News

Following its premiere this month in Pittsburgh, Lera Auerbach’s new orchestral work Frozen Dreams receives its first European performances with the Vienna Symphony Orchestra and Manfred Honeck on 21 and 22 June.

The new Turning Points brochure examines 20th century composers whose lives and musical careers were ended by murder or damaged by exile, banishment or suppression.

The Hamburg State Opera presented in May the premiere of Unsuk Chin’s second opera, Dark Side of the Moon, in which the worlds of physics and psychoanalysis collide.

From Dust, the virtual reality opera by Michel van der Aa, has won the Immersive Competition at the 78th Festival de Cannes. Premiered in Rotterdam in December, the opera is presented at the Holland Festival between 13 and 29 June.

Sean Shepherd’s Latticework premieres this summer with violinist Leila Josefowicz and cellist Paul Watkins.

A compiled list of 2025 summer festival highlights around the United States.

May brings the final publications in the newly revised and corrected edition of all 15 Shostakovich symphonies, bearing fruit from the merging of publishers Boosey & Hawkes and Sikorski. The four scores, released to complete the set, range from experimental early Soviet symphonies to Shostakovich’s late, great song-symphony exploring themes of mortality.

La Biennale di Venezia has awarded Meredith Monk the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement of Biennale Musica 2025.

In its 25th anniversary year, The Armed Man: A Mass for Peace has reached the highest ever position for a work by a living composer in the Classic FM Hall of Fame; its arrival in at number two marks it as Britian’s favourite piece of contemporary classical music for the third year in a row.

Sokolovic’s You Can Die Properly Now receives its world premiere with soprano Emma Pennel and the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal in May.

Anne Akiko Meyers premieres Eric Whitacre’s The Pacific Has No Memory this spring, including a performance at Carnegie Hall on May 17.

Lera Auerbach’s new orchestral work Frozen Dreams receives its world premiere with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra and Manfred Honeck in June.

Composer Sofia Gubaidulina died on 13 March, aged 93, prompting obituaries, tributes and homages to the great Russian composer.

Benjamin Britten’s pacifist masterpiece continues to offer a powerful reflection on the horrors of war with notable performances in Tel Aviv, Kyiv and Hiroshima. Coming months mark 80 years since the end of World War II and 2026 is the 50th anniversary of Britten’s death.

Composer Grace-Evangeline Mason returns to the woodland glades for her new song cycle The Hart, following the success of her orchestral work The Imagined Forest. Ryan Wigglesworth conducts the premiere on 5 June with soprano Sophie Bevan and the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra.

Boosey & Hawkes | Sikorski continues its series of web videos with conductor Marin Alsop discussing the music of Dmitri Shostakovich in his 50th anniversary year.

The 75th birthday of Bill Whelan is marked in May and the composer discusses his classic Riverdance, touring internationally in its 30th anniversary year. The double celebrations also see publication releases and concert performances, including the premiere of a new Concerto for Orchestra.

The virtual reality opera From Dust by Michel van der Aa, premiered in Rotterdam last December, has been selected for the Immersive Competition at the Cannes Film Festival 2025 and is also presented at the Holland Festival in June.

The Hamburg State Opera presents the world premiere of Unsuk Chin’s new opera Dark Side of the Moon on 18 May. Kent Nagano is on the rostrum for the five performances and the staging is by the theatre collective Dead Centre.

Nonesuch Record’s newly released Steve Reich Collected Works box set spans 60 years of Reich’s music, from early tape works to first recordings of recently premiered scores including Jacob's Ladder and Traveler's Prayer.