< World Premiere > PAUL HINDEMITH : Concerto for Woodwinds, Harp, and Orchestra Sunday 15 May, 1949 McMillan Academy Theatre, Columbia University, New York CBS Symphony Orchestra, cond. Thor Johnson Schott Music Ltd., London, 1950 (ED 4604)

< World Premiere > BENNO AMMANN : Missa «Defensor Pacis» (for unaccompanied SSATBB div. choir) Thursday 15 May, 1947 St. Peter's Basilica, Vatican City Sistine Singers, cond. S. Exz Don Lorenzo Perosi Hug & Co. Musikverlage, 1954 (GH 9965) “A large scale choral work written by Benno Ammann for the celebration of the canonization of the Swiss hermit Niklaus von Flüe (1417-1487), and accordingly has the subtitle "in honorem S. Nicolai Helvetii Eremitae" (in honor of the Swiss saint and hermit Niklaus von Flüe).”

< World Premiere > ERNST PEPPING : Deutsche Choralmesse (for unaccompanied SSATBarB choir) Thursday 14 May, 1931 – Bremen, Germany Bremer Domchor, dir. Richard Liesche Schott Music GbmH & Co., 1930 (ED 3241)

Trump Has Made His First Round of Judicial Picks — and They’re Terrifying Elie Mystal The Nation Thursday 8 May, 2025 Donald Trump unleashed his first round of judicial nominees over the past week: four district court appointments and one appellate judge. Trump made 234 judicial appointments during his first term. He’ll now have the opportunity to make hundreds more, and we can be sure that the worst is yet to come. The district court appointments are all from Missouri, and they’ll serve as trial judges there. They’re all reliable Republicans, all litigators, and two of them have been working for the Republican Missouri attorney general. I’m sure they’ll do horrible things to the rights of anybody who winds up in their courtrooms who isn’t white, male, and straight. The fact that they’re practicing litigators, instead of law professors created in a Federalist Society lab experiment, is at least notable. Whether Trump continues down this track or falls back on standard-issue Leonard Leo acolytes is an issue that bears watching. The nominee who should really give pause to liberals—along with anyone who wishes the Democratic Party would fight harder for control of the courts—is Trump’s pick for the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals: Whitney Hermandorfer. If confirmed, she’ll replace Jane Branstetter Stranch, an Obama appointee who took senior status last year, pending confirmation of her successor. Joe Biden did indeed do that. He tapped Karla Campbell, one of Stranch’s former clerks. But the Senate, controlled then by Democrats, refused to confirm her. I have no idea why. Campbell, a white woman who worked for the Peace Corps and the Department of Interior in addition to her legal work, was as inoffensive a pick for a circuit judge as you could reasonably get. Republicans were playing hardball with all of Biden’s judicial nominees by the end, but there was no objective reason for the Democratically controlled Senate to capitulate to the minority party. But capitulate they did. Campbell’s nomination was scuttled as part of a gross “deal” engineered by Senate majority leader Charles Schumer in the lame-duck session after the election. Republicans agreed to drop their objections to a number of district court appointments while Democrats agreed to withdraw the four circuit court judges awaiting Senate confirmation. The deal allowed Joe Biden to say that he appointed 235 judges to the federal bench during his term, one more than Trump. To be clear, I would have taken four circuit judges over 12 trial judges any day, and that’s even while accepting the false premise that the majority party couldn’t have confirmed all 16 of the judges their Democratic president nominated. But my “deal” wouldn’t have given Biden the bigger number of total appointments. I can only assume that some Democrats