“Martinů and his World” is the theme of the Summer Festival in August 2025 in Bard, 170 km north of New York, once again offering an opportunity for discoveries and renewed encounters with his music.

Despite several recordings, Camille Saint-Saëns’s Septet in E flat major op. 65 for piano, trumpet and string quintet of 1880/1881 remains something of a chamber music rarity because of its unusual scoring – rather like the E flat major Septet op. 20 by Beethoven. But is it “chamber music” at all?

Cassandra Miller’s (b. 1976) compositions make an indelible impression. “Music this uncalculatedly beautiful leaves you almost desperate with gratitude”, wrote Alex Ross of Miller’s motet “The City, Full of People” in the “New Yorker”. Canadian-born and London-based, her creative wellsprings are as varied as J.S. Bach, Kurt Cobain, Maria Callas, and birdsong, from which she fashions music of unerring immediacy, often drawing on forms of creative transcription. “The Guardian” hailed her Duet for Cello and Orchestra as one of finest compositions of the 21st century.

Lisa Illean (b.1983) invites listeners “to immerse themselves in a world where near silence and stillness shape the very fabric of its sounds” (Gramophone).

Franz Schubert’s stage works have never become firmly established in the repertoire. And yet they contain interesting examples of Romantic opera aesthetics. And with the 2028 Schubert anniversary year in mind, they offer a variety of opportunities for productions.

In 2024, the entire musical world commemorates the 200th anniversary of the birth of the Czech composer Bedřich Smetana (1824–84). It is in this year that the Bärenreiter Praha has released a new Urtext edition of the complete cycle of six symphonic poems “Má vlast” (My Country). This completes a ten-year project of successive publishing of the individual movements of Smetana´s symphonic cycle. This iconic Czech orchestral work has been reissued after almost 60 years.

Leonore is no longer a victim. In “Fidelio schweigt” for the Musiktheater im Revier Gelsenkirchen the character who was merely a lover becomes an active subject and in so doing, emancipates herself from the well-known, all-too-familiar subject matter.