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Aribert Reimann’s new opera, L’Invisible, conjures a mysterious and foreboding atmosphere. On 8 October, the world premiere of this “trilogie lyrique” will be presented at the Deutsche Oper Berlin in a production by Vasily Barkhatov conducted by Donald Runnicles.



Reimann first encountered the plays of Maurice Maeterlinck in the 1980s at the Berliner Schaubühne and was immediately inspired to write an opera, however thirty years passed before the idea became a reality. L’Invisible is based on three short Maeterlinck plays, L’Intruse, Intérieur and La Mort de Tintagiles, woven together through musical language and the recurring character of a young boy. Another Maeterlinck play, Les Aveugles also provided inspiration.

Aribert Reimann – L’Invisible: Living in the shadow of death

In L’Intruse a family waits for a doctor, called to attend to the daughter who has just given birth. However, before he arrives the blind grandfather notices death is amongst them. This opening scene is accompanied only by strings, but the texture is shattered at last by the baby’s first cry: a shrill chord in the woodwinds. At the same moment, the mother takes her last breath. Three countertenors hidden in the wings represent the invisible messenger of death and create an atmosphere of omnipresent foreboding.

In contrast, Intérieur is scored for only woodwinds. The audience peers through a window at the family. Outside, a stranger is telling the Grandfather about the eldest daughter’s suicide after he dragged her body out of the river. As the grandfather prepares to break the news to the family, the two girls in the inside room take up the melody previously sung by the countertenors. Only the young boy, Tintagiles, remains on stage to provide the link to the final scene.

In La Mort de Tintagiles the entire orchestra is used for the first time. An old queen issues the command to have all her potential heirs killed. Afraid that Tintagiles may be on her list, his sisters try unsuccessfully to protect him and the countertenors reappear as the queens’ executioners. Reimann ends the work as it opens, as if the story were to begin again.

From the moment a human is born, they live with death. Maeterlink explores this theme in his three plays. In the third, somebody is being kidnapped and murdered. Every day humans are murdered because of an order. If one drives into a crowd of people, they don’t know who their victims are. They’re invisible, just like here. – Aribert Reimann

Reimann wrote both French and German versions of the libretto, and the premiere will feature the French libretto with German and English surtitles.  L’Invisible will run at the Deutsche Oper Berlin until 31 October.

• Aribert Reimann – profile


• L'Invisible – workdetails and score


• L'Invisible at Deutsche Oper Berlin

The London Philharmonic Orchestra celebrates Valentin Silvestrov’s 80^th birthday with the UK premiere of his Symphony No. 3 (“Eschatophony”) at Royal Festival Hall on 27 September with conductor Vladimir Jurowski.



Silvestrov was 15 when he began teaching himself the craft of composition. While studying engineering in Kiev, he continued his musical education in the evenings, eventually winning the Koussevitzky Prize at the age of 30. However, he was expelled from the Composers’ Union of the USSR shortly after for embracing the “Kiev Avantgarde” movement.

During this period, Silvestrov experimented with significant contrasts in his compositions. Symphony No. 3 is one such example, featuring interactions between complex rhythms and free improvisation. It was this rejection of traditional forms and structures that led to his works being banned in his home country of Ukraine, though they achieved great success in Europe and America.

Symphony No. 3 by Valentin Silvestrov: Music from the beginning of a new world

The subtitle “Eschatophony” is a neologism fusing eschatology, the area of theology concerned death, judgment and the final destiny of the soul, and the Greek word for sound, phoné, to lend a musical connotation.

According to [Silvestrov], everything already exists – everything has already been written. In order to understand this you have to think of the Lord Almighty. Everything has been created before, all you have to do is to listen to it carefully and call it up again. Then another thing begins to vibrate. It’s always been there but now we can feel its vibration and understand it as music. – Sofia Gubaidulina on Silvestrov’s understanding of music

A new world is created in every performance of Symphony No. 3 as the score is peppered with instructions such as “chromatic cluster of indefinite size” or “atonal improvisation corresponding to the graphic model”. Improvised passages for the strings and percussion also occur in each of the three movements.

Further performances of Silvestrov’s works are planned around the world in honour of his 80^th birthday on 30 September.  On 28 September Symphony No. 8 can be heard in the Sibelius Hall in Lahti, Finland played by the Lahti Symphony Orchestra and John Storgårds; on 30 September and 1 October at the Kulturpalast Dresden, Serenade and Elegy for string orchestra will be performed by the Dresden Philharmonic conducted by Kirill Karabatis; on 27 October, Adelphi Symphony Orchestra conducted by Christopher Lyndon-Gee will present Postludium at the Adelphi University Performing Arts Center in New York; on 4 November Symphony No 4 and Postludium can be heard in Tokyo played by the NCTS Orchestra and Dennis Russell Davies; and on 11 November, the Svetlanov Orchestra and Vladimir Jurowski will perform Dedication in Moscow.

