1992
Armin Köhler takes the place of Josef Häusler; increased incorporation of artistic forms between various arts and genres.
1993
Christof Bitter leaves. First thematic emphasis: "KlangRAUM / RAUMklang" ("SoundSPACE / SPACEsound") Increased incorporation of sound installations at locations in the city with a particular aura. World's first radiophone installation, "Fmo 99.5" by Martin Orlbrisch. Composers presented for the first time include Hanspeter Kyburz; Video Opera by Nam June Paik.
1994
Theme of the festival: "The Poetry of Abstraction. Music Beyond Language". Large-scale exhibition "musica mechanica," out of which a worldwide initiative of sound artists develops. Composers presented for the first time include Dror Feiler.
1995
Theme of the festival: "Music and Language" In Bill Fontana's "Returning Landscapes", the first worldwide satellite-based transmission of sound files in real time. Composers presented for the first time at the festival include Antoine Beuger, Olga Neuwirth and Julio Estrada. Other cultures are represented for the first time with a Japanese Gagaku ensemble.
1996
"The orchestra is dead – long live the orchestra"
March 1996
The management of Südwestfunk informs the co-organizers that it must reduce its financial involvement by 50% from 1998 onwards; it aims to present the festival biennially. An unparalleled wave of international protest forces a new financing concept: in addition to Südwestfunk Baden-Baden, the state of Baden-Württemberg and the city of Donaueschingen, new financial backers are found: the KULTUR-STIFTUNG (Cultural Foundation) of the Deutsche Bank and the Federal Ministry of the Interior.
18 October 1996
Gala event "75 Years of the Donaueschinger Musiktage" in the Donauhalle A. Speakers: Bernhard Everke, Mayor of Donaueschingen, Erwin Teufel, Minister-President of the State of Baden-Württemberg, Friedrich Bohl, Head of the Federal Chancellery, Horst Fischer, President of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde, Helmut Lachenmann, Peter Voss, Director of Südwestfunk Baden-Baden, August Everding, Director of the Bavarian State Theater. Festival theme: "The orchestra is dead - long live the orchestra."
1997
Festival theme: "Live Electronics". First performances in Donaueschingen: Peter Ablinger, Diego Minciacchi, Bendedict Mason, Silvia Fómina and Frederic Rzewski. Composers Pierre Boulez, György Ligeti and Mauricio Kagel, who "grew up" with Donaueschingen in the 1950s, return to the festival for the first time. First Internet café with worldwide live discussions on the Internet. A special project for children for the second time since 1996; outstanding sound installation "Empty Vessels" by Alvin Lucier.
1998
Theme of the festival: "The Principle of Concertizing". Acclaimed concert with the Arditti Quartet, which has to be repeated three times; continuation of the inclusion of new media.
1999
Composers presented for the first time: Zoro Babel, Daniel Ott, Peter Eötvös and Misato Mochizuki. Bolivian ensemble with native instruments. Returning to Donaueschingen after decades, one of the "old masters" of the avant-garde, Karlheinz Stockhausen. Sylvain Cambreling appears for the first time in Donaueschingen as the new chief conductor of the SWR Sinfonieorchester Baden-Baden and Freiburg.
2000
The festival has been supported for 50 years by Südwestfunk, now Südwestrundfunk (Southwest Broadcasting), on this basis, its longest continuous period of existence. During this time, around 400 works have been commissioned by SWR for the festival.
2001
Outstanding concert by the Hilversum Radio Chamber Orchestra conducted by Peter Eötvös. Composers presented for the first time in Donaueschingen include Jörg Widmann, Wolfgang Mitterer and Liza Lim. Systematic expansion of activities in the area of sound installation in the direction of "concert installation", for example, in the F.F. Library; first emphasis on video art.
2002
Theme of the festival: "Music and Voice"; excellent concerts with the SWR Experimental Studio of the Heinrich Strobel Foundation of SWR and the SWR Sinfonieorchester Baden-Baden und Freiburg. Composers presented in Donaueschingen for the first time include Bernhard Lang, Jennifer Walshe and Karin Rehnqvist. Incorporation of the "Pisces Collection" in the festival programme.
