On December 19, the French premiere of La bella dormente nel bosco, an opera by Ottorino Respighi (1879-1936), will be performed at the Théatre Municipal in Colmar.

As part of the commemorations for the 100th anniversary of the outbreak of World War I, the Orchestre National de Belgique and the music department of the Palais des Beaux-Arts have commissioned Matteo Franceschini to write A memoria d’eco. The world premiere will be performed on 5 December 2014 in Brussels under the direction of Dima Slobodeniouk.

From our Repertoire is a blog category featuring knowledgeable commentary on works from our diverse catalogues. We will introduce you on a regular basis to not only the best-known compositions but also to niche works that we think deserve a little more attention.

This time: Gérard Grisey’s Les Espaces Acoustiques.

Conductor and composer Laurent Petitgirard will conduct the premiere his new orchestral piece, Solitaire, with the Orchestra Colonne in his last concert at Salle Pleyel on 14th December.

The Portuguese premiere of Azio Corghi’s cantata for choir and orchestra De paz e de guerra will be performed in Lisbon on 15 November by the Orquesta Sinfonia Portuguesa and the Coro do Teatro Nacional de São Carlos under the direction of João Paulo Santos.

On December 11, New Music Concerts will present the Canadian premieres of two pieces by guest composer Marco Stroppa at the Music Gallery in Toronto. Conductor Robert Aitken will lead the ensemble in From Needle’s Eye for trombone, double wind quintet and percussion, with trombonist Benny Slutchin, and …of Silence for saxophone and chamber electronics, with saxophonist Wallace Halladay.

On December 8, the Paris Mozart Orchestra, under the direction of Claire Gibault, will perform the French premiere of Silvia Colasanti’s ORFEO. Flebile queritur lyra at the Lycée René Cassin in Arpajon as part of the orchestra’s social and education programme. The project consists of a tour of 16 concerts in the high schools of Paris’s banlieue through April 2015.

A few months ago, a previously unpublished mélodie for voice and piano, Seguidille, was released as part of the collection Œuvres Complètes de Claude Debussy under the direction of Marie Rolf. The mélodie from 1882, based on a poem by Théophile Gautier, is the composer’s longest.

One of the first anti-war films in history, Maudite soit la guerre (War is Hell) was made in 1914 shortly before the First World War. Now Olga Neuwirth has composed music for the silent movie. The Ensemble 2e2m performs the world premiere in conjunction with the film in Paris on November 10 and then takes the project on tour to France, Belgium, Germany and Austria. “You always need to remember the past! That is the only way that we could learn something”, says Olga Neuwirth in our interview.

Philippe Manoury's Trauermärsche, a short piece for chamber orchestra, had its world premiere at the Wittener Tage für neue Kammermusik 2014 when it was performed by the WDR Sinfonieorchester Köln. In this video interview Philippe Manoury explains the challenges of writing this piece together with another one, Le Temps, mode d'emploi – two pieces that are closely linked to each other, particularly regarding the interaction of different temporalities.