Manfred Trojahn has composed a Magnificat for the reopening of the Imperial Cathedral in Königslutter following its restoration. The work, which is scored for two sopranos and orchestra, was conceived with the specific acoustic of this famous church in mind. The composer conducted the work in a concert with the Staatsorchester Braunschweig on 25 April 2010. Shortly before this, Moderato, Sinfonischer Satz, Überschreibung II. Zustand was premiered at musica viva in Munich, an orchestral composition whose theme is musical acceleration.

Leoš Janáček’s symphonic fragment Dunaj (The Danube) dates from the period of the composition of “Katya Kabanova”. The composer was not concerned with a musical-picturesque description of a river landscape, but with the mythical link between women’s destinies and water.

You might imagine that Beethoven’s Violin Concerto was available in a definitive version. But the current version has been proved to contain errors in many details, reason for Jonathan Del Mar to edit the work afresh from scratch, and to provide today’s musicians with a reliable basis to work from.

“People are on a journey through present-day Egypt; whilst searching for its origins, they encounter their own wilderness as an absence of memory...” Thus Beat Furrer describes the plot of Wüstenbuch. His new music theatre piece after texts by Händl Klaus, Ingeborg Bachmann and others receives its first performance at the Theater Basel in a production by Christoph Marthaler on 15 March. The first German performance takes place at Maerzmusik Berlin on 27 March. Before then, on 12 February, at Eclat 2010 in Stuttgart, Begehren was performed in a staged production by the Ensemble Modern and the SWR Stuttgart Vocal Ensemble conducted by Beat Furrer, with sets designed by rosalie. At the Konzerthaus Wien Xenos III for Percussion and Chamber Orchestra was premiered on 1 March by Ensemble Resonanz and Dirk Rothbrust (percussion).  

There is an abundance of sources for Mendelssohn’s oratorio Elijah, which was hailed as the most important work of its day soon after its first performance. Bärenreiter’s new edition sheds new light on the work.

Philipp Maintz, who was awarded the scholarship of the Deutsche Akademie Rom Villa Massimo, has written an orchstral work for his home city of Aachen. archipel describes a group of islands which are linked under water and whose peaks project. Thus, in the archipelago, there are on the one hand ”subterranean” links to the material in his opera project Maldoror (Munich Biennale 2010), and on the other hand, it reflects a special compositional structure; however, Philipp Maintz has conceived the orchestral work as a grouping of separate parts, whose continuity and branching out is interrupted by vertical intersections.  Music director Markus R. Bosch has conducted the first performance with the Aachen Symphony Orchestra on 22 October 2008.

Manfred Trojahn, who celebrates his 60th birthday on 22 October, has been awarded  the Deutscher Musikautorenpreis in the symphonic category; the prize has been awarded for the very first time in Berlin by GEMA, the German performing rights society. Trojahn has composed sentimento del tempo. music for solo violin, two flutes and strings. ansbachisches konzert 2009 for the Bachwoche Ansbach, which was contrasted with Johann Sebastian Bach’s 4th Brandenburg Concerto in a concert given by the Freiburg Baroque Orchestra on 7 August.