think 235 appointments was a “victory” since some Democrats think this is all a freaking game and don’t know where power actually lies in the federal judicial system. Now, Hermandorfer is on the brink of filling the vacancy created by Republican obstruction and Democrat ineptitude. She should be easily confirmed by the Republican Senate. A Princeton grad who went on to law school at George Washington University, she’s a Federalist Society member who clerked for alleged attempted rapist Brett Kavanaugh (when he was on the DC Circuit) as well as Supreme Court Justices Samuel Alito and Amy Coney Barrett. It would be churlish for me to suggest that she’s anything but “well qualified.” But she will be an awful jurist by the standards of anyone who favors human rights. In recent years, she’s been working in the office of the Tennessee Attorney General, Jonathan Skrmetti. If that name sounds familiar to you, it should. Skrmetti is the named litigant in US v. Skrmetti, a case currently before the Supreme Court that revolves around Tennessee’s ban on gender-affirming care for minors. Skrmetti and the other bigots in the state are almost surely going to win that case when the decision comes down in a few weeks—and Hermandorfer will deserve much of the credit. As the “tip of the spear” (National Review’s words) for the Tennessee AG’s Strategic Litigation Unit, she has her hands all over the kinds of cases that make for big headlines across the culture-war universe—including US v. Skrmetti. She has also been in charge of defending Tennessee’s near-total ban on abortions. All of this has at least some Republicans salivating. “This a great pick and hopefully just the first of many comparable choices to come,” gushed Michael Fragoso—former chief counsel to Mitch McConnell—in National Review. Fragoso also thinks this “puts to rest” any idea of a rift between Trump and the Fed Soc crew. Again, I’m not so sure about that and will wait for more evidence. Hermandorfer has a long career ahead of her. She is now 37. To put that in perspective, when Obama elevated Jane Branstetter Stranch to the bench in 2010, she was already 57. I can hardly blame Stranch for taking senior status at the age of 72, but it highlights another failure of the Democrats’ approach to the courts: Historically speaking, Democrats nominate established professionals to the bench and then have to fight again for the seat every decade or so, Republicans nominate young people who can serve for almost half a century. A person searching for “good” news might point out that at least Hermandorfer’s appointment will not meaningfully shift the balance of power on the Sixth Circuit. The 16-member court is already controlled by Republicans, 9–7. Replacing one Democratic justice for a Republican one just deepens Republican control, 10–6. But I’d argue that it’s worse than it seems. The two oldest judges on the circuit are both Clinton appointees in their late 70s. They’ll have to hang on for at least another four years. The circuit also has three George W. Bush appointees who are getting up in years and will soon be eligible for senior status. It’s not out of the realm of possibility that Trump could nominate five judges, in addition to Hermandorfer, to the Sixth Circuit before his term is up. The Sixth Circuit oversees Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio, and Tennessee, by the way. We’re potentially looking at a court comprised, 12–4, of young, entrenched Republicans who control election laws in Michigan and Ohio. One day, Democrats will get it. It’ll be too late, and they’ll be passing notes to each other through the bars in their cell blocks about what it was like to live in a democracy, but eventually Democrats will realize that their refusal to fight for the courts is why they failed. ~

