Commissioned by the Basel Sinfonietta, Andrea Lorenzo Scartazzini has composed Siegel his latest work for orchestra with voice. The premiere in Basel on 20 January 2008 with Claudia Barainsky (soprano) and the Basel Sinfonietta under Peter Hirsch was followed by the first German performance on 22 January in Gütersloh.

For Miroslav Srnka, born in 1975 in Prague, the Czech tradition is extremely important, in the sense of a musical mother tongue which has shaped him, alongside the great masters of modern music of the twentieth century such as Boulez, Stockhausen, Ligeti, Messiaen and others. He lists Dvořák and Janáček in particular as such models, who introduced new qualities to music – characteristics like sound contrasts, colour, gesture and dynamic progression.