The English composer Thomas Adès is fascinated by depictions of the dance of death The famous ‘Totentanz’ in Lübeck, destroyed in the war, is the starting point for his largest symphonic work to date.

(1.10.2014) La Mer, composed between 1903 and 1905 has been revised and refined several times by Claude Debussy up until at least 1913. These corrections are found in a score which Debussy gave to his wife as a present for her private library in 1913. The new scholarly-critical edition draws on several important sources previously unavailable to musicologists, resulting in an array of new readings and corrections.

Jonathan Del Mar has presented his new edition of Beethoven's Fourth piano concerto. Due to the fact that the autograph is lost, many inconsistant details and additions to the score have survived even in many modern editions.

Giuseppe Verdi's Messa da Requiem has appeared in a new Urtext-Edition by Marco Uvietta. In this new scholarly-critical edition the editor, on the basis of all available sources, succeeds in presenting practical suggestions to solve musical problems and those concerning the interpretation of this famous work. A hitherto unexamined handwritten reduction for voice and piano casts a new light on the evaluation of several known sources and leads to new philological and editorial decisions.

A masterwork by the bohemian composer Jan Dismas Zelenka has been found: the large-scale Missa Divi Xaverii for soloist, chorus and orchestra, composed in 1729 in Vienna. This new discovery by Václav Luks and his ensembles brings a magnificent sacred work to light.

(4.10.2014) Philipp Maintz has composed a concerto for piano and large orchestra for the Festival Musica Strasbourg. The composer describes his work as “an exciting approach to a form steeped in historical tradition, but at no point in the compositional process did I think of breaking it down.” It receives its premiere on 10 October 2014 in Strasbourg with Jean Frédéric Neuburger as soloist and the Orchestre Philharmonique du Luxembourg conducted by Peter Hirsch. The same day his orchestral work archipel can be heard in Saarbrücken, with the Deutsche Radio Philharmonie Saarbrücken conducted by Robert HP Platz. And finally, ferner, und immer ferner. music for organ solo receives its Polish premiere in Wroclaw on 11 October 2014 at the World New Music Days 2014, performed by Piotr Rojek.

(7.10.2015) Matthias Pintscher has described his orchestral work idyll as a shining, light image of a place of yearning. The composition receives its British premiere on 3 December 2015 in Glasgow, with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra conducted by the composer. There are numerous first performances of Pintscher’s works this autumn. First performances include bereshit given in the Netherlands by the Ensemble intercontemporain, and his cycle Profiles of Light (Now I and II for piano and violoncello) and beyond (a system of passing) for flute in the USA. Sarah Maria Sun and Jan Philipp Schultze give the Spanish premiere of his Lieder und Schneebilder on 15 December 2015 in Bilbao. – (photo: Franck Ferville)