Classical:NEXT, the largest international network meeting in the classical music world, opens on 13 May with a concert organised by karsten witt musik management in Berlin's Pierre Boulez Saal.

The JACK Quartet will be touring Europe in May and June with premieres and first performances in various concert programmes at London's Wigmore Hall, Berlin's Pierre Boulez Saal, the Bergen International Festival and the Dublin International Chamber Music Festival.

Ulrike Mayer and Simon Bode will take part in the performance of Beehoven's 9th Symphony on 13 May - 200 years after the work's premiere - which opens the three-year Beethoven27 project by Jan Caeyers and his orchestra Le Concert Olympique in Antwerp's Elisabethzaal.

From 28 April, Alejo Pérez will conduct a new production staged by Calixto Bieito of Janáček's opera Káťa Kabanová at the Semperoper.

After a long and trusting co-operation as local management, we are now also representing Olli Mustonen internationally.

Simon Steen-Andersen's new opera Don Giovanni's Inferno was premiered at the Royal Danish Opera on 20 April and can be seen in Copenhagen until 9 May.

Ilya Gringolts premiered Chaya Czernowin's new violin concerto together with the Munich Chamber Orchestra under the direction of Bas Wiegers at the Prinzregententheater Munich on 18 April. The Swiss premier will follow on 29 May.

Light and Darkness is the title of a new album of works for saxophone by Toshio Hosokawa released by the Kairos label.

For a new recording with the Odense Symphony Orchestra and flautist Alberto Navarra, Holly Hyun Choe conducted works by Mozart, Reinecke and Nielsen.

Ming Tsao becomes Birge-Cary Professor of Music at the University at Buffalo, taking over the professorship once created for Morton Feldman.

Until 8 May, Ulrike Mayer can be seen in a breeches role at Theater Bremen - she received outstanding reviews for her role debut as Sesto in Mozart's opera La clemenza di Tito after the premiere at the end of March.

Together with the Mozarteum Orchestra, Lin Liao has recorded three works by Hans Werner Henze that are closely related to Mozart and Salzburg.

Role debut as Sieglinde: Sarah Wegener will perform Wagner's Walküre under the baton of Kent Nagano in six major European concert halls from March 2024. In the run-up, she talks about her path to the new role and other vocal milestones of recent years.

Johannes Klumpp will conduct Carl Maria von Weber's Freischütz from 17 March at the Hessisches Staatstheater Wiesbaden, where the romantic opera is staged in a new production by Clemens Bechtel.

From 16 March, Caroline Melzer can be seen at the Freiburg Theatre in an unusual new production of Verdi's opera Don Carlos, in which she makes her role debut as Elisabetta.

In June, Mariam Batsashvili will once again be a guest at the Klavier Festival Ruhr. In a very personal interview with festival director Katrin Zagrosek in the run-up to the festival, she spoke about what composers such as Johann Sebastian Bach and Franz Liszt mean to her.

"Don't touch" was what Carlotta Dalia heard as a child when it came to guitars. Luckily, she revolted against this order and now delights audiences with her playing on historical and modern guitars, even outside of sworn guitar circles.

At the memorial concert for Kaija Saariaho, who passed away last year, Anssi Karttunen performed the cello concerto Notes on Light with the Orchestre de Paris under Esa-Pekka Salonen on 15 February - the concert recording is available as a video on the Philharmonie de Paris website until August.

In 2026, the music world will celebrate Friedrich Cerha's 100th birthday. In view of this occasion, we would like to draw your attention to a selection of the most important works by the composer, who died in February 2023 - and to the new website friedrich-cerha.com.

With a record release concert on 15 February at the Roulette in New York, the JACK Quartet presented the first album with compositions by its violinist Austin Wulliman.

Outstanding reviews for the Armida Quartet's recording of works by Max Reger and Johanna Senfter.

"Impulsive and rich in contrast - simply fantastic": The second part of Antje Weithaas' recording of all of Beethoven's violin sonatas is just as enthusiastically received by critics as her debut in Berlin's Pierre Boulez Saal.

Olli Mustonen's recording of the two 3rd piano concertos by Rautavaara and Martinů with the Lahti Symphony Orchestra under Dalia Stasevska was honoured with the German Record Critics' Award.

Lukas Ligeti is the artistic director of the World New Music Days, which took place in Africa for the first time in its centenary year 2023 - a unique opportunity for creative exchange: both the African audience and the guests from all over the world heard music they had never come into contact with before.

Congratulations to Mahan Esfahani: His recording of 20th century Czech harpsichord concertos with the Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra under Alexander Liebreich was awarded an Opus Klassik.

