The Orchestra della Toscana, conducted by Francesco Lanzillotta, will perform the world premiere of Francesco Antonioni’s Nostro mare, five short scenes for small orchestra, on 24 September. The performance will take place at the Teatro Verdi in Florence as part of the fourth edition of the Play It! Festival.

The world premiere of Partita, Silvia Colasanti’s new composition for flute and strings, will be performed on July 18 at the Emilia Romagna Festival in Bologna. The soloist Massimo Mercelli and I Solisti Aquilani will be conducted by Michelangelo Galeati.

On our blog, our contemporary composers present their favorite work from our catalogs. This time François Meïmoun introduces Pierre Boulez’s Sonate n°1.

Jean-Frédéric Neuburger performs the world premiere of his newest trio together with Julian Steckel (cello) and Nicolas Dautricourt (violin) in Evian-les-bains on July 10, 2015.

Samy Moussa’s newest compositions will be premiered at two of Europe’s most prestigious festivals: The Sick Rose for voice and piano will be premiered in Aix-en-Provence on July 10, and later in the summer Julien Leroy will lead the Lucerne Festival Academy Orchestra in the world premiere of Crimson at the Lucerne Festival, on August 23. Learn more on our blog.

Laurent Petitgirard leads the Oldenburgische Staatsorchester in the world premiere of his new orchestral work called États d’âme on July 12, 2015.

Two new works by Philippe Hersant have their premieres this summer. On July 3, Alice Ader and Jonas Vitaud performed Hurlevent for 2 pianos at Festival des forêts in France. Another work for 2 pianos called Onze haïkus will be performed in a new version on July 18 in Cordes-sur-Ciel by Nicolas Kruger and Mara Dobresco.

The newest orchestra work called Clair-Obscur by Franco-Lebanese composer Bechara El-Khoury will be premiered by the Lebanese Philharmonic Orchestra on July 31, 2015 in Helipolis (Egypt).

The critical edition of Gioachino Rossini’s La gazzetta, a comic opera in 2 acts on a libretto by Giuseppe Palomba, goes on stage this summer at the Rossini Opera Festival in Pesaro (11, 14, 17 and 20 August). The Orchestra and Choir of the Teatro Comunale in Bologna will be conducted by Enrique Mazzola and directed by Marco Carniti. Performed for the first time in 2001 at the ROF and then revived there in 2005, Stefano Scipioni and Philip Gossett’s critical edition returns to the Rossini Festival after being performed in cities like Barcelona, Liege, London and Boston. We asked Enrique Mazzola to talk to us about this opera and his relationship with the world of Rossini.

In the spring of 2011, Susanna Mälkki, undertook the daunting task of taking up the baton at the Teatro alla Scala to conduct the world premiere of Luca Francesconi’s Quartett, an opera in 13 scenes, based on the play of the same name by Heiner Müller, drawn from Laclos’s Les liaisons dangereuses. Driven by a keen interest in the music of today, she spoke to us on a sunny afternoon in Chicago about Quartett and the music of Luca Francesconi.