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Trump’s Newest Executive Order “Unleashes” the Cops—and Flirts With Martial Law Elie Mystal The Nation Wednesday 30 April, 2025 Holding police officers accountable when they commit crimes or violate the constitutional rights of those they’re allegedly here to “serve and protect” is one of the most difficult things to do in law. The police are protected by powerful, well-funded, and well-lawyered unions. They are protected by the judicial doctrine of qualified immunity, which prevents them from being personally sued for monetary damages when they damage or destroy property or lives. They’re protected by prosecutors and district attorneys who work alongside them and are often reluctant to charge them with crimes. And then, even when police officers are charged with crimes, they are often protected by sympathetic (white) juries who give the cops a pass when they brutalize or harass unarmed citizens. The entire system is designed to help cops get away with crime. Now, Donald Trump has issued an executive order that will make it even harder to hold cops accountable—and flirts blatantly with martial law. Named the dystopian “Strengthening and Unleashing America’s Law Enforcement to Pursue Criminals and Protect Innocent Citizens,” this new order purports to “unleash high-impact local police forces; protect and defend law enforcement officers wrongly accused and abused by State or local officials; and surge resources to officers in need.” The aggressive language in the order could be cribbed from any military police state in the annals of history, and that’s clearly the kind of polity that Trump would like to create and lead. The order instructs the secretary of defense to put down the bottle long enough to “determine how military and national security assets, training, non-lethal capabilities, and personnel can most effectively be utilized to prevent crime.” It also instructs the Department of Homeland Security to “advance the objectives of this order.” Careful readers will note that this sounds an awful lot like the prelude to martial law, a framework where national military assets are deployed in American cities to enforce the president’s priorities. That would, of course, be a violation of the Posse Comitatus Act, which prevents the president from using the American military as a domestic police force. But I think it’s well established that Trump has never watched The West Wing and doesn’t respect the rule of law in this country anyway. The most charitable view of this provision is that it will merely enable the federal government to make unused military equipment available to local law enforcement (then again, presidents already have the power to do this and it’s the reason why police often look like they’re heading into Fallujah every time a SWAT team shows up). The most dangerous read is that it will lead to army divisions patrolling our streets to quash dissent and, ultimately, “protect” Donald Trump’s reelection to a third term in office. If they weren’t dripping hypocrites, conservative “states’ rights” aficionados would be rending their garments over this unconstitutional nationalization of the local police power. But I think most people reading already know that the states’ rights people only care about the concept when it comes to owning slaves and forcing pregnant people to give birth against their will. Apparently, all Abraham Lincoln needed to say was that he was sending Union troops to the South to “fight crime,” and then they would have been welcomed with open arms by the Confederacy. I wonder why he didn’t think of that. Still, while the martial law concerns are significant, we are probably two or three unconstitutional executive orders away from that. The more immediate thrust of this order is to make it nearly impossible to hold cops accountable for crimes. Toward that end, it calls for officers to be indemnified by the federal government when they “unjustly incur expenses and liabilities for actions taken during the performance of their official duties to enforce the law.” This essentially extends the concept of qualified immunity to the criminal sphere. Now, even a cop who is held criminally liable can have their expenses paid for. Cops will also get free lawyers, and not the kind of overworked, underpaid, noble attorneys who work for legal aid. Trump has been bullying law firms to provide pro bono services for conservative causes, but he didn’t really define exactly what those causes were supposed to be. This executive order closes that loop: “This mechanism shall include the use of private-sector pro bono assistance for such law enforcement officers.” As if cops didn’t already have access to the lawyers provided to them by their labor unions, now apparently they can make Wall Street lawyers work on their behalf for free. No pro bono lawyers will be made available for the people the cops murder, beat up, or otherwise harass. The order also directs the Department of Justice to go after state and local officials who “willfully and unlawfully direct the obstruction of criminal law, including by directly and unlawfully prohibiting law enforcement officers from carrying out duties necessary for public safety and law enforcement.” I can’t say for sure what this provision means, given that it is already a crime to “obstruct justice,” but I bet Hannah Dugan knows what Trump is talking about. Dugan is the Milwaukee judge who was illegally arrested in her own courtroom for refusing to let ICE arrest a defendant in that very courtroom. I can only assume that we’ll see more of that because of this executive order. Finally, the EO instructs the attorney general to “review all ongoing Federal consent decrees, out-of-court agreements, and post-judgment orders to which a State or local law enforcement agency is a party and modify, rescind, or move to conclude such measures.” This is a provision straight out of Project 2025. It means that the Trump administration can and will remove any ongoing accountability or restrictions currently faced by police forces arising out of their prior bad behavior. I cannot help but understand this order through its potential impacts on my lived experience. Let’s say a cop pulls me over for driving-while-Black. After he hops out of his M1-Abrams tank, he uses a military grade stun-gun on me because I gave him the side-eye while searching for my vehicle registration. I “resist” by saying things such as “Ow!” or “What the hell!” and he proceeds to beat me to within an inch of my life. I’d want him to face criminal charges, but the prosecutor doesn’t want to take the risk. Even though I have a good case, they’re worried that if they press charges against the officer, they will face charges from the Department of Justice. Even if I can marshal considerable public pressure to get the prosecutor to file charges, the cop is now being defended, for free, by Brad Karp at Paul, Weiss or some other wealthy Biglaw attorney who has decided to be complicit with fascism. The trial proceeds, but let’s say I win (because corporate attorneys are not necessarily the best courtroom litigators). Even then, any damages I receive for being Tiananmen Square’d by the racist cop are covered by the government. The cop returns to the force soon after, because any accountability measure like a consent decree is also no longer available during the Trump administration. Like all of Trump’s executive orders, this one can be rescinded by the next president (if we are allowed to have one). But unlike some of the others, I don’t necessarily trust that a future Democratic president will go back and rescind this particular order. Democrats, at least in my lifetime, have been almost as deeply committed to brutal police practices as the Republicans. It would take a Democrat uniquely committed to criminal justice reform to go back in and take away the indemnification Trump has provided, and one can only imagine the stink the police unions will make if such a Democrat takes it away. During the campaign, Trump promised to give police officers immunity when they commit crimes. This executive order doesn’t do that, but it’s close enough. If you want to commit crimes in this country, the single best thing you can do for your criminal career is join the police. Trump is making it easier for police to get away with murder than ever before. Pretty soon, we might not even be able to distinguish between an American police force and a hostile occupying army. ~

