Miloslav Kabeláč is one of the most important Czech composers of the 20th century. He can indisputably be described as the greatest symphonist of the generation after Bohuslav Martinů..

(1.10.2014) Manfred Trojahn’s highly-acclaimed music theatre work Orest receives its Austrian premiere. Trojahn, who celebrates his 65th birthday on 22 October 2014, was acclaimed in the press for his work, premiered at the Nederlandse Opera in 2011; it was described in reviews as a “burningly intense” piece on the myth of matricide. The music theatre work will be staged by Neue Oper Wien, the amadeus ensemble-wien and the Vienna Chamber Choir in a production by Philipp M. Krenn. The conductor is Walter Kobéra. 

The Czech composer Vítězslava Kaprálová, who only lived to the age of 25, left a series of symphonic pieces which are now being published by Bärenreiter Praha. Her works are characterised by a great wealth of invention.

Jonathan Harvey, who has died at the age of 73, was one of the UK's leading composers of music in all genres, a composer as happy to be sung in a cathedral evensong as to be performed at Pierre Boulez' electro-acoustic research institute IRCAM in Paris. He was quite impossible to pigeon-hole.

[10.10.2012] In his work The Absent, composed for the rainy days Festival in Luxembourg, Russian composer Vadim Karassikov develops a subtle game with perception by means of extreme reduction.

[10.10.2012] Three premieres by Beat Furrer can be heard in quick succession: linea d’orizzonte will be performed in Donaueschingen on 21 October by Ensemble ascolta, and Enigma V by the choir Les Cris de Paris under Geoffroy Jourdain on 26 October in Paris. With this Furrer concludes his series of five “Enigmas” for unaccompanied choir, after Leonardo da Vinci’s late “Profezie”. Furrer composed Ira - Arca for bass flute and double bass for the Erste Bank Composition Award, which receives its premiere from Eva Furrer and Uli Fussenegger on 3 November in Vienna.

Following the premieres of early piano works and the string quartet by Jean Barraqué at Musica Strasbourg, in January 2012 the Ultraschall Berlin Festival devotes an extensive portrait to the French composer, with premieres of further previously unperformed works and German premieres. The programme includes the Sonate pour violon seul (1949) with Carolin Widmann, the Quatuor à cordes with the Quatuor Diotima, early piano pieces with Nicolas Hodges and the Sonate pour piano using the new critical-practical edition. There will be a special focus on premieres of early vocal works given by the RIAS Kammerchor and Christiane Iven, including the Trois mélodies (1950), which formed a “nucleus” for the work Séquence later published by the composer.