2003
Theme of the festival: "Background and Occurrence. InVersions". Experimentation with a new form of musical presentation combining concert and installation in "Music for Dogs". The Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France is heard in Donaueschingen for the third time, after appearances in 1992 and 1996.
2004
World premiere of "Licht – Bilder", the final portion of Karlheinz Stockhausen's LIGHT cycle, conducted by the composer. The large-scale concert sound sculpture "felt/ebb/thus/brink/here/array/telling" by Benedict Mason, performed by Ensemble Modern, is also critically acclaimed. The festival's diverse spatial concepts and new forms of musical presentation including concert, installation and performance are continued under the theme "Far – Near". Heard for the first time in Donaueschingen: Paul Usher, Rebecca Saunders and a Balinese ensemble with music from their homeland. The festival is sponsored for the first time by the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation.
2005
With "Fama", Beat Furrer and Christoph Marthaler create a new form of opera in which a modular box that surrounds the audience is both a central part of the staging and an acoustic design element. Another outstanding event is the concert with the Hilversum Radio Chamber Orchestra with works by Valerio Sannicandro, Samir Odeh-Tamimi, Lars Petter Hagen and Dai Fujikura. Klaus Ospald is the first recipient of the composition prize of the SWR Sinfonieorchester Baden-Baden and Freiburg.
2006
The festival is supported for the first time by the Excellence Initiative of the German Federal Cultural Foundation and has since been one of the eight "beacons" of German cultural funding. Alvin Curran's "Oh Brass on the Grass Alas", premiered by 350 amateur brass musicians, is one of the most moving outdoor spatial sound projects. "Hyperion", a concerto for light and orchestra by Georg Friedrich Haas / rosalie, the world's first orchestral installation in which a light installation of 3000 light-emitting diodes by rosalie spanning the concert space fulfils the dual function of pulse generator for the musicians and independent aesthetic medium, attracts special attention. The concerts by the Arditti Quartet and the Schönberg Ensemble Amsterdam, in which works by Mauricio Kagel, Wolfgang Rihm, Alberto Posadas, Julio Estrada and Ole-Henrik Moe are premiered, receive critical acclaim.
2007
The festival continues its tradition as the leading orchestra festival of contemporary music with outstanding orchestral works by Mark Andre, Enno Poppe, Hans Zender, Helmut Oehring and Klaus Huber. In a sensational multimedia concert with ensemble recherche and SWR Experimentalstudio, composers such as François Sarhan, Simon Steen-Andersen, Michael Pelzel and Francesco Filidei are rediscovered. Also heard in Donaueschingen for the first time: Hans Thomalla and James Saunders.
2008
Pierre Boulez returns to the podium in Donaueschingen, 50 years after his conducting career began here. A new concert form that operates on the principle of "double premieres" is established: the "ensembliade". The three leading ensembles for new music today, the Ensemble Intercontemporain, Ensemble Modern and Klangforum Wien, repeat new works by Arnulf Herrmann, Bernhard Gander and Aureliano Cattaneo in a five-hour concert event. In his "Five Difficulties in Writing the Truth", Dror Feiler presents a new form of political music that is articulated in different forms of presentation and media (including a garbage truck parade through urban space). A new discovery for Europe: Ben Johnston, who also receives the composition prize of the SWR Sinfonieorchester.
2009
The focus of this year’s festival is the symphony orchestra as an institution. Simultaneous world premieres by the SWR Sinfonieorchester Baden-Baden und Freiburg of the expansive, four-hour concert environment "doppelt bejaht" (double affirmed) by Mathias Spahlinger and the installation opera "Batsheba". "Eat The History!" by Manos Tsangaris, which extends over two days at various locations within the urban space of Donaueschingen – a logical continuation of projects that do not highlight the distinctive factors of performance art, i.e. concert and installation art, but seek to merge the environment and the concert type in concert installations or installation operas in all forms from performance to sound art. Heard for the first time in Donaueschingen: Franck Bedrossian and Raphael Cendo. The shell of the Stravinsky Hall is used as an installation venue for the first time.
