New works by composer David Fennessy will be premiered in Scotland and Germany this year, alongside performances in London and Prague.

In February, Scottish Opera will mount the first production of Fennessy's second opera, Happy Story, as part of its Five:15 programme showcasing new chamber operas. Based on a short story by Peter Carey and adapted by the composer and director Nicholas Bone, Happy Story 'reads a line between the completely banal and the totally fantastic' in a domestic setting for two voices.

There will be seven performances—four at Òran Mór, Glasgow: on Friday 20 February (sold out), Saturday 21 (3.00pm and 7.30pm), Sunday 22 (3.00pm); and three at The Hub, Edinburgh: on Saturday 7 March (3.00pm and 7.30pm) and Sunday 8 (3.00pm).

In March, Fennessy will travel to the Pearl River Delta in China to research and develop a commission for Ensemble Modern. The project, co-funded by Siemens Arts Program and the Goethe Institute, involves 16 composers—including Heiner Goebbels, Benedict Mason and Unsuk Chin—responding to four 'megacities' (the other three being Istanbul, Dubai and Johannesburg). A concert of the resulting 20-minute-long work is scheduled for October in Frankfurt.

Saturday 21 March will also see a performance of This is how it feels (Another Bolero) by the Philharmonic Orchestra of South Bohemia, conducted by Stanislav Vavrinek, at the Dvorák Hall Rudolfinum in Prague during the 2009 Prague Premieres festival. First heard during the RTE Living Music Festival last year in Dublin, the work is 'modelled on Ravel's Bolero and is a "slow burner" characterised by a single crescendo that charts the journey from the gentlest touch on an open string to a harmonic through to a full-blooded big vibrato'. The work has also just been published by Universal Edition in Vienna.

Completed in Glasgow in 1999, Dead End was recorded by the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Gary Walker, on Friday 23 January as part of a programme of contemporary music. It will be broadcast on BBC Radio 3 at a later date.

For further details, see our calendar.

Posted: 26 January 2009