World premiere «Rhapsody» for baritone and orchestra (September 2022)

To mark the 75th birthday of the writer Salman Rushdie, the composer and conductor David Philip Hefti was commissioned by the Württembergisches Kammerorchester Heilbronn to compose a new work in April 2020. On 21 September 2022, Hefti's «Rhapsody» for baritone and orchestra will be premiered with the Württembergisches Kammerorchester conducted by Case Scaglione and featuring baritone Benjamin Appl.

Once Hefti was in contact with Rushdie, it began "an inspiring correspondence that resulted in a completely new text composition of passages from Rushdie's novel «The ground beneath her feet». My composition freely follows the rhapsodic text and, despite the orchestration, is orchestrated in a chamber music style, which allows the wonderful ambitus of Benjamin Appl's singing voice of almost three octaves to come into its own."

Indian-British writer Salman Rushdie is considered one of the most important authors of contemporary British literature and has been persecuted since the late 1980s due to the subject matter of his novel «The Satanic Verses».

Further information on the premiere on 21 September 2022 in the Heilbronn Harmonie at
https://www.wko-heilbronn.de and about the work at
https://www.hefti.net/de/werk/94.

September 15, 2022