2010
The expansion of the Stravinsky Hall and the redesign of the foyers and the artists' dressing rooms transform the Donauhallen complex into a modern festival centre. The string quartet becomes the focus with the "Quardittiade". A new type of concert is introduced which unites three string quartets from different generations and performance cultures – the Arditti Quartet, the JACK Quartet and the Quatuor Diotima – and continues the principle of double premieres. The works "limited approximations" for six grand pianos at twelve-tone intervals and orchestra by Georg Friedrich Haas, Marco Stroppas "Let me sing into your ear", Simon Steen-Andersen's "Double Up" and string quartets by Philippe Manoury, Brian Ferneyhough, Bernhard Lang and James Dillon enjoy particular acclaim.
2011
90 years of the Donaueschinger Musiktage. The new chief conductor of the SWR Sinfonieorchester Baden-Baden und Freiburg, François-Xavier Roth, is on the conductor's podium for the first time. Ensemble in Residence is musikFabrik, Cologne; Rebecca Saunders composes a work for space and ensemble specifically for the new Stravinsky Hall and this ensemble. The Neue Vocalsolisten and the SWR2 NOWJazz Session devote two concerts to the gender discussion: the programme consists exclusively of compositions by women. The festival's dominant work: the "Séraphin Symphony" by Wolfgang Rihm.
2012
The instrumentations of Arnold Schoenberg's Chamber Symphony and Edgard Varèse's "Octandre" have long been considered models for the composition of new music ensembles. The question of whether this was a necessary or makeshift instrumental reduction, whether it was due to the institutional situation or arose from the artistic will of the composers was taboo. That is no longer relevant today, however. During the past ten years, in particular, ensembles have emerged which explore a wide range of instrumentation. This year, the Donaueschinger Musiktage focus on different accents and interdependencies of music and machine in mixed media constellations using the example of new ensemble formations that rely on a mix consisting of simple electronic instruments, on the one hand, and a small but very specific group of acoustic instruments, on the other, in which electro-acoustic instruments such as electric guitar or electric violin take on a connecting function between the various media. Four young ensembles from Norway, Israel, Belgium and Germany are invited: asamisimasa, Nikel, Nadar and ascolta. The SWR Sinfonieorchester Baden-Baden und Freiburg, the SWR Vokalensemble Stuttgart and the SWR Experimentalstudio also play a central role in the current festival. The cosmos of different ensemble constellations includes the exploration of complex new relationships between technology and body, the perspective of live experience, which despite all the various current developments in the field of storage media has remained of central importance and has even gained in importance, and questions about the protagonists of the artistic process and the medial forms of transport and transformations of the individual media. Who determines what happens: man or machine? How interactive and communicative is the relationship between these two actors within the new ensemble constellations? Twenty-eight compositions by artists from 15 nations are premiered.
2013
This year, the Donaueschinger Musiktage revolve around large and small instrumental constellations of large-scale musical forms. These either refer to historical models such as Bruckner or Wagner, explore the simultaneity of different time dimensions, or derive their initial potential from the organic processes of nature. The programme includes world premieres by Georges Aperghis, Raphaël Cendo, Bernhard Lang, Philippe Manoury, Bruno Mantovani, Georg Nussbaumer, Enno Poppe, Alberto Posadas, Kirsten Reese and Walter Zimmermann. Renowned performers such as the SWR Sinfonieorchester Baden-Baden und Freiburg, SWR Vokalensemble Stuttgart, IRCAM, Klangforum Wien, Ensemble Modern, Ensemble musikFabrik, Trio recherche, François-Xavier Roth, Emilio Pomàrico, Pascal Rophé, Wolfgang Lischke and others are invited.
2014
The Donaueschinger Musiktage concentrate this year on composers who, in addition to their musical activities, also express themselves in other professions and benefit from the interrelationships between the disciplines. The focus of the festival is not only on hybrid or transdisciplinary artistic products, but also positions that rely on the autonomy of the particular artistic sector. In addition to the usual concerts, installations and performances, there are readings, film and video screenings as well as an accompanying exhibition. The programme includes compositions and other works of art by Peter Ablinger, Ondřej Adámek, Pascal Dusapin, Mazen Kerbaj, Johannes Kreidler, Chiyoko Szlavnics, Salvatore Sciarrino, Manos Tsangaris, Jennifer Walshe and others.
2015
Armin Köhler, who steered the fate of the Donaueschinger Musiktage for 22 years and passed away in November 2014, is succeeded as Artistic Director by Björn Gottstein.
