The rehearsals for Georg Friedrich Haas’ in vain are going well, the London première of the work for 24 instruments will take place today at the Queen Elizabeth Hall and will be preceded by a conversation with the composer.

Emilio Pomàrico conducts the London Sinfonietta.

Georg Friedrich Haas: in vain
for 24 instruments | 70'
2 1 2 1 - 2 0 2 0 - perc(2), hp, acc, pno, sax, vln(3), vla(2), vc(2), cb
06.12.2013, Queen Elizabeth Hall, London; London Sinfonietta, cond. Emilio Pomàrico

Yesterday Josep Pons conducted the BBC Symphony Orchestra at the Barbican Centre. On the programme: Franz Schreker’s Vorspiel zu einem Drama [Prelude to a Drama].

The London Evening Standard writes that the concert “was held together not by anniversaries or any overriding concept but by the quality of the music itself.” Read the full review here.

Today, 5 December 2013, the new homepage of the Stockhausen-Stiftung für Musik has been presented on the occasion of the sixth anniversary of the death of the composer Karlheinz Stockhausen.

Although the old website will stay online, it won’t be updated anymore.

The Royal College of Music hosts a workshop with Georg Friedrich Haas today at the RCM, where the composer will talk about his recent works.

The event starts at 2:30pm GMT and is free, but tickets are required and can be booked here. Haas’ String Quartet No. 2 will be performed at the venue by students of the RCM.

Find out more on the homepage of the Austrian Cultural Forum London.

Georg Friedrich Haas: String Quartet No. 2
for string quartet | 18'
05.12.2013, Royal College of Music, London; RCM students

Congratulations to György Kurtág!

Yesterday, 1 December, Kurtág was honoured with the Royal Philharmonic Society Gold Medal at the Queen Elizabeth Hall in London.

Tim Ashley of The Guardian has reviewed the recent publication of Wolfang Rihm’s Dionysos, available now on DVD and Blu-ray. The recording is from the world première of the opera, with which the Salzburg Festival opened in 2010.

The full review is available at The Guardian. Find out more about the DVD at EuroArts.

Wolfgang Rihm on the creation of Dionysos:

David Sawer talks about Flesh and Blood for mezzo-soprano, baritone and orchestra:

Flesh and Blood has been shortlisted for the 2013 British Composer Awards in the “vocal” category. It received its world première on 15 February 2013 at the Barbican Hall, London, where it was performed by mezzo-soprano Christine Rice, baritone Marcus Farnsworth, and the BBC Symphony Orchestra under Ilan Volkov.

View the full vocal score and find our more about David Sawer’s Flesh and Blood.

Georg Friedrich Haas at the Galerie Nikolaus Ruzicska in front of an installation by Maurizio Nannucci, and at the Mozarteum Salzburg, where Wohin bist du gegangen? was premièred yesterday, 27.11.2013, by the Klangforum Wien and the Salzburger Bachchor under Clement Power.

Here is the new collaboration between col legno and Zantho for Wein & Co, entitled Musik trifft Wein. 

Exploring the connection between wine and music, two rather stylish packages have been created: a white edition (Grüner Veltliner) and a red edition (Blauer Zweigelt), both of which come with their own CD.

The music has been selected by Christian Seiler and Andreas Schett, and we are happy to see that they have included compositions by Schnyder and Rihm (on WHITE) and Cerha and Rihm (on RED).

The packages can be ordered at Wein & Co (WHITE and RED) or by writing directly to col legno.

Georg Friedrich Haas’ Wohin bist du gegangen? for choir and 17 instruments will be premièred today, 27 November, at this year’s Dialogues festival (27 November to 1 December) of the Salzburg Mozarteum Foundation in the concert session “Central Park in the Dark”.

Wohin bist du gegangen? is based on texts by the Persian poet Attar of Nishapur (ca.1136–ca.1220) in a free translation by the composer. The male and female voices are separated by the ensemble (with the men on one side and the women on the other). At the beginning of the work, the situation is akin to a traditional performance, but within only a few seconds the light is dimmed until the concert hall is in total darkness.