His publishers Belaieff and Schott Music send Valentin Silvestrov their warmest congratulations on this occasion.

• Valentin Silvestrov – profile


• Symphony No 3 – details and score


• To the limits: Concert of the London Symphony Orchestra

The genre of the symphony includes many strange beasts: "Unfinished" works, others labelled "No. 0", and even some with alternate or multiple opus numbers. Krzysztof Penderecki’s Symphony No. 6 may well be one such oddity. His Symphonies No. 7 and No. 8 were completed decades ago and have enjoyed multiple performances, however, Symphony No. 6 has only recently been completed.



Long Yu will conduct the Guangzhou Symphony Orchestra and baritone Yuan Chenye in the world premiere on 24 September.

Krzysztof Penderecki – Symphony No. 6: A farewell to the genre?

Subtitled “Chinese Songs”, Symphony No. 6 comprises eight songs based on Chinese texts connected by solo intermezzos played on the erhu, a Chinese stringed instrument. Evoking a melancholic atmosphere, the use of a small orchestra creates an intimate chamber music feel and at just under 25 minutes, the work contrasts his earlier extended symphonies. Penderecki has declared this to be his farewell to the symphonic genre - although one never knows what the future may bring.

I have spent decades searching for and discovering new sounds. I have also closely studied the forms, styles and harmonies of past eras. I continue to adhere to both principles … my current creative output is a synthesis. – Krzysztof Penderecki

Michael Sanderling will conduct the Dresdner Philharmonie in the German premiere on 5 May 2018.

• Krzysztof Penderecki – profile


• 6. Sinfonie – work details and score


• Saisoneröffnung - 60 Jahre Guangzhou Symphony Orchestra

“…Your son is leaving. He won’t be able to hear the bells of freedom”, wrote Konstantinos Sirbos in a farewell letter hours before his murder by the Nazis. Luigi Nono chose this and other similar letters as the basis for his work Il canto sospeso ("Floating chant"), which will be performed on 11 September by the SWR Symphonieorchester and the SWR Vokalensemble at Musikfest Berlin with Peter Rundel conducting and soloists Mojca Erdmann (soprano), Jenny Carlstedt (mezzo soprano) and Robin Tritschler (tenor).

During the Third Reich, many people chose to resist the injustices of the Nazi regime and most of them faced death as a result. Letters written by such fourteen- to forty-year-old members of the resistance from around Europe just before their death were published in a documentary in 1954. Nono's work sets fragments from these letters in nine connected sections and is dedicated to all those who lost their lives in the fight for freedom.

Luigi Nono‘s Il canto sospeso: Overcoming death through music

At the work's opening, Nono uses floating orchestral sounds to draw the audience in before the choir sings the first episode. “I’m dying for justice. Our ideas will win”, wrote a young man from Bulgaria. In the next episode, the three soloists simultaneously sing the words of three different Greek patriots. At the climax of the piece, Nono uses lines written by a condemned woman describing moment the Nazis came to execute her, with the music moving from heart-rending brass and timpani to a contrasting, stark string accompaniment. The soprano soloist then sings words of farewell from a young Russian woman to her mother, accompanied by the hums of the women in the choir and a selection of high instruments. The piece ends with the choir singing the words “I’m leaving, having faith in a better life for you”, with only timpani accompanying. Nono connects each cryptic text fragment with instrumental Intermezzi, creating an atmosphere of farewell, desperation, and bewilderment around the listener.

Now as much as ever, works dedicated to remembrance and reflection are of great importance, giving a voice to thoughts and feelings and even serving as focal points for discussion, talks, and educational activities. You'll find more works of remembrance by following the link below. In these works it is evident that composers at all times have deeply believed that music has the ability to remind, admonish, but also comfort and reconcile. Composer and conductor Leonard Bernstein put it like this:

This will be our reply to violence: to make music more intensely, more beautifully, more devotedly than ever before.

This year offers another opportunity to hear Il canto sospeso on 26 November at the Sendesaal des Hessischen Rundfunks in Frankfurt, Germany.

• Luigi Nono – profile


• Il canto sospeso – work details and score


• Musikfest Berlin

Igor Stravinsky’s L'Oiseau de feu (The Firebird) has enjoyed regular performances all over the world for more than 100 years, with the Orchestral Suite being a staple of the concert repertoire. This week alone, the piece will be performed in five different cities.