2016
The human voice appears again and again this year. Together with the soprano Juliet Fraser, Klangforum Wien presents Rebecca Saunders' "Skin", conducted by Titus Engel. The world premiere of Joanna Bailie's "Music from Public Places" with the SWR Vocal Ensemble and the Améi Quartet takes place in the Christ Church. There is also a vocal part in Klaus Schedl's "Blutrausch" for orchestra and electronics – performed by Moritz Eggert. Several voices are heard in "Good Morning, Deutschland!" – a radio project by Hannes Seidl with refugees in Donaueschingen. Other world premieres include works by James Dillon, Bernhard Gander, Patricia Alessandrini, Georg Friedrich Haas and Franck Bedrossian.
2017
Two concerts with a performative focus stand out at this year's Donaueschinger Musiktage the Belgian Ictus Ensemble goes to a container in an adjoining hall for Martin Schüttler's self-reflective piece "My mother was a piano teacher" – to be followed by the audience as a live video transmission. In a concert staged by Laurent Chétouane, the Berlin ensemble Kaleidoskop moves from a truck through the entire hall and auditorium. Commissioned works by Dmitri Kourliandski, Sebastian Claren and Chyoko Szlavnics are premiered. Alexander Schubert transforms the stage set into a thunderstorm of strobe lights, digital noise and musicians acting like machines with "Codec Error". New orchestral compositions are also on the programme, including works by Bernhard Lang, Andreas Dohmen, Bunita Marcus, Chaya Czernowin and Thomas Meadowcroft.
2018
Robots, media archaeology, filter bubbles and public violence play a key role this year. At the opening concert, the Orchestra and Vocal Ensemble of the SWR and the Paris research institute IRCAM present four world premieres that deal with the orchestra as a complex social structure – works by Ivan Fedele, Malin Bång, Isabel Mundry and Marco Stroppa. Malin Bång is awarded the orchestra prize for "Splinters of ebullient rebellion". In 21.10.18 by Georgian Koka Nikoladze, the members of Klangforum Wien sit at interactive music stands, which the composer controls like a DJ with specially developed software. Technological extensions also play a role in Brigitta Muntendorf's "Ballet for eleven musicians", which transforms the musicians of Ensemble Modern into actors in a theatrical scenario with live video and electronics. Other world premieres include works by Georges Aperghis, Enno Poppe and Benedict Mason, who sends the musicians of the SWR Symphonieorchester through the entire hall as a la ola wave.
2019
For the first time in the 100-year history of the Donaueschinger Musiktage, the SWR Big Band, SWR Symphonieorchester and SWR Vokalensemble of the SWR are on stage together. In Simon Steen-Andersen's "TRIO", the three ensembles are confronted with their historical predecessors in a virtuoso composite film made from SWR archive material. Christian Lillinger's improv ensemble project "Open Form for Society", which combines influences from jazz, pop and new music, is also popular with the audience. Sound art, in particular, moves in unusual spheres this year. Marko Ciciliani's project "Anna & Marie" transforms musicians into players in a 3D computer game environment, "Music for Hotel Bars" is presented in the Wyndham Garden Hotel and Kirsten Reese's installation "Neglou" takes place in a swimming pool – above and under water. Further world premieres include works by Matthew Shlomowitz, Eva Reiter, Gordon Kampe, Mark Andre, Nina Šenk, Johannes Boris Borowksi and Saed Haddad.
2020
In 2020, the Donaueschinger Musiktage take place exclusively as a radio festival for the first time. In view of the drastic increase in the number of corona cases in autumn, the event has to be cancelled, but with combined forces some of the ensembles can still realize their projects – for broadcast on SWR2 and online on the festival weekend. The SWR Symphonieorchester plays orchestral miniatures by Klaus Lang, Mica Levi, Cathy Milliken, Lula Romero, Oliver Schneller and Michael Wertmüller; the Cologne ensemble Musikfabrik performs new works by Carola Bauckholt, Gerald Barry and Peter Ablinger. In addition, the Ensemble MAM presents the project "On Being Human As Praxis" together with the vocal artist Elaine Mitchener. For this themed concert, five composers were invited to respond to texts by the Jamaican writer Sylvia Wynter.