For the first time in my career, an orchestra — the Essener Philharmoniker — has refused to perform one of my works.

I am the portrait composer of the Festival NOW! in Essen, Germany. The festival commissioned me to write a new concerto for violin and orchestra. Two years ago, during an initial meeting with the orchestra’s management, I asked whether I could also use unconventional instruments as part of the orchestration. This has always been a fundamental element of my compositional practice. Like many composers, I have been extending musical possibilities with nonstandard objects for over twenty years — not as a gesture of being “contemporary,” but because they are integral to how I imagine sound. If a sound cannot be produced with traditional instruments, I look for the materials that can produce it.

At that meeting, I was initially informed that the use of objects would not be allowed. I told them that this would be like programming my name without my music. After that, they reassured me I could do whatever I needed. And so, I wrote the piece. 

Recently, after receiving the score, the orchestra saw the number of objects and extended techniques involved and decided to hold a vote. They requested an additional fee — something not uncommon in such cases, since objects are often treated as second instruments — but they proposed a price so high it was effectively an obstruction. In a secret vote, 30% of the musicians refused to play the piece, and the orchestra ultimately cancelled the performance, without even consulting the conductor, Elena Schwarz, or the soloist, Carolin Widmann.

I believe deeply in this piece and it is painful not to be able to hear it live after working on it for so long. However, I have the privilege of working with institutions that support me and my music, and I am fortunate enough to be confident I will get to hear this composition in ideal circumstances in the future.

This is not the case for everyone. In a way, it is good that this happened to me, because I have the visibility and the public support to speak openly about it. If this had happened to someone with less institutional backing, perhaps nobody would have heard about it. And if situations like this are not addressed, they risk creating a climate where composers — especially younger ones — begin to anticipate refusal and adapt their language in advance. This quiet form of self-censorship can have a devastating effect: it discourages risk, limits artistic freedom, and gradually narrows the collective imagination.

What concerns me most is a profound lack of curiosity. An orchestra, as one of the most powerful and symbolic bodies in musical life, cannot claim to represent our time if it accepts only one type of music — the one that fits within the most conventional definitions of instrumentation and form. Of course, composers can write pieces with traditional techniques and instruments; it has been done for centuries and will continue to be done for centuries. But that cannot and must not be the only music we imagine or perform.

History is full of works that have expanded what an orchestra can be, how it can sound, how it can exist in the world. Refusing to engage with new ideas does not protect the orchestra; it diminishes it. It narrows its future. It reinforces a dangerous complacency at a time when the musical world is already facing deep challenges — challenges that require openness, imagination, and courage.

In other artistic fields, this openness is already happening. As a curator myself, I see theater, opera, dance, and other performing arts constantly reinventing their forms, questioning their spaces, challenging their own languages and traditions. Meanwhile, in the orchestral world, I am being told, in essence: do not think beyond the comfort zone.

This is not only my personal disappointment; it is a sign of a broader cultural inertia. If orchestras are to remain relevant, they must embrace risk, imagination, and multiplicity. They must be willing to confront the unfamiliar, not retreat from it. To refuse to play a piece because it dares to imagine a different sound world is, ultimately, to refuse a part of the future.