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The 32nd edition of the Dresden Days of Contemporary Music presented some of the most internationally renowned composers and ensembles of contemporary music as well as important up-and-coming projects, provided insights into the vibrant regional independent music scene and projects and focal points of established institutions such as the Elblandphilharmonie Sachsen, Semperoper, Dresden University of Music, Staatsschauspiel Dresden, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen and Staatskapelle Dresden. Selected projects and artists were highlighted that are currently raising awareness of the power of listening together, but also of the fragility of artistic processes.

The festival will be opened by Ensemble Modern with an immersive concert archive installation by the young composer Anda Kryeziu and a portrait concert of the composer Kaija Saariaho (28.3.), whose opera “Innocence” can currently be experienced in a new production at the Semperoper. In cooperation with the Saxon Music Council and Ensemble Modern, the Landesjugendensemble Neueste Musik Sachsen, founded in 2021, is developing a program (30.3.). Other important projects for the next generation include the portrait concert by young saxophonist and performer Aina Font in cooperation with the Berlin Prize for Young Artists (30.03.), the opera project “Die weiße Rose” (12.4.) as a cooperation between the Dresden University of Music and the Staatsschauspiel Dresden and the concert project by MUSAIK in cooperation with the Staatskapelle Dresden (16.4.).

The Trickster Orchestra’s guest performance in residence promises to be an extraordinary experience with new compositions by George Lewis and Cymin Samawatie, among others (04.04.). In a concert performance, Elaine Mitchener, a first-generation Black British citizen, explores the legacy of Julius Eastman, the long-forgotten but perhaps most radical and exciting representative of minimal music (08.04.). Auditiv Vokal can be experienced with musical interventions in the archive of the avant-gardes (10.+13.4.). In addition to a world premiere by composer Wilfried Krätzschmar, born in Dresden in 1944, the Elbland Philharmonie Sachsen will present a cello concerto by composer Aida Shirazi, born in Tehran in 1987 and now living in New York, as well as a work by young American composer Lauren Siess in cooperation with Deutschlandfunk (11.4.).

At the ZENTRALWERK Dresden, old musical instruments met electronics and European baroque music met new compositions by Sokratis Sinopoulos, Keyvan and Bijan Chemirani and Yannis Kyriakides at the “Isles & Rivers” concert (15.04.). At the end of the festival, the Ensemble intercontemporain, founded in Paris in 1976, dedicated a very special concert to the composer and conductor Pierre Boulez for his 100th birthday at the Festspielhaus Hellerau (17.04.), while Ensemble Musikfabrik brought the visual worlds of the internationally renowned painter Gerhard Richter to life in his home city of Dresden in a mesmerizing film project with music by Rebecca Saunders and Steve Reich (18.04.). The two compositions, which were premiered in New York (Steve Reich) and Kyoto (Rebecca Saunders) in 2019, were performed together for the first time and for the first time in Dresden.

An important legacy of the composer, conductor and artistic director Udo Zimmermann, who died in 2021, is the “Dresdner Tage der zeitgenössischen Musik” (Dresden Days of Contemporary Music), which he founded in 1987. After the internationally renowned festival was successfully continued under new management from 2009 under the title “TONLAGEN – Dresdner Tage der zeitgenössischen Musik”, the original title “Dresdner Tage der zeitgenössischen Musik” (DTZM) will be used again for the first time from the 31st edition (19.04.-07.05.2023) for the festival, which is now held biennially.

As a prologue to the 31st edition of the festival, the German premiere of Karlheinz Stockhausen’s music theatre “Music in the belly” in Simon Steen-Andersen’s adaptation was presented on 19 January 2023, followed on 24 March by the opening performance of the installative project “opera – a future game” by Michael v. zur Mühlen in the HYBRID Box and the Festspielhaus in Hellerau. From 19. April, the festival begins with further highlights such as portrait concerts of the composers Olga Neuwirth with the Staatskapelle Dresden and Annesley Black with ensemble courage, a concert by the Elbland Philharmonie Sachsen with world premieres by Piyawat Louilarpprasert and Lothar Voigtländer, a new artwork by visual artist and composer Esmeralda Conde Ruiz in cooperation with Schaufler Lab@TU Dresden, a world premiere by Ole Hübner with Auditiv Vokal and a music theatre performance with the punk band Pisse at objekt klein a.

