It might seem audacious to venture to place any piece of music alongside the gigantic symphonic creations of Gustav Mahler. And yet this is the essence of the commission from the Jena Philharmonic and its Music Director Simon Gaudenz for the composer Andrea Scartazzini. A short, self-contained orchestral work has been composed to complement each of the Mahler symphonies, each relating to Mahler’s music and intellectual world.

Almost fifty years after the first edition of Bohuslav Martinů’s 4th Piano Concerto „Incantation“, Bärenreiter-Verlag is publishing new material based on the Critical Complete Edition.

The clarinet as representative of the human voice, chorus and symphony orchestra as sounding spaces: with these resources Miroslav Srnka is on the search for truth in our digital world.

„How to respond to Clara Schumann?“ That is the question for fellow composer Charlotte Seither, 146 years younger than Schumann. There’s no question of looking backwards for her.

In the few months since its first performance at the BBC Proms in London, Dieter Ammann’s “Piano Concerto (Gran Toccata)” has already been performed several times – in Taipei, Boston and Helsinki – each time to astonished and enthusiastic audiences. The pianist Andreas Haefliger is soloist and initiator of the concerto. With stupendous virtuosity, he is central to the series of performances of the work. Following the American and Finnish premieres, conductor Susanna Mälkki now conducts the German premiere on 9, 10 and 12 January 2020 with the Munich Philharmonic. (photo: Dieter Ammann and Andreas Haefliger after the world premiere in August in the Royal Albert Hall, London; photo: Chris Christodoulou)

Following the success of his new opera “Violetter Schnee” at the Berlin Staatsoper, Beat Furrer has new projects in sight.

Over several years the Swiss composer has complemented the Jena Philharmonic’s Mahler cycle with his own companion pieces. For each concert Scartazzini has written a symphonic movement, and with each Mahler performance these new movements join together to form a large-scale orchestral work. The beginning was Torso in October 2018. Like this, Epitaph also draws on a lyric text by Rainer Maria Rilke.