To celebrate his 60^th birthday this year, Pascal Dusapin gave us a triumphant opera Penthesilea, premiered in March 2015 at the Brussels Théâtre de la Monnaie, under the baton of Franck Ollu, with staging by Pierre Audi. This fall the co-commissioner, Opéra du Rhin will present the French premiere in Strasbourg on September 26, 2015.

In this new interview, Bernard Fournier presents Arthur Honegger’s Quatuor à cordes n°1 to us. Despite being a part of Groupe des Six, Arthur Honegger is indisputably a traditionally Germanic composer, who distances himself from the French taste for entertainment and lighter music.

Philippe Hersant announces a new large-scale work, written for the same orchestration as the Messe à quatre chœurs by Marc-Antoine Charpentier, and for the same spatial arrangement.

A new bilingual edition of one of the most emblematic works by Iannis Xenaki is going to be released. It is a new publication which is seen from a practical angle as much as a musicological review. We have called in Michel Tranchant who, under the supervision of the composer, recorded the work with Groupe Vocal de France.

Eric Tanguy has three important premieres coming up in the next few weeks: the world premieres of Cercle (for soprano and piano) and Nouvelle Etude (for piano) as well as the the first British performance of In a dream, a composition for violin and piano.

In this second interview of our series dedicated to the “French Touch” in orchestral music, the conductor Stéphane Denève speaks to Nicolas Southon about his relationship with French music as a conductor, which according to him, is overall characterised by its visual aspect, its colours and the sonic space it creates.

Composer Alberto Posadas continues his work with visual art, in a new piece entitled Tres pinturas imaginarias, which will be premiered on June 20 at the Centre Georges Pompidou (Paris) by Ensemble Court-Circuit during the festival Manifeste (Ircam).

After the resounding success of Das geopferte Leben, premiered only just one year ago at the Biennale de Munich, Hèctor Parra announces a new opera, which will be premiered at Schwetzinger Festspiele on 22nd May, with Radio-Sinfonieorchester Stuttgart des SWR, under the direction of Peter Rundel, with staging by Calixto Bieito.