a magical power” in the imposing work. Performances take place on 16 and 17 January 2016. – (Photo: Herbert Lehmann)

(10.10.2015) At the “Salzburg Dialoge” Festival, Beat Furrer features as a guest composer this year in four concerts: as part of this, spazio immergente for soprano and trombone will be premiered by Golda Schultz and Mike Svoboda on 28 November, a multi-layered setting after Lucretius. Performances of Furrer’s works also include Spur for string quartet and piano, choral pieces from the Enigma cycle, and his ensemble work linea dell’orizzonte with the Klangforum Wien, conducted by the composer. This composition receives several performances this autumn: from Shanghai to the USA – performed by Ensemble intercontemporain, Ensemble Phace Contemporary and Klangforum Wien, which gives the British premiere of the work at the Huddersfield Festival. – (foto: David Furrer)

(30.4.2015) On 10 May Beat Furrer’s new opera la bianca notte / die helle nacht after Dino Campana will be premiered in Hamburg. The poet, who narrates in order to survive, becomes the inspiration for a music theatre work which deals with the question of identity. The textual basis are the Canti orfici by Dino Campana, who allowed the futuristic ideas of his time to flow into poetic texts full of suggestive power. The conductor at the Hamburg Staatsoper is Simone Young.