Beat Furrer, the winner of the 2018 Ernst von Siemens Music Prize, will be celebrating his 65th birthday on 6th December 2019. Born in Schaffhausen in Switzerland but with his home for a long time now in Vienna, the composer, conductor, university lecturer and founder of major institutions (the ensemble “Klangforum Wien” among others) is one of the most prominent and influential figures in today’s musical scene. “With Beat Furrer we enter into a landscape of tones and sounds in which any noise of the commonplace is not heard,” as the poet Uwe Kolbe put it in his citation in honour of Beat Furrer’s music. Devoid of the commonplace, Furrer’s musical landscapes create their own fascinating allure – his works are of existential power. The beginning of 2019, an eventful year in his life, saw the celebrated premiere of his latest opera “Violetter Schnee” (Violet Snow) at Berlin’s Staatsoper Unter den Linden, further performances of which are set for January 2020. New and exciting large-scale projects are in the pipeline. Furrer’s works are published since 1996 by Bärenreiter-Verlag, Kassel. (photo: EvS/Manu Theobald)

Complementing the Bärenreiter Complete Edition of Camille Saint-Saëns’ instrumental works, Bärenreiter are now publishing the first critical edition of the French composer’s “Oratoire de Noël”, edited by Christina Stahl. Thomas Hengelbrock launches this with his Balthasar Neumann Choir and Ensemble on 1 December 2019 in the Konzerthaus Freiburg, followed by a tour from 3 to 8 December with performances in Vienna (Konzerthaus), Luxembourg (Philharmonie), Hamburg (Laeiszhalle), Essen (Philharmonie) and Wilhelmshaven (Stadthalle). Publication of the performance material, which will be available to purchase, is planned for April 2020 for the Frankfurt Music Fair.

With perfect timing Oper Bonn begins the Beethoven anniversary year on 1 January with a new production of “Fidelio” conducted by its Music Director Dirk Kaftan. The creative team includes the unconventional theatre director Volker Lösch. As in his previous productions, by including local choirs he aims to integrate the present-day into the ostensibly historical operatic events. The musical material is the new critical edition by Helga Lühning, which is also being used for other prominent new productions of “Fidelio” in the anniversary year: Kirill Petrenko’s “Fidelio” debut with the Berliner Philharmoniker on 4, 7 and 13 April 2020 in the Festspielhaus Baden-Baden, in a production by the highly-acclaimed Slovenian theatre director Mateja Koležnik; concert performances conducted by Marek Janowski with the Dresden Philharmonic on 24 and 26 April 2020 in the Kulturpalast of the Saxon state capital; and Frederic Wake-Walker’s new production for Glyndebourne Festival Opera which opens on 25 July 2020. Here the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment performs with conductor Robin Ticciati, who has been Music Director of the famous British festival for several years. On 16 March 2020 the Austrian actor and Oscar prizewinner Christoph Waltz’s production of “Leonore 1806” opens at the Theater an der Wien in Vienna. Staged in the theatre where the 1805/1806 versions of “Leonore” were premiered, Manfred Honeck conducts the Vienna Symphony Orchestra.

In the few months since its first performance at the BBC Proms in London, Dieter Ammann’s “Piano Concerto (Gran Toccata)” has already been performed several times – in Taipei, Boston and Helsinki – each time to astonished and enthusiastic audiences. The pianist Andreas Haefliger is soloist and initiator of the concerto. With stupendous virtuosity, he is central to the series of performances of the work. Following the American and Finnish premieres, conductor Susanna Mälkki now conducts the German premiere on 9, 10 and 12 January 2020 with the Munich Philharmonic. (photo: Dieter Ammann and Andreas Haefliger after the world premiere in August in the Royal Albert Hall, London; photo: Chris Christodoulou)

“Splendour” could stand as the heading for Matthias Pintscher’s last composition in his “Shirim” cycle, which now receives its premiere as a complete work. As the fourth part and conclusion of his Shirim cycle, Matthias Pintscher has set the third chapter of the Song of Solomon for baritone, chorus and orchestra. In this, there is mention of splendour, the entrance of King Solomon himself, of the costliness of the treasures and robes, the shimmering gold swords of his accompanying retinue