At the center of the 31st Dresden Contemporary Music Days is “Parasite Village”, a project by curator Elisabeth Erkelenz: a gathering of international artists such as Aida Shirazi, Yannis Kyriakides or Emre Dündar and ensembles such as Trickster Orchestra, Hezarfen Ensemble from Istanbul or Omnibus Ensemble from Tashkent. In cooperation with the Semper Opera and the Dresden University of Music, a symposium on the music theater of Aribert Reimann is planned, and another symposium will discuss the future of the international, experimental and independent scene of new music theater. As part of the DTZM Archive Project, which will be developed in cooperation with the Darmstadt Summer Courses and Ensemble Modern, among others, a classic of New Music can be experienced again in HELLERAU: Music for 18 Musicians by Steve Reich.

TThe 30th edition of TONLAGEN / DTzM took place in several parts due to COVID-19: the first period presented numerous new productions and positions with artists such as Julian Charrière, Carsten Nicolai, Josh Speer & John Moran, Robert Lippok & Maryvonne Riedelsheimer, Chaya Czernowin, Olga Neuwirth & Robyn Schulkowsky and many others as well as installative works, keynotes and lectures, mainly online from April 11 to May 2, 2021.

In cooperation with the Staatskapelle Dresden for each of the 22 days of the festival, “An Invitation to Disappear” by Julian Charrière was set up as a filmed installative rave performance. A central focus of the first part of the festival was on new music theater in cooperation with the Munich Biennale, ZKM | Karlsruhe, Semperoper and the Dresden Universities of Music and Fine Arts. In the symposium “Musik Theater Positionen” in cooperation with “Theater der Zeit” and “Positionen”, Manos Tsangaris, Susanne Kennedy, Christine Fischer, Iñigo Giner Miranda, Juliana Hodkinson, Lea Letzel and Wen Chin Fu, among others, discussed current topics, positions and projects.

The festival's deliberately regional and historical perspective is reflected in parts of the programme: in cooperation with the Saxon Academy of Arts, the Saxon State Library and the Dresden City Archive, among others, valuable visual and audio documents from the former Dresden Centre for Contemporary Music will be researched, digitized and thus made accessible over the next few years. Numerous local ensembles are also represented in the program, including AuditivVokal, Sächsische Staatskapelle, Elbland Philharmonie, Ensemble Avantgarde, Contemporary Insights, El Perro Andaluz and ensemble courage. In the first part, Frieder Zimmermann presented a new project on Dresden-Prohlis, the place of his childhood. In a podcast, musicologist Jakob Auenmüller discussed various perspectives on the reappraisal of East German art in the post-reunification period. A symposium curated by Elisa Erkelenz debated diversity, categories and justice in (contemporary) music. Guests included Max Czollek, Kübra Gümüşay, Jessie Cox, Margareta Ferek-Petric, Steven Walter, Annekatrin Klepsch, Gregor Hotz, Lena Krause and Katja Lucker. Robert Lippok and Maryvonne Riedelsheimer concluded the first part of the festival in a live streaming with a speculative musical study in HELLERAU.

After a second part in November 2021 with such diverse and exciting projects as the performance of the Ø Trilogy by Trond Reinholdtsen, Mariana Sadovska, Golnar Shahyar, Helmut Oehring, Anna Korsun or the Trickster Orchestra, a third and final part followed in February 2022 with a musical premiere by the punk band PISSE, a portrait concert by Mirela Ivicevic with the Blackpage Orchestra, among others.