News

Leading pianist Víkingur Ólafsson gives the UK premiere of John Adams’s concerto After the Fall, following 17 international performances. Esa-Pekka Salonen conducts the work with the Philharmonia Orchestra on 25 February at the Royal Festival Hall in London.

This March, Grace-Evangeline Mason’s new work for orchestra, An Everywhere of Silver, premieres with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra and Jonathon Heyward.

In his new film opera, Theory of Flames, Michel van der Aa examines how conspiracy theories and disinformation can threaten our human lives. The stage premiere at Dutch National Opera, opening on 6 March, will be followed by future performances at Norwegian National Opera and the Bregenz Festival.

Julia Kerr (1898–1965) was not only the wife of Berlin's leading critic Alfred Kerr – she was also a successful composer. Her daughter Judith recounted the family's exile in her book When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit. Among their belongings was the unfinished manuscript of the Zeitoper Der Chronoplan, in which the Kerrs send the great Albert Einstein on a journey through time.

The world’s leading classical music publisher Boosey & Hawkes announces that Emma Kerr is promoted to Senior Vice President, heading up the Promotion teams in the London and New York offices.

In November, Gabriela Ortiz’s Revolución diamantina won Best Classical Contemporary Composition at the 2025 Latin GRAMMY® Awards. The Recording Academy also announced nominations for the 2026 GRAMMY Awards, with Gabriela Ortiz and Jeanine Tesori among the nominees.

John Adams’s music is featured in Luca Guadagnino’s new film After the Hunt. The soundtrack, released by Nonesuch Records, features selections from Adams’s Gnarly Buttons, The Death of Klinghoffer, and City Noir.

In January, Sokolovic’s opera CLOWN(S) premieres at the Opéra de Montréal. The new stage work draws inspiration from the worlds of Sand, Fellini, Chaplin, and Keaton to create a favola in musica told in seven scenes.

The coming Spring brings an extensive collection of new and recent works by Boosey & Hawkes and Sikorski composers, including world premieres by Michel van der Aa, Ondrej Adámek, Brett Dean, Olga Neuwirth and Matthias Pintscher.

In his new book Music’s Odyssey composer and writer Robin Holloway’s distils his reflections on the history of Western classical music, drawing on a lifetime of listening.

Christian Tetzlaff is soloist in Ondrej Adámek’s second violin concerto, Thin Ice, unveiled at the Festival Présences in Paris on 8 February. Further performances follow in Winterthur and Prague, and with the London Symphony Orchestra in a future season.

The monstrosity of power is laid bare in the new opera by composer Olga Neuwirth and writer Elfriede Jelinek. As well as seeing the curtain going up on Monster’s Paradise at the Hamburg State Opera, February also brings the world premiere in Munich of Neuwirth’s Zones of Blue, written for clarinettist Jörg Widmann and conducted by Simon Rattle.

The new opera by Matthias Pintscher, The Cold Heart, takes us deep into a mysterious forest landscape for this modern take on a classic German folk tale. Staged at the Berlin State Opera in January and the Opéra Comique in Paris in March, this is Pintscher’s first commission under his recent publishing contract with Boosey & Hawkes.

On 3 December Robinson Crusoe, one of Jacques Offenbach's most idiomatic works, takes the stage in a new production at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris using the acclaimed Offenbach Edition Keck. The high-calibre artistic team is led by director Laurent Pelly and conductor Marc Minkowski, two renowned Offenbach specialists.

Boosey & Hawkes marks the death of composer Jonathan Lloyd, a unique figure in the 1980s and ‘90s whose Puckish invention and often-anarchic collision of cultures belied a profound fascination with music’s temporal ambiguities.

Managing Director Janis Susskind OBE concludes her distinguished 46-year career at Boosey & Hawkes. Steven Lankenau becomes President, continuing the company’s legacy of championing the world’s leading composers and their music.

Mark-Anthony Turnage’s new operatic version of The Railway Children emerged from lockdown to take the stage successfully at Glyndebourne. Based on the 1906 book by Edith Nesbit, the drama is transformed in Rachael Hewer’s libretto to become a pacy cold war thriller.

Conducting concerts in December at leading venues in London, Birmingham and Manchester, Karl Jenkins celebrates the festive season. Programmes include music from his Christmas collections Stella natalis and Joy to the World together with other Jenkins favourites.

James MacMillan’s Christmas Oratorio, widely acclaimed as a summatory work in his output, is now available in a new vocal score published by Boosey & Hawkes. The composer conducts a performance of the full-evening work with BBC Symphony forces in the build up to Christmas at the Barbican in London on 19 December.

The New York City debut of Tesori’s acclaimed opera launches her 2025–2026 season as Lincoln Center’s Visionary Artist.