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< World Premiere > GAVIN BRYARS : Psalm 141 (for unaccompanied SATB div. choir) Thursday 10 May, 2012 – All Saints Church, Penarth, UK Ars Nova Copenhagen, cond. Soren Kinch Handsen Schott Music Ltd. London, 2012 (ED 8843)

The U.S. Threat Looming Over Canada Stephen Marche The Atlantic Sunday 4 May, 2025 The idea of a war between Canada and the United States was inconceivable even a few months ago. Most Americans still don’t believe it’s a possibility, or simply haven’t noticed their president’s occupationist rhetoric, or can’t imagine a world in which a neighbor they have been at peace with for 150 years is suddenly an enemy. The very idea seems completely absurd. But Canada does not have the luxury of dismissing White House rhetoric as trolling. Canadians are imagining the unimaginable because they have to. Donald Trump’s pointless and malicious trade war has been, by his own account, a prelude to softening up Canada economically so that it can be appropriated as the 51st state. He has brought up his plans for incorporating Canada into the union with Prime Ministers Justin Trudeau and Mark Carney in private calls. The definitive end of the status quo came with the president’s casual comment that he would sell only deliberately downgraded F-47s to allies who purchased American military hardware, “because someday, maybe they’re not our allies.” From that point on, spending on equipment from the American military-industrial complex is a form of national suicide for any country in the free world. Canada could no longer comfortably sit within the American military sphere. In this stark moment, our nation has abruptly become an adversary of the most powerful country in the world. An American military threat is Canada’s worst nightmare. And Canada is unprepared precisely because it never considered the U.S. to be a potential threat. Trust made Canada vulnerable. For 60 years at least, both Conservative and Liberal governments have worked toward greater integration with the United States. Our country’s trade and security policies have been built on the premise of American sanity. That assumption, it turned out, was a mistake, hopefully not a fatal one. What would a continental conflict look like? Conventional war between the United States and Canada would be highly asymmetric, to say the least. The U.S. possesses an enormous military, comprising more than a million men and women under arms. Canada’s armed forces have 72,000 active members. Even worse, because of its deep-seated trust in the United States, Canada has built its forces around interoperability with U.S. forces, both for mutual continental protection, in binational projects such as the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), and for expeditionary forces such as the NATO mission to Afghanistan. This vulnerability does not mean that Canada would be there for the taking. “The U.S. military does not have the capacity to seize the country,” Scott Clancy, who served as a Colorado-based director of operations for NORAD, told me recently. Clancy served 37 years in the Royal Canadian Air Force and rose to the rank of major-general, and is intimately familiar with U.S. and Canadian military capabilities. “They would have to seize specific points. And the more they went into cities, the more it would become unmanageable from an American military point of view.” A continental war would, then, likely play out as an insurgent conflict in Canadian North America—and across the U.S. homeland, as well. “Let’s say they just hold the oil fields,” Clancy said, referring to a U.S. military occupation of Canadian oil reserves. “We’re not gonna roll over. And just because you attacked Alberta doesn’t mean that we’re not gonna strike at you in New York.” When I interviewed half a dozen experts on insurgent conflict for my book The Next Civil War, they all agreed that insurgent conflict was the least predictable and containable. Aisha Ahmad, a political-science professor at the University of Toronto, told me she does not think Canada’s reputation for gentleness would make it any less brutal as an opponent. “There’s no such thing as a warrior race,” said Ahmad, who is an expert on insurgency who has conducted field work in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, Lebanon, Mali, and Kenya. “Nobody is born an insurgent. Insurgency is what happens when someone kills your mom.” Just one soldier firing on a protester at a rally could be the spark. “All of these cute, latte-drinking TikToker students,” she said. “You look at them and you don’t see insurgents. But if you kill their moms, the Geneva Convention will not save you.” An occupying military force has three strategies for dealing with insurgent conflicts, none of which work. The first we could call “Groznification”: complete suppression, as the Russian army did in Chechnya at the turn of the century. Even the destruction of any means of resistance works only temporarily, as Colonel Gaddafi learned in Libya. “Hearts and minds,” the strategy applied in Iraq and Afghanistan, is also ineffective: If you build hospitals and then fill them with corpses, you just generate more insurgents. The third option is “decapitation,” but the systematic targeting of insurgent networks’ leaders—the idea behind the recent U.S. air strikes on the Houthis in Yemen—can easily be countered by detailed succession plans. And killing leadership has the unintended consequence of fragmenting the insurgency’s power structures, so that, if you ever do want to negotiate a peaceful settlement, you have dozens of mini-insurgencies to deal with, rather than a single contained force. The Canadian population would present particular challenges to any counterinsurgency strategy. “The Taliban would look lightweight,” Ahmad told me. “Canada has all of the attributes to have an even fiercer insurgency than the other places in the world where I study these problems.” Canada has the most educated population in the Group of Seven advanced industrial nations, which for a resistance movement would be “an asset in being able to identify pressure points, in being able to know what critical infrastructure is, in being able to develop technology and weapons that can be highly disruptive,” Ahmad said. “The scale and the capacity would be so much higher.” If only one in 100 Canadians took up arms against an American occupation, that force would be 10 times the estimated size of the Taliban at the outset of the Afghan War. And that force would consist of machine-learning specialists and petroleum engineers rather than shepherds and subsistence farmers. Canadians are already a well-armed population. More than a quarter of Canadian households own a gun. Consider, also, the Canadian landscape, which is vast beyond imagination and would provide ideal cover for insurgents. To give you an idea of that wilderness, Manitoba alone, one of 10 Canadian provinces, has some 90,000 unnamed lakes—even Canadians can’t keep track of their territory. In short, a continental conflict would be an unmitigated act of murderous folly. But murderous folly is not beyond the capacity of this new iteration of the United States. Already, the once-unthinkable idea of a war between Canada and the United States is growing less unthinkable. Before the 2024 U.S. election, 12 percent of Republicans viewed Canadians as “unfriendly” or “an enemy.” Now that number is 27 percent. Persuading the military to carry out an attack on Canada would probably be more difficult than convincing the population to support such an attack. The American officer class is trained, from the beginning, in “the duty not to follow orders,” and combat operations against Canada would involve fighting against fellow soldiers who shed blood beside them in Afghanistan and other theaters. Canadian and American soldiers have attended a great number of one another’s funerals. But turning the U.S. military is far from impossible. The Trump administration fired the commander of a Space Force base in Greenland the moment she expressed a position wavering from his annexationist aims there. The Naval Academy has already purged its library and canceled various speakers. At least some of the U.S. military’s leaders are on board with the ideological purification of their institutions. The conditions required for the occupation of Canada would also mean the end of American democracy. That, too, is not an impossible outcome—and a U.S. military adventure might even have both objectives in view. “The orchestration of a security crisis allows the incumbent government to declare emergency powers and bypass ordinary politics,” Ahmad said. “The Trump administration has already signaled that it wants a third term.” The 2028 election will be a watershed. If Trump decides to run again, a manufactured emergency over Canada would be a convenient excuse for overturning the constitutional barriers. Nobody wants to believe that a continental conflict could happen. Very few Ukrainians, right up until the point of Russia’s 2022 invasion, believed that their malignant neighbor would invade. Canadians cannot afford complacency. Reflecting on U.S.-Canadian relations in happier times, President John F. Kennedy said: “Geography has made us neighbors. History has made us friends. Economics has made us partners. And necessity has made us allies. Those whom nature hath so joined together, let no man put asunder.” Now, and for the foreseeable future, Trump has sundered us. And yet, even so, our fates remain entwined. The end of America would destroy Canada. The occupation of Canada would destroy America. ~