Sergei Diaghilev, manager of the Ballets Russe, originally commissioned Alexander Tscherepnin and Anatoli Ljadow to compose music for the ballet L'Oiseau de feu. However, when both of these collaborations proved unsuccessful, Diaghilew turned to a then unknown 27-year-old by the name of Igor Stravinsky. Stravinsky finished the score for the ballet based on two Russian fairy tales within a few months.

Igor Stravinsky’s L'Oiseau de feu – A model for modern film music

While hunting, Prince Ivan captures the Firebird, a powerful female spirit. As a token of thanks for releasing her, she gives him a feather that he can use to summon her when in need. In the forest, Ivan comes across 13 Princesses, all enchanted by the immortal King Koschei, who have slipped away from the palace to dance. Ivan joins in and falls in love with the beautiful Tsarevna. Despite their warnings, Ivan follows them back to the palace which is filled with stone statues. Koschei tries to turn Ivan into stone but the Firebird’s feather saves him. The Firebird then casts a spell over Koschei and his soldiers who begin to dance uncontrollably. Meanwhile, Ivan destroys the source of Koschei's immortality, an egg hidden in a tree. The stone statues regain their human form and Ivan marries Tsarevna.

Stravinsky creates distinct musical identities for the main protagonists in L'Oiseau de feu. Chromatic scales are used to herald Koschei while the Firebird has chromatic, woodwind-driven orchestration. The Prince and Princesses’ music includes quotes from Russian folk songs.
Stravinsky later arranged his ballet music into several orchestral suites. The earliest, from 1911, is essentially a shortened version of the original ballet music. In the 1919 version, the composer reduced the orchestration from 100 musicians down to 60 in order to make the work accessible to smaller ensembles. In the 1945 version Stravinsky added another five movements to the version from 1919.

Remember this young composer; he is a man on the cusp of glory. – Sergei Diaghilev, during a rehearsal in preparation for the world premiere of L'Oiseau de feu.

The L'Oiseau de feu Suite (1919) will be played in Goiânia, Brazil, by the Goiânia Philharmonic Orchestra on 6 September, and in Coburg by the Philharmonische Orchester des Landestheaters on 9 September. The Schwäbische Youth Wind Orchestra will present a special arrangement for wind instruments by Randy Earles in Nördlingen, Germany on 9 September and in Füssen, Germany on 10 September. Herbert Schneider’s revised version of the ballet will be performed by with the Gewandhausorchester in Leipzig on 9 September.

• Igor Stravinsky – profile


• The Firebird (Suite 1919) – work details and score


• L'Oiseau de Feu (critical revised version) - work details and score


• Landestheater Coburg


• Gewandhaus Leipzig - schedule

On 2 September, the Opernhaus Hannover will present Hans Werner Henze's much-performed comic opera, Der junge Lord, for the first time in the opera house's history with director Bernd Mottl and Mark Rhode conducting the Niedersächsische Staatsorchester.



Henze and the librettist Ingeborg Bachmann shared a lifelong friendship and close artistic partnership resulting in several operas including Der Prinz von Homburg and Der Idiot. Der junge Lord was their final collaboration, commissioned by the Deutsche Oper Berlin. Bachmann selected Wilhelm Hauff's fable Der Affe als Mensch (The Ape as a Man) as basis for her libretto, adding the lovers Wilhelm and Luise to the story.

Hans Werner Henze‘s Der junge Lord – Fascination and blindness

The setting is Hülsdorf-Gotha at the beginning of the 19th century. The dignitaries and citizens await the arrival of the wealthy Englishman Sir Edgar who has purchased a house in the town. They have prepared a pompous reception ceremony and are consternated when Sir Edgar’s secretary announces that his master has no interest in attending. The resentment only increases when Sir Edgar subsequently invites the artists of a travelling circus into his home; his house is daubed with xenophobic slogans during the night.

Later, the lovers Wilhem and Luise arrange a clandestine evening rendezvous but are startled by loud screams emanating from Sir Edgar’s house. Sir Edgar explains that his nephew Lord Barrat, who has just arrived from London, is in the process of learning the German language and his mistakes are being corrected with the aid of corporal punishment.

A couple of weeks later, Sir Edgar holds a reception to introduce the young Lord. The guests are captivated by his eccentric behaviour, which is imitated enthusiastically by all assembled. Only Wilhelm is disturbed by the manner in which the young lord is wooing Luise; her mother begins to plan an engagement between Luise and Lord Barrat. During the ensuing exuberant dancing, the young lord is increasingly plagued by wild convulsions. Finally, he tears off his clothes and reveals his true colours: he is the circus monkey Adam who has been dressed up as a nobleman. Sir Edgar sends him from the room, leaving behind the shocked citizens of Hülsdorf-Gotha.

