For the anniversary year “Luther 2017. 500 Jahre Reformation" Charlotte Seither has composed Inschrift for choir and orchestra, a commentary on Bach’s cantata Christ lag in Todes Banden  BWV 4. It can be performed following on from this cantata, but also as an independent work, and is scored for the same forces as the original work (choir and strings), with the addition of two recorders and (several) trombones playing the chorale melody. The premiere on 30 April in the Erlöserkirche Herten/Recklinghausen will be given by the Hertener Kantorei with members of the Dortmund Philharmonie conducted by Elke Cernysev. – (photo: Marco Bussmann)

Bärenreiter-Verlag has embarked on a major new project devoted to French music with the launch of a large-scale editorial project to publish the instrumental music of Camille Saint-Saëns in a 36-volume, historical-critical complete edition. The first volume to be published is a new edition of the Symphony in C minor op. 78, known as the Organ Symphony, edited by General Editor Michael Stegemann. The new edition will be launched on 11, 12 and 13 Dezember in the Philharmonie Cologne, performed by the Gürzenich-Orchester Cologne under the baton of its chief conductor François-Xavier Roth. His father Daniel Roth, titular organist at St. Sulpice in Paris, plays the organ. The concert will be broadcast on DeutschlandRadio Kultur, together with an in-depth studio discussion with the editor Michael Stegemann.

Asrael, Josef Suk’s symphony dedicated to the memory of Antonín Dvořák and his daughter, Suk’s wife Otilie, who died young, is a major work by the Czech composer and of Czech music of its time. A critical new edition of this work has long been overdue, a task which has now been taken up by Jonáš Hájek, editor at Bärenreiter Praha. The first performance will be conducted by Tomáš Netopil, Music Director in Essen, and one of the leading Czech conductors of the younger generation. He conducts the work on 17 and 18 November 2016 with the Essen Philharmonic, when Josef Suk’s Asrael Symphony will be performed for the first time using the new Bärenreiter material. The concert will be recorded live by Oehms Classics and released on CD.

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.

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.

When he received the commission to write a Mass, Beethoven feared comparison with Haydn. But his Mass in C, a new Urtext edition of which is published by Bärenreiter, established itself as a masterpiece which remains in the standard repertoire today.

There is now a new Urtext edition of Antonín Dvořák’s two Serenades op. 22 and 44, which removes many uncertainties and defective variant readings.