View the full programme of Dialogues Light.

Wohin bist du gegangen?
for choir and 17 instruments | 12'
1 1 1 1 - 1 1 1 1 - perc(2), acc, pno, vln, vln, vla, vc, cb
world prem. 27.11.2013, Mozarteum; Salzburger Bachchor; Klangforum Wien, cond. Clement Power

At Sotheby’s “Music, Continental Books & Manuscripts” sale several items from the estate of Franz Schreker will be on sale. Among them: Schreker’s own annotated and marked-up scores of Der Ferne Klang and Der Schatzgräber, a full score of Schönberg’s Gurrelieder (also annotated by Schreker) and a first edition of Wozzeck, signed and inscribed by Berg to Schreker.

The auction starts tomorrow, 27 November, at 10:30 GMT. Find out more at Sotheby’s and at the Entartete Musik blog.

Georges Lentz talks about String Quartet(s).

Georges Lentz’ String Quartet(s) will be premièred on 30 November at this year’s Rainy Days Festival (28. November to 01. December) in Luxembourg.

Watch James Eccles (vla) and Oliver Miller (vc) of The NOISE in an interview with composer Lyle Chan, a recording session of String Quartet(s), a trial performance of the work at Cockatoo Island, and Andrew Wholley’s promo clip for the piece by clicking on the pictures below.

This footage was taken by Patrick Mullins and forms part of a series of documentation on Lentz’ work undertaken by Vexations 840, “a mysterious organization dedicated to classical music at its greatest”.

Rohan de Saram, former cellist of the Arditti Quartet, will perform works by Bach, Berio, Wellesz, Rusconi, Rogl, and Berauer on 27 November at the Austrian Cultural Forum London.

De Saram on Sequenza XIV:

I feel very honoured that Maestro Berio wrote this work for me. I feel also great sorrow that we did not have the opportunity to meet in August 2003, as planned, in order to finalise technical details. His last words to me were, “See you in August!"

Part of the inspiration for Sequenza XIV came from Luciano's interest in the Kandyan drum rhythms of Sri Lanka, Kandy being the ancient capital of Ceylon, the Sri Lanka of today. Several times after my performances of Il Ritorno degli Snovidenia, with Maestro Berio conducting, he wanted to know about the musical instruments of the country I came from, Sri Lanka, particularly the Kandyan drum which I have played myself since I was a boy. [...]

Read the full text.

Find out more on the website of the Austrian Cultural Forum London. The event is free, but seating is limited.

Luciano Berio: Sequenza XIV
for violoncello | 13'
Egon Wellesz: Sonate
for violoncello
27.11.2013, Austrian Cultural Forum London; Rohan de Saram, vc

Wolfgang Rihm, Franz Welser-Möst and Friedrich Cerha after the performance of Cerha’s Étoile, performed by Martin Grubinger and The Percussive Planet on 21 November at the Konzerthaus, Vienna.

View the full score of Étoile or watch a video interview in which Friedrich Cerha talks about his music.

In the past years we have had many losses in the world of music to mourn. Why did the date of Benjamin Britten’s death – 4 December 1976 – touch such a chord in me?

During this time I was obviously at the point where I could recognize the magnitude of such a loss. Inexplicable feelings of guilt, more than that even, arose in me. I had just discovered Britten for myself. Just before his death I began to appreciate the unusual purity of his music – I had had the impression of the same kind of purity in the ballads of Guillaume de Machaut. And besides, for a long time I had wanted to meet Britten personally – and now it would not come to that.

Arvo Pärt

Celebrating the centenary of Benjamin Britten, here are the first three pages of Arvo Pärt’s autograph of Cantus in Memory of Benjamin Britten (Cantus Benjamin Britteni mälestuseks), a piece commemorating the great English composer.You can click on the images to see high resolution zoomable scans.

By the end of this day, the piece will have been performed more than 1150 times in the last 20 years, there are more than 150 entries in our performance database for 2013 alone.