In Der junge Lord, Henze closely follows the formal structure of 'opera buffa' with its typical ensembles and the virtual exclusion of arioso elements. He uses traditional musical forms such as folk songs, children’s songs, minuets and waltzes. Under the surface, though, Henze and Bachmann succeed in creating a double bluff: The illusion of light entertainment serves the purpose of emphasising their criticism of society. This can be seen in Bachmann’s use of a quote by Goethe in the libretto “In the German language you lie… That’s an important and serious business".

The main target of this piece is: the lie. It is being born out of greedy curiosity, deceived material hopes, provincial showing-off and offended vanity. – Hans Werner Henze

Performances of Der junge Lord will continue at the Opernhaus Hannover until 19 October.

• Hans Werner Henze – profile


• Der junge Lord – workdetails


• Opernhaus Hannover - premiere of Der junge Lord

Ludwig van Beethoven and Canada. What do those two have in common?

Gerald Barry’s new work for voice and orchestra, Canada, will have its world premiere at the Royal Albert Hall as part of the BBC Proms on 21 August.



Specially commissioned for the Proms, it will be performed by tenor Allan Clayton and the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra conducted by Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla.

"Some time ago I was in Toronto airport returning to Dublin. When I got through security, Canada suddenly came into my head: a setting of the Fidelio Prisoners' Chorus for voice and orchestra." Gerald Barry

Gerald Barrys Canada – A tribute to Beethoven

The text, in English, French and German, includes the lines "Speak softly! We are watched with eyes and ears" from Beethoven’s politically charged and only opera, Fidelio. Barry holds Beethoven in high regard, considering him to be the greatest composer that ever lived. Many of his own works draw on the letters and works of Beethoven.  These include Schott and Sons, Mainz for bass solo and SATB choir which uses selected texts from Beethoven’s letters to his publisher and Beethoven for bass voice and ensemble which also features excerpts from Beethoven’s personal letters to his "Immortal Beloved".

“Canada, the name and country, is both everyday and strange to me - exotically normal.” Gerald Barry

Other new works for Barry this season include an Organ Concerto for organist Thomas Trotter commissioned jointly by Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, the London Philharmonic Orchestra and the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra.

Beethoven would celebrate his 250. birthday in 2020. If you’re still looking for suitable musical programme, you’re invited to have a look at the recent Schott journal for inspiration.

• Gerald Barry - profile


• Canada - work details


• BBC Proms

“Aribert Reimann’s opera Lear, which is enjoying being our fifth new production in 2017, is about the corruptive force of power, about loneliness, about losing human connections - even to one’s own children”, theatre manager Markus Hinterhäuser remarks.



On 20 August, Reimann’s masterpiece will be given a new production at the Salzburger Festspiele with theatre and film director Simon Stone and Franz Welser‑Möst conducting the Vienna Philharmonic.

Reimann undertook to write an operatic version of Shakespeare’s tragedy at the repeated suggestion (since 1968) of baritone Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau. Although fascinated by the story, it would take Reimann four years to begin work on the opera. He approached Claus H. Henneberg to write the libretto, having successfully worked with him in the past, most notably on the opera Melusine.
Reimann recognises three musical inspirations for Lear: Anton von Webern, who taught him precision, Alban Berg, whose expressivity he took as an example, and the rhythmic music of India. In order to create these complex sounds, the composer requested an 83 piece orchestra, 48 of which were to be strings.

Aribert Reimann’s Lear: A parable mirroring our time

In this piece I discovered more and more what seemed to me as a parable of our time. All those things that happened then could happen any time.– Aribert Reimann

King Lear wishes to divide his kingdom amongst his three daughters by giving the one who loves him most the biggest share. The youngest daughter, Cordelia, who doesn’t express her love for her father in words, is banished from the kingdom and leaves to marry the king of France. The loyal Earl of Kent, who disapproves of Lear’s decision, is also exiled. The two older daughters share the inheritance with their husbands but it is soon revealed that their proclamations of love were an exercise in greed. A series of tragic events gradually reveals their true character to Lear, who in the final scene, insane and abandoned, crouches over Cordelia’s body and follows her into the afterworld.

„The audience is magnetized by the orchestra for two hours: with clusters of varying intensities and quarter note dissonances, whirling soundscapes punctuated by explosions of brass, constantly changing rhythms, and lyrical solo voices. All of these techniques are employed in the development of protagonists, expressions, situations – never as just an exercise in composition.“ (Wolfgang Schreiber)

Performances of Lear continue at Salzburger Festspiele until 29 August.