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< World Premiere > ALEXANDER SHCHETYNSKY : "Uzna Sebe" Symphony for Mixed Choir a cappella (2003) (for unaccompanied SSAATTBB choir & Soli) Friday 5 May, 2006 4th Festival of Contemporary Sacred Music, Uzhhorod, Ukraine Uzhhorod Chamber Choir Cantus, cond. Emil Sokacz Acta Publishers, 2007 Texts : Hryoruii Skovoroda, and other sources (in bookish Old Ukranian, Old Slavonic, Ancient Greek, and Latin)

... from Emilie (mmaowww @ Threads) 🇪🇺 If Europe was a group of friends… 🎭🍷 🇫🇷 France – The loud one. Always ready to argue, especially if it’s about food, culture, or politics. Will protest just to stay in shape. Drinks wine while arguing about politics and thinks everyone secretly wants to be French. Loves to flirt but gets mad if you flirt back. 🇩🇪 Germany – The responsible overachiever. Builds everything, fixes everything, balances everyone’s budget, and secretly judges France’s chaotic ways. Efficient, logical, but can party hard at the right time. Pretends not to care about drama but knows every detail. 🇬🇧 UK – The grumpy rebellious ex who still shows up at family events. Complains about the rules but somehow follows them anyway. Constantly reminding everyone of “the good old days”. Drinks tea aggressively. 🇮🇹 Italy – The chaotic artist. Either incredibly stylish and charming or an absolute disaster, no in-between. Can cook, can love. Talks with their hands, always late, but somehow gets away with everything because… look at them 🇪🇸 Spain – The party animal who lives between siesta and revolution. Can go from a peaceful nap to a full-blown protest in 0.2 seconds. Loud, passionate, and always up for tapas. 🇮🇪 Ireland – The fun but rebellious friend. Loves a good fight (especially with the UK), drinks like a champion, tells the best stories, and somehow makes suffering sound poetic. Sheep. 🇨🇭 Switzerland – The high-maintenance diva. Pretends to be neutral while watching everything. Rich, a bit mysterious, will lend you money with interest, and will always, always get the best deal. Also, chocolate. 🇳🇱 Netherlands – The chill but secretly savage one. Acts relaxed, but will destroy you in a debate. Bikes everywhere, judges your life choices while smoking a joint, and somehow manages to be both laid-back and incredibly successful. 🇸🇪 Sweden – The effortlessly cool and emotionally reserved friend. Designs beautiful things, pretends to have no emotions, but is secretly stressed 24/7. Drinks coffee like it’s a survival tool. Good thrillers. Viking. 🇧🇪 Belgium – The middle child with an identity crisis. Speaks multiple languages, but never knows which one to use. Loves beer, fries, and waffles more than life itself. Constantly overshadowed by France and Germany. 🇵🇱 Poland – The tough survivor. Has seen too much, been through too much. Trusts no one, and is always ready to fight if necessary. But will also feed you the best homemade food and tell you stories about how their grandma lived through everything. 🇩🇰 Denmark – The effortlessly successful one. Happy, rich, and somehow always ahead of everyone in everything. Pretends to be humble but is secretly flexing all the time. Viking. 🇫🇴 Faroe Islands – The Nordic outsider. Technically Danish, but not really. Isolated yet connected. Lives for the sea, the storms, and the sheep. Too small for most people to care, but fiercely proud of its identity. 🇬🇷 Greece – The ancient philosopher turned chaotic uncle. Invented democracy, now yells about how everyone else is ruining it. Simultaneously broke and convinced they invented civilization (which… they kinda did). Can party and lecture you at the same time, probably while smashing plates. 🇫🇮 Finland – The quiet one who will absolutely destroy you if needed. Loves the cold, the sauna, and being left alone. Might not talk much, but when they do, it’s either pure wisdom or pure savagery. 🇦🇹 Austria – The elegant yet secretly wild one. Acts classy, loves classical music, but will outdrink you in a ski resort. Thinks everyone should appreciate art more. Judges Germany for being too serious but follows their lead anyway. 🇳🇴 Norway – The rich but low-key friend. Spends half the year in darkness and still functions better than everyone. Owns more oil than they let on. Loves nature more than people. Viking. 