In the history of music, Josef Bohuslav Foerster (1859–1951) is particularly known for his friendship with Gustav Mahler during their time together in Hamburg. The immense musical output of this most gifted artist awaits rediscovery. Following the new publication of Foerster’s 1st and 2nd Symphonies by Editio Bärenreiter Praha in 2007 the late Concerto for Cello and Orchestra of 1930/31 is now being published. The work was recorded by Jirí Bárta and the Prague Chamber Philharmonic under Jakub Hrusa for Supraphon in January.

Charlotte Seither who has has been awarded a scholarschip by the Villa Massimo for 2009 and is currently spending a year on a scholarship in Rome, presented her latest work for large orchestra in London and Krefeld. The first part of Essay on Shadow and Truth has been performed by the BBC Symphony Orchestra, London, under the direction of André de Ridder. The complete orchestral work was premiered in Krefeld.

The 47th Festival di Nuova Consonanza in Rome presents Beat Furrer as both composer and teacher: at the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia he directs a composers’ workshop with concerts. The Ensemble Algoritmo will perform several works in a portrait concert on 17 December, including aria for soprano and ensemble, lotófagos for soprano and double bass and spur for piano and string quartet. The London Sinfonietta presents In Portrait: Beat Furrer on 18 January. This concert in the Queen Elizabeth Hall conducted by the composer will include the British premiere of Xenos for ensemble, as well as Presto.

Mendelssohn worked on a third Piano Concerto in E minor between March 1842 and March 1844, but did not complete it. He later used motivic and thematic material from it for his famous Violin Concerto op. 64, also in E minor. Based on the extended surviving sketches for the first two movements, the American Mendelssohn scholar R. Larry Todd has reconstructed and completed this third Piano Concerto, rounding it off a transcription of the finale from the Violin Concerto. Matthias Kirschnereit recorded the new concerto with the Robert Schumann Philharmonie Chemnitz for the Arte Nova label, and gave the first public performances on 10 January 2009 in Bad Kissingen. He was accompanied by the Staatskapelle Weimar under George Pehlivanian.

After his piano concerto attracted a lot of attention in Cologne, Paris and Munich, described by Gerhard Rohde as “a dramatic, exciting, almost uncannily enigmatic ‘double’”, Beat Furrer has been working on several compositions and a new music theatre piece. In lotófagos II he has developed his explorations into spatial acoustics further in collaboration with IRCAM in Paris, and at the same time has been writing a piece on forgetting.

At the Prague Spring International Music Competition 2008, Clarinettino by Ondřej Kukal was one of the set pieces. This demanding work, yet one easily understood by audiences, is an important addition to the repertoire for clarinettists.

The BBC London commissioned a new orchestral piece from Matthias Pintscher. Pourquoi l’azur muet. Musique de “L'espace dernier” pour sopran, mezzosopran et orchestre was premiered in London on 10 October by Claudia Barainsky (soprano), Claudia Mahnke (mezzo soprano) and the BBC Symphony Orchestra under Kazushi Ono. Parts of Pintscher’s music theatre piece L’espace dernier about Arthur Rimbaud have been assembled to form this new work. The German premiere was given by Anu Komsi (soprano), Claudia Mahnke (mezzo soprano) and the Radio Symphony Orchestra Stuttgart under Krysztof Urbanski in April, 2009 in Stuttgart.