• Aribert Reimann - Profile


• Lear - work details


• Salzburger Festspiele - Lear

The success of his Rhapsody in Blue led the New York Symphony Society to commission a piano concerto from the young George Gershwin.

As Ferde Grofé had done the orchestration for Rhapsody, Concerto in F was Gershwin’s first attempt at orchestrating. Aware of his inexperience in this area, he hired an orchestra for the last phase of the compositional process in order to experiment with different orchestral sounds and textures.


Gershwin himself was the piano soloist at the world premiere of the concerto at Carnegie Hall New York in December 1925. The piece established Gershwin as one of the most important American composers of the 20^th century.

George Gershwin‘s Concerto in F: American Jazz cloaked in a classical garment

Originally entitled New York Concerto, Gershwin eventually changed the title to the more generic Concerto in F for piano and orchestra, reflecting his conscious desire to write absolute music, as opposed to the program music he had previously written. The piece is structured as a traditional concerto in three movements: slow – fast – slow.

Gershwin created his own American musical style with his Concerto, mixing jazz, Broadway songs, dance rhythms and late romantic harmonies. The syncopated Charleston rhythm is present in the first movement (Allegro alla breve), from which the solo piano emerges with the first theme. These two ideas are connected in the second movement (Adagio – Andante con moto) in the piano solo-cadenza. This movement is often described as a “Blues-Nocturne” because of its stylistic features. The third movement is heavily influenced by jazz, with Gershwin describing it as an “orgy of rhythms, starting violently and keeping to the same pace throughout.”

Many persons had thought that the Rhapsody was only a happy accident... I went out to show them that there was plenty more where that came from. I made up my mind to compose a piece of “absolute” music. The Rhapsody, as its title implied, was a blues impression. The Concerto would be unrelated to any program. – George Gershwin

A performance of Gershwin’s Concerto in F by the Schleswig-Holstein Festival Orchestra conducted by Christoph Eschenbach and soloist Tzimon Barto at the Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg will be given on 14 August.  Though this concert is now sold out, a public rehearsal of the program which includes Ravel’s La valse and Daphnis et Chloé, can be heard  in the ACO Thormannhalle Rendsburg on 13 August.

• George Gershwin - Profile


• Concerto in F - workdetails and score


• Concert in the Elbphilharmonie


• Public rehearsal

Nearly 80 years after its world premiere, Carl Orff’s opera fairy tale Der Mond (The Moon) is arriving in Taiwan for the first time.  A staged performance of the work will be presented by the Taipei Symphony Orchestra on August 4.


Orff, who wrote both music and libretto for this single act opera, was inspired by the Grimm brothers’ fairytale of the same title. His choice of a young boy as the narrator led him to describe the Der Mond as “kleines Welttheater” “small world theatre”.

The work delves into a universe split between heaven, earth and the underworld, all overseen by St Peter. The earth is split into two countries, each a mirror image of the other.

Carl Orff's Der Mond: a parable on the order of the cosmos

At the start of the opera, the moon enlightens one side of the earth. The other remains completely dark. One night, four boys from a village on the dark side discover the moon is tied to a tree.  Without hesitating, they steal it to enlighten their own village.

Years later, as each of them dies, a quarter of the moon is buried with them and sent to the underworld. Eventually, the moon becomes whole again and its light fills the underworld, waking up the dead who continue to live once again.

Alarmed by this chaos in the underworld, St Peter arrives to set things in order. Instead, he gets swept up in the underground revelry until he comes to his senses and takes the moon back to the sky where it shines over the whole world.

The music is modeled on themes from the Orff-Schulwerk (Music for Children) and in scenes in the underworld listeners will be reminded of “In Taberna” from Carmina Burana. The villagers have an array of lively dance music and popular song orchestrated for full romantic orchestra with a large percussion section.

I took this tale, which I found in the ‘Kinder- und Hausmärchen’ ‘Childrens’ and Home fairy tales’, collected and published by Wilhelm and Jakob Grimm, as a model for the piece. It is a thoughtful parable of the futility of people trying to destroy the world order, as well as a parable of the security that this order is meant to create for them. – Carl Orff

Performances of Der Mond continue with the Taipei Symphony Orchestra until 6 August 2017.  For European Carl Orff fans, The Munich Puppetry will present Carmina Burana with puppets on 12 August. Further performances of Carl Orff’s works can be found on his profile on our website.

• Carl Orff - profile


• Der Mond - workdetails und online score