🇭🇺 Hungary – The dramatic nationalist who thinks they should still have an empire. Loves history but selectively. Fiercely independent, even when it’s inconvenient. Complains about the EU but won’t leave. Deep down, just wants to be taken seriously—preferably while eating paprika-loaded food and reminding you they have the best thermal baths. 🇨🇿 Czech Republic – The beer-fueled philosopher. Pretends to be cynical but secretly cares. Loves deep debates over a pint, trusts beer more than politicians, and has perfected the art of not taking life too seriously. Will absolutely destroy you in sarcasm, then take you to the best underground bar you’ve ever seen. 🇨🇾 Cyprus – The friend with relationship drama. Technically one island, but in a complicated situation. Loves the beach, great at hospitality, but will never stop reminding you about their history. 🇷🇴 Romania – The mysterious friend with a hidden depth. Will tell you Dracula stories while casually hacking into a system and sipping țuică. Loves folklore, dark humor, and proving people wrong. Friendly but won’t trust you right away. Might curse you in a poetic way if you cross them. 🇧🇬 Bulgaria – The underrated gem. Quietly impressive, full of history, but tired of being confused with other Balkan countries. Nods for ‘no’ and shakes head for ‘yes’ just to mess with you. Has great beaches but won’t tell you about them. 🇸🇰 Slovakia – The underrated adventurer. Loves the mountains more than people, disappears into nature every weekend, and secretly thinks their cuisine is superior. Drinks stronger liquor than you and will out-hike you without breaking a sweat. Small but fierce, will fight you if you mix them up with their neighbor. 🇸🇮 Slovenia – The friend who has their life together. Beautiful, peaceful, loves nature, and somehow managed to avoid most European drama. Basically the ‘I moved to the countryside and found peace’ friend. 🇱🇹 Lithuania – The phoenix. Has been through it all and came back stronger. Tough, proud, and always ready to remind you that they existed before you even knew where they were on the map. 🇱🇺 Luxembourg – The ridiculously rich but low-profile one. Owns half of Europe’s banking system but acts like it’s no big deal. Will help you out… for a price. 🇪🇪 Estonia – The tech genius. Runs on WiFi and efficiency. Casually five years ahead of everyone in digital life, probably already working on an AI government. Prefers forests over people. Has the best electronic systems in Europe but won’t brag—just gives you a smug look when your country still uses paper for taxes. 🇲🇹 Malta – The Mediterranean wildcard. Small but fierce. Lives on the beach, has more history than most, and somehow manages to stay out of trouble. Knows everyone’s secrets but won’t spill—unless there’s wine involved. Balances being a laid-back islander with having a past full of knights and battles. 🇱🇻 Latvia – The quiet, artistic one. Loves music, nature, and avoiding conflict. Doesn’t trust people easily, but once they do, they’re fiercely loyal. Has spent centuries fighting off invaders and somehow still standing strong. Drinks like a warrior when the occasion calls for it. 🇷🇸 Serbia – The Balkan tough guy. Proud, stubborn, and ready to argue about history for hours. Loves a good ćevapi and rakija session, but don’t get them started on politics unless you’re ready for a debate that lasts all night. 🇭🇷 Croatia – The effortlessly cool one. Has stunning beaches, amazing food, and a strong personality. Low-key flexes their coastline every summer while pretending they don’t care. Secretly thinks they’re the real heart of the Balkans. 🇧🇦 Bosnia & Herzegovina – The survivor with a heart of gold. Has been through way too much, but still keeps going. Drinks coffee like a ritual, will feed you endlessly, and somehow makes you feel like family within minutes. 🇲🇪 Montenegro – The stylish but unpredictable one. A small country with big energy. Beautiful, dramatic, and never in a rush—except when driving like a maniac on a mountain road. 🇲🇰 North Macedonia – The underrated intellectual. Passionate about history, but constantly annoyed that people don’t know which Macedonia they’re talking about. Low-key loves a good identity crisis. 🇽🇰 Kosovo – The determined underdog. Young, energetic, and always ready to prove themselves. Fiercely independent, loves their traditions, and will never turn down a party.