World premiere of the year: Vito Žuraj's first full-length opera Blühen came to the stage in Frankfurt in early 2023 under the musical direction of Michael Wendeberg and has now been named premiere of the year by Opernwelt magazine. In our interview, Vito Žuraj talks about his collaboration with librettist Händl Klaus, director Brigitte Fassbaender and the Ensemble Modern.

In 1975, Les Percussions de Strasbourg premiered Karlheinz Stockhausen's scenic composition Musik im Bauch. At the Berlin festival Maerz Musik, the ensemble presented the work in a visually and musically impressive new production by Simon Steen-Andersen.

Trio Mediaeval's new album presents the music of the Old Hall Manuscript, a long-lost collection of English motets and masses of the Middle Ages, together with works composed especially for the trio.

Newborns as music critics: With Liszt's Liebestraum No. 2, Mariam Batsashvili starts a series of recordings of "baby-friendly" works from the piano repertoire.

Numerous obituaries, some of them very personal, pay tribute to the life and work of Friedrich Cerha, who died in February 2023.

On François-Frédéric Guy's first Chopin album Secret Garden, the pianist lets a cross-section of Chopin's works blossom on two CDs.

The GrauSchumacher Piano Duo inspires with their recording of Brigitta Muntendorf's Trilogy for two pianos and as performers in her Theater des Nachhalls (Theatre of Echo) included on Blue-ray.

The PluralEnsemble has recorded important works by Fabián Panisello for a recently released portrait CD.

In addition to having recorded all of György Ligeti's works for choir a cappella, the SWR Vokalensemble is offering workshops on the composer's work as part of a major school project and is also touring his music in Germany, Hungary, the Czech Republic, France and Italy in May and June.

Composers of various generations talk about their personal encounters with Friedrich Cerha’s monumental Spiegel cycle.

Congratulations to Daishin Kashimoto: his CD with chamber music by Nino Rota received a Diapason d'or award of the year!

On 2 February 2023, Samir Odeh-Tamimi's music theatre work Philoktet, based on the dramas by Sophocles, Heiner Müller and André Gide, was premiered at the Eclat Festival Stuttgart with the Neue Vocalsolisten and the Zafraan Ensemble.

In the first edition of our new kwmm podcast series "Encore," violinist Johanna Staemmler chats about the Armida Quartet's complete Mozart recordings while we listen to the interpretations together (in German).

Ming Tsao's Triode Variations, premiered in May by Ensemble Musikfabrik under Emilio Pomàrico, have now been released on CD; the Neue Vocalsolisten Stuttgart and the Kammerensemble Neue Musik Berlin have also recorded works by the composer for the album.

Composer and painter: Friedrich Cerha (1926-2023) was both. Karsten Witt on his encounters with the artist since the 1980s.

In May 2022, Ensemble Musikfabrik premiered Ming Tsao's Triode Variations in Cologne. We caught up with the composer during a visit to his Berlin flat in the run-up to the performance.

Friedrich Cerha died on the morning of February 14, just a few days before his 97th birthday. We mourn the loss of a great artist, one of the most important composers of our time and an ever-attentive, critical contemporary.

Congratulations to the Armida Quartet: the final CD of the complete Mozart recordings is currently receiving critical acclaim, and the previously released Volume 4 even receives an Opus Klassik award.

"Outstanding through and through": On 26 August, Miriam Batsashvili's second album was released on the Warner Classics label, centred on Liszt's piano transcriptions from the opera, lied, and organ repertoire.

The Armida Quartet has put together a comprehensive Mozart package in recent years: a concert series, a complete recording, and even an app - all with surprising perspectives on the composer.

The new CD by the Gringolts Quartet received outstanding reviews and was awarded a Diapason d'or.

The Armida Quartet becomes musical ambassador of the climate initiative Orchestras of Change.

In the November issue of the journal MusikTexte, Ming Tsao outlines ways towards a materialistic musical expression.

Premio Abbiati del Disco: The recording of Ondřej Adámek's compositions Where are you? and Follow me with Magdalena Kožená, Isabelle Faust and the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra conducted by Peter Rundel and Sir Simon Rattle has received the prestigious Italian critics' award.

The Castalian String Quartet's debut CD, released at the end of April, has received rave reviews.

Originally recorded for a film, this masterful interpretation of Mahler's Wunderhorn Lieder with baritone Dietrich Henschel and the Bochumer Symphoniker under Steven Sloane has now been released on CD.

In the FAZ, Ilya Gringolts is portrayed as a musician with enormous stylistic range and unwavering integrity.

Maximilian Hornung becomes artistic director of the Traunstein Summer Concerts

Just before Bas Wiegers conducted his first concerts in front of a live audience in May, he sat down for an interview to reflect on the preceding Corona year.