Arash Safaian
Concerto for Violin and Orchestra inspired by the ‘Speech of the Birds’ by Attar of Nishapur (2022-2024)
is a concerto for violin and orchestra based on real bird songs from around the world, analytically transcribed into musical notation. Placed within a musical context, they reveal their melodic richness and become perceptible as absolute music. The dramaturgy of the concerto follows the 12th-century mystical narrative The Conference of the Birds by the Persian poet Fariduddin Attar.
Partita for Percussion and Orchestra
is built on the idea of interlocking. Rhythmic, sonic and harmonic structures merge into a single, intricately interconnected whole, with vibraphone, marimba and piano at its centre — ex machina, a sound machine.
a Phantasy for Piano and Orchestra
Beethoven Variations – A Phantasy for Piano and Orchestra is a concerto for piano and orchestra, composed for the 250th anniversary of Beethoven’s birth. The work is both a personal world of imagination and a contemporary musical reflection on Beethoven. A kaleidoscope of associations and themes unfolds into one another: Beethoven’s music encounters Schubert’s Wanderer Fantasy and Shostakovich, as well as the Belvedere Torso and Mies van der Rohe’s Barcelona Pavilion.
Concerto for Piano, Vibraphone and String Orchestra
The sixth concerto of ÜberBach was composed to mark the tenth anniversary of the cycle. The work refers to Johann Sebastian Bach’s famous cantata Christ lag in Todes Banden, BWV 4, and is itself conceived in the form of a cantata. The cantata form is framed by movements in the French style.
for Piano, Vibraphone and String Orchestra
ÜberBach is a cycle of five double concertos for piano, vibraphone and string orchestra. Bach’s music is the point of departure for a metamorphosis in which his themes and motifs become musical seeds, merging with my own language and growing into something new.
Concerto for Piano, Trumpet and String Orchestra (2018)
was composed for Jan-Ole Gerster’s film Lara, in which it exists as a composition by the fictional protagonist Viktor Jenkins. Developed from Viktor’s imagined musical perspective in collaboration with actor Tom Schilling, the concerto forms part of the film’s narrative rather than merely accompanying it.
Fragments after T. S. Eliot for Six Violoncellos and Double Bass
Fragments after T. S. Eliot’s "The Waste Land" for Six Violoncellos and Double Bass
by William Byrd, arranged by Arash Safaian for Six Violoncellos and Double Bass
for ensemble and baritone
Dramolett considers tragedy as a fundamental principle of the world: a process in which opposing forces collide, destroy one another and create something new. Music becomes a means of experiencing this principle beyond concepts and language.
for ensemble
for ensemble, is conceived as a long act of breathing, from inhalation to exhalation. The piece is an attempt to look, as if through a musical microscope, into the interior of emotion.
for Ensemble (2009)
for ensemble. Explores the transition from light into darkness through a finely layered and atmospheric musical language. Across its three sections, Prelude, Nachtteilchen and Stillleben, fleeting gestures, shimmering timbres and subtle repetitions gradually give way to a more suspended, contemplative state. Rather than following a conventional narrative, the music unfolds like a nocturnal landscape, where sound, color and silence continually shift and overlap.
after the Adittapariyaya Sutta for Three Violoncellos (2026)
after the Ādittapariyāya Sutta for Three Violoncellos is inspired by the Buddha’s Fire Sermon. The outer flame of perception ignites within, where the world of things and appearances is transformed into an inner fire of feeling and emotion.
Two Songs after poems by Else Lasker-Schüler
Trio for Horn, Violin and Piano (2010)
refers to the name of the great English landscape painter Joseph Mallord William Turner. In William Turner’s landscapes, air becomes light, chaos becomes a generous order, distance becomes proximity, and figure becomes form
for two pianos
Two closely interlocked pianos generate a musical grammar from a single note and gesture, from which musical speech and, ultimately, emotion emerge.
Two Songs after poems by Gottfried Benn (2008)
for Flute - Piano - Percussion (2006)
For string quartet, clarinet and soprano. (2007)
A setting of Thomas Bernhard’s poem Hinter dem Schwarzen Wald.
for Three Violoncellos
John Dowland arrangement by Arash Safaian
for Accordion Solo (2010/11)
The work centres on the principle of breathing. The title refers to alpha, the first letter of the Greek alphabet, which also carries the numerical value of one. Here, this “one” represents the self: the individual presence of the performer, extending outward through the breath of the instrument.
for Vibraphone, Glockenspiel and Tape (2010)
for Solo Piano
for Diskant-Zither Solo
inspired by the bull-leaping fresco at Knossos, Minoischen Variationen über den Stiersprung unfolds in twelve variations that evoke the ritual imagery and archaic world of Minoan Crete.
For solo countertenor
Romantik
Music Theatre (2017)
Der Schuss is a music theatre work centred on the killing of student Benno Ohnesorg during the demonstrations against the Shah of Persia in Berlin on 2 June 1967. Fifty years later, the work tells a fictional story of the night through the perspective of his pregnant wife Christa, who waits for her husband without knowing that he has been shot.
A Ballet Production with music from Beethoven Variations
Shakespeares Sonette is a ballet production by the Staatstheater Cottbus, choreographed by Jörg Mannes, with music from Arash Safaian’s Beethoven Variations. Inspired by Shakespeare’s sonnets, the production translates their enigmatic world of love, desire and uncertainty into dance.
A Ballet and Opera Production with music by Arash Safaian, J. S. Bach and G. F. Handel
Sanssouci is a ballet and opera production by the Nationaltheater Mannheim, choreographed by Stephan Thoss, bringing together Arash Safaian’s ÜberBach, music by Johann Sebastian Bach and Handel’s Dixit Dominus. The production takes its inspiration from Bach’s historic encounter with Frederick II at Sanssouci Palace.
Singspiel (2014)
Uschi and Bolle, a couple from Neukölln; a “amour fou” set to music; a kind of opera; perhaps a fairy tale. It began as a short scene from a stroll through Berlin, written in a single day and night.
Music Theatre
Inspired by the opera Einstein on the Beach, originally created in 1976 by Robert Wilson and Philip Glass, Mr. Wilson has selected five teams of artists to re-interpret sections of the seminal work. On The Beach celebrates a new generation of artists and their reactions to an opera that is widely recognized as one of the greatest artistic achievements of the 20th century.
Chamber Opera conceived as a Dynamic Installation
At Stake is a chamber opera conceived as a dynamic installation — a form between opera, ballet and mechanical theatre. Without a conventional narrative, a surreal sequence of movements, objects and appearances unfolds within a stage space that continuously transforms itself.
Original Motion Picture Score
Based on a true story, Vier minus drei follows a professional clown who loses her family in a devastating accident. Adrian Goiginger’s film explores grief and the difficult journey back towards life through humour, art and an unconventional confrontation with loss.
Original Motion Picture Score
tells the true story of Franz Streitberger, the great-grandfather of director Adrian Goiginger. During the Second World War, the young Austrian soldier finds an injured fox cub and forms an extraordinary bond with the animal. The encounter becomes a deeply personal story of companionship, loss and humanity amid the violence of war.
Original Motion Picture Score
Music lies at the heart of Lara: a piano concerto composed from the imagined perspective of Viktor exists within the film as his own work, while a woodwind quintet forms the musical voice of Lara herself. The score received the Bavarian Film Award for Best Film Music.