In two important new compositions Heinz Winbeck has paid tribute to major antecedents: Lebensstürme [Life’s storms] after Schubert and Jetzt und in der Stunde des Todes [Now in the hour of death] as a reflection on Bruckner’s 9th Symphony.

L’ubica Čekovská’s orchestral piece Adorations receives its first German performance on 24 April in Gera conducted by Howard Arman. The Slovakian composer is Composer-in-residence with the Philharmonic Orchestra of Altenburg-Gera in the 2010/11 season. Čekovská’s most important future project is her opera Dorian Gray after the novel by Oscar Wilde. It will be premiered at the Slovak National Opera in Bratislava in a production by David Pountney on 22 November 2013. The libretto is by the British writer Kate Pullinger, and the conductor is Lukasz Borowicz.

Bärenreiter has published the first critical music edition of Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy’s major Goethe cantata Die erste Walpurgisnacht. The composer reworked the piece several times following its premiere. In this new edition by John Michael Cooper, the revised version of February 1843 is made available for the first time in a critical edition to performers for practical use.

Charlotte Seither, who has just received the highest music award from the State of Lower Saxony, the Praetorius Musikpreis 2010 for composition, has been commissioned to write a work for the beginning of the Kleist Year 2011 in Heilbronn. Schatten und Klarsein. Verse für Heinrich von Kleist für Sopran und Kammerorchester [Shadows and clarity. Verses for Heinrich von Kleist for soprano and chamber orchestra] is intended as a “portrait in sound of the beauty of Kleist’s poetry”. The composition received its first performance on 15 December, given by the Wurttemberg Chamber Orchestra and soprano Dorothy Mields, conducted by Ruben Gazarian.

Matthias Pintscher’s Songs from Solomon’s garden have been performed several times since their premiere in New York. Scored for baritone and ensemble, the work receives its French premiere on 15 December in the Cité de la musique Paris, given by the Ensemble Intercontemporain and soloist Leigh Melrose, conducted by the composer.
Matthias Pintscher has been Artist-in-Association with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra since autumn 2010, working with the orchestra as composer and conductor. He conducts four concerts with the orchestra in January 2012. His Ex nihilo for small orchestra will be premiered in Glasgow on 19 January 2012. His composition is about the beginning from total darkness, about the creation from nothing.

Manfred Trojahn has composed Cinque sogni per Eusebius for the Düsseldorf Symphony Orchestra under conductor Andrey Boreyko, which has been premiered in the Tonhalle Düsseldorf together with an orchestration of Schumann’s Träumerei. The composition for the Schumann anniversary year picks up on the characteristic short form of the Romantic period. Trojahn’s Sinfonischer Satz. Allegro has been premiered by the Niedersächsisches Staatsorchester conducted by Wolfgang Bozic in Hannover.

(31.3.2014) Two prominent orchestras are performing works by Dieter Ammann as part of the Swiss Migros Percent for Culture Classics. Boost for orchestra will be played by the BBC Symphony Orchestra conducted by Sakari Oramo between 26 and 29 April in St. Gallen, Lucerne, Zurich and Geneva. The Mariinsky Orchestra conducted by Valery Gergiev performs Ammann’s Core in its concerts from 18 to 21 May in Zurich, St. Gallen, Bern and Geneva. And a look ahead to the summer. The Hitzacker Summer Music Festival is presenting a composer portrait of Dieter Ammann, featuring several of his works.