< World Premiere > PAUL MORAVEC : Tempest Fantasy Friday 2 May, 2003 – The Morgan Library, New York City Trio Solisti – David Krakauer, Clarinet Winner of the 2004 Pulitzer Prize in Music Subito Music Publishing, 2003

< World Premiere > BOHUSLAV MARTINŮ : String Quartet No. 6 Thursday 1 May, 1947 – Harvard University The Walden String Quartet Edition Bärenreiter Praha, 2006 (H 7968) "String Quartet No. 6 differs considerably from Martinů's previous Quartets. It represents a major step on a road which the composer characterised as the development from “geometry to fantasy”; it is music dislodged from all certainty. Typical for the whole work, which is constructed around three movements, is his most constant use of the principle of progressive variation, uneasy harmonic development, pulsating yet fine rhythmical values, and inventive treatment of sound.” – Aleš Březina

< World Premiere > LEVENTE GYÖNGYÖSI : Magnificat (for unaccompanied SATB-SATB choir & soli) Tuesday 29 April, 1997 – Béla Bartók Conservatory, Budapest Choir of the Music Academy, cond. by Anna Mechler Kontrapunkt Music Ltd., Budapest, 2017 (K-0358)

< World Premiere > THEA MUSGRAVE : For the Time Being: Advent (for unaccompanied SSAATTBB choir) Monday 27 April, 1987 – St. John's Smith Square, London The BBC Singers, cond. John Poole Text: W. H. Auden (1907–1983) Novello & Company Ltd., London, 1991 (No. 070513) W. H. Auden published his long poem ‘For the Time Being’ in 1945. It is headed by a dedication to the poet’s mother who had died in 1941, and this quotation from Romans VI: “What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound? God forbid.” The poem is subtitled ‘A Christmas Oratorio’, and was written with the intention (never fulfilled) that it should be set to music by Auden’s regular collaborator at the time, Benjamin Britten. This work is a setting of the whole of the first section of the poem, ‘Advent’, in a continuous 25-minute span. It respects the division into separate numbers implied by the layout of the poem, and includes a Narrator speaking the text of Part II, accompanied by the chorus singing fragments from the previous section, and echoing the Narrator’s ironic prayer.

< World Premiere > ANDRZEJ PANUFNIK : Song to the Virgin (for SSATBB a cappella chorus or Soli) Sunday 26 April, 1964 – Victoria & Albert Museum, London Geraint Jones Singers, cond. Geraint Jones Boosey & Hawkes Ltd. (BH-3996)

< World Premiere > ELLIOTT CARTER : Symphonia "Sum fluxae pretium spei" Saturday 25 April, 1998 – Bridgewater Hall, Manchester, England BBC Symphony Orchestra, cond. Oliver Knussen, CBE Hendon Music / Boosey & Hawkes, 1998 A symphony beyond symphonies, this was an astoundingly and hearteningly massive achievement for a composer in his mid-eighties. The invention is consistently alert, the execution masterful and the development typically nimble. Thinking of the latin poem 'Bulla' ('The Bubble') by the English poet Richard Crashaw (c. 1613-1649), Carter adopts the viewpoint of a bubble floating above human affairs, observing, in the three movements, the games people play, the tragedies they endure, and the life that goes on fizzing through them. These movements may be performed separately and were separately commissioned: 'Partita' by the Chicago Symphony, 'Adagio tenebroso' by the BBC, and 'Allegro scorrevole' by the Cleveland Orchestra. But it is when they are played together that the full breadth of this extraordinary work stands revealed. — Paul Griffiths

< World Premiere > ROBERTO GERHARD : Concerto for Orchestra Sunday 25 April, 1965 – Boston, Massachusetts BBC Symphony Orchestra, cond. Antal Dorati Oxford University Press, London, 1965 “... Ensemble playing, the distinguishing feature of the concerto for orchestra, in fact here takes the place of the virtuoso soloist in the traditional concerto. As a result, one of the composer's tasks is to provide such varied instances of virtuoso team-work as will show up the quality of the Orchestra as an ensemble.” — Roberto Gerhard

< World Premiere > JULIAN ANDERSON : Four American Choruses (for unaccompanied SATB div. choir) Saturday 24 April, 2004 – The Concertgebouw, Amsterdam Netherlands Radio Choir, cond. Simon Halsey Faber Music, Ltd., 2008 Texts: Mary S. B. Dana, William O. Cushing, Victoria Stuart, and P. P. Bliss I. I'm a pilgrim:

STEVE REICH : Music for 18 Musicians Saturday 24 April, 1976 – Town Hall, New York City Steve Reich & Musicians Hendon Music / Boosey & Hawkes, 1976 (HPS 1239)

< World Premiere > ALEX FREEMAN : A Wilderness of Sea (for unaccompanied SSAATTBB choir) Saturday 23 April, 2016 – Helsinki, Finland Helsinki Chamber Choir, cond. Nils Schweckendiek Fennica Gehrman Oy, Helsinki, 2021 Texts : William Shakespeare (from 'Sonnet 64', 'The Tempest' , 'A Comedy of Errors')

< World Premiere > MATTHEW MARTIN : The Lamentations of Jeremiah (for unaccompanied SSATTB choir) Wednesday 20 April, 2016 The Tallis Scholars, cond. Peter Phillips Faber Music, Ltd., 2017