Manfred Trojahn, who celebrated his 60th birthday on 22 October 2009, has been awarded the Deutscher Musikautorenpreis in the symphonic category; the prize was awarded for the very first time on 28 May in Berlin by GEMA, the German performing rights society. To mark the composer’s birthday, the Henschel Quartett is releasing a CD with Trojahn’s String Quartets I, III and IV, and gave the premiere of String Quartet IV in Düren on 10 November. Zwei Sätze für Orchester received their premiere in the Leipzig Gewandhaus, performed by the Symphony Orchestra of the Hochschule für Musik und Theater Leipzig conducted by Ulrich Windfuhr.

Beschriftung der Tiefe von innen (Inscribing the depths from inside), Charlotte Seither’s new composition for ensemble, received its world premiere on 11 December given by the Ensemble Modern in Rome (in the Auditorio del Parco della Musica). The composer is spending a year in the Italian capital on a scholarship at the Deutsche Akademie Villa Massimo. She has composed a work in which, she writes, “the low register takes centre stage”. “The merging of sounds, although they are always highly individually shaped and remain ‘subjectivized’, takes place in the process, especially in the low registers. Here, the ‘grey areas’ of deformity also always lead into the undefinable.”

On 30 November 2009, Klaus Huber celebrated his 85th birthday. The Swiss composer’s works continue to be of seminal importance for trends in contemporary music. His compositions constitute a multi-faceted lifetime’s achievement, recently recognized with two important awards: the Ernst von Siemens Music Prize and the Salzburg Prize 2009. Huber’s important works from the 1950s and 1960s are published by Bärenreiter – the period when the composer first came to international attention. One early major work above all awaits rediscovery: Soliloquia for soloists, chorus and large orchestra, written in 1959-64.

The Swiss composer Dieter Ammann’s works will be published by Bärenreiter-Verlag from now onwards. Born in Aarau in 1962, Ammann first made his name as a performer (trumpet, keyboards and bass) in improvised music and jazz. After studying composition and theory at the Musikakademie Basel and attending master classes with Wolfgang Rihm and Witold Lutoslawski, he turned increasingly to composing orchestral and chamber music in the 1990s. His work also includes teaching at the Hochschulen in Lucerne and Berne. As well as winning several national and international prizes, Dieter Ammann was recently awarded the prize for the most promising composer by the Siemens Arts Program.

The 20^th anniversary of the death of the Slovak composer Ján Cikker is marked by Bärenreiter. Cikker, born in 1905 in Banska Bystricá, enjoyed international success in the 1960s and 70s, particularly with his operas, first and foremost his gripping Vzkriesenie (Auferstehung/ Resurrection) after Tolstoy; after its premiere in Prague in 1962, it received many successful performances in European opera houses. Following on from this, Hra o láske a smrti (Das Spiel von Liebe und Tod/ Play on love and death) after Romain Rolland, Coriolanus after William Shakespeare and Roszudok (Das Urteil / The Judgement) after Kleist were amongst his most popular works.

The Martinů Foundation and Martinů Institute are planning a major series of activities for 2009 and 2010 in honour of the Czech composer. This will be an excellent opportunity to engage with both well-known works and unknown works worth discovering.