Why another book about music and the brain? is the first question Eckart Altenmüller asks himself. It differs from others, he answers, because it also asks questions about where, how and why. He covers a wide range of topics, with insights into research into the prehistory of music-making, the question of whether animals also make music, emotion research and music therapy. He does all this in a pleasantly unpretentious, clear and well-founded style. The explanations in the continuous text are supplemented by musical examples that can be called up with the help of QR codes.

Altenmüller is a neurologist and, as a flautist, a student of Aurèle Nicolet, i.e. extremely talented both as a musician and as a scientist. He is rightly regarded worldwide as one of the most important representatives of neuromusicology. The fact that reading the book is a great pleasure is also due to the fact that he remains present as a person. He illustrates his theses and theories primarily from his personal experience as a flautist. He has also played numerous examples on his instrument himself. His roots in the Western European, educated middle-class medical tradition are also very noticeable. Inserts to break up the scientific explanations quote personalities such as Grimmelshausen, Proust, Ingeborg Bachmann, Ovid and so on.

The strongest passages in the book are the explanations of the physiological aspects of music-making. Altenmüller not only knows how to explain the latest findings on brain physiology and the sensory aspects of music-making. He also deals with practicing techniques and musicians' illnesses, especially the "musician's cramp", in an enlightening way. He is a little more on the slippery side when it comes to the more humanistic areas of emotional theories and music therapy. A great deal of space is devoted to the more physiological research on goosebumps in music. As Altenmüller himself admits, these are produced more reliably by rather banal things such as scratching on a blackboard. One can therefore wonder how great her knowledge potential for emotion research in music really is.

However, important current models of emotion research in music remain unmentioned or are only touched on in passing. For example, references to David Huron's ethological model or Klaus R. Scherer's component process model and Nico Frijda's emotion theories, which are the starting point for the most important newer models, are likely to be missed. Altenmüller also reflects on music therapy primarily as a physiologist. Some examples of current music therapy research seem unrepresentative or outdated.

Eckart Altenmüller: From Neandertal to the Philharmonie - Why humans cannot live without music, 511 p., € 24.99, Springer, Berlin 2018, ISBN 978-3-8274-1681-0

I had great fun playing through his ten waltzes for two violins by the busy comedy violinist-conductor-entrepreneur Aleksey Igudesman. The Simple Waltz at the beginning is easy to play, but well formed. The other nine are ingenious inventions in various moods. They demand familiar playing and great dynamic and agogic flexibility. Humorous effects are created by built-in general pauses, hectic accompanying figures, scratchy notes or theatrically breathless turning pauses. The arrangements of Chopin, Brahms and Johann Strauss take their content to the extreme. The two voices alternate democratically with the lead; it is a pleasure for professionals and good amateurs ... and also for the listeners.

Aleksey Igudesman: Waltz & more for 2 violins, UE 33657, € 17.95, Universal Edition, Vienna

The lonely shepherd on the beach, waiting for his beloved, blowing on the double reed, calling, lamenting: bucolic associations of this kind run through one's mind from the very first note. Letter from afarwhich György Kurtág wrote in memory of the harpist Ursula Holliger, who died in 2014. Her husband, Heinz Holliger, intones this piece on the oboe in a heartbreakingly elegiac manner. It is no coincidence that we encounter a similar mood several times among the 37 tracks on this CD, in Kurtág's ...a Sappho fragment for example, or in ...(Hommage à Tristan) - The cor anglais appears in Act 3 of the opera. Holliger, for his part, takes up the intense and warm tone. It is often about memories of the deceased, tributes to friends, reminiscences of music history, very touching, calling out, calling after, imploring, lamenting, sometimes in delicate, sometimes in dark colors, in the playing of Holliger and Marie-Lise Schüpbach on oboe and/or cor anglais, and especially when Ernesto Molinari's double bass clarinet joins in. There are also instrumental dialogs and pairings, beautifully performed, with character, precisely drawn.

Dialogues is the title of the CD that the ECM label is dedicating to Holliger on his 80th birthday. Both Holliger's and Kurtág's names appear on the cover. It is a testimony to a long artistic friendship. At first, it may come as a surprise when Holliger says that their compositional styles are similar. Many of the older works seem completely different, and yet the two have grown closer in recent decades. After all, they had the same teacher in Sándor Veress. This very harmonious CD tells the story. And just when you think the whole thing sounds very homogeneous, you discover nuances, mysterious ones. The references become richer and closer. At times, the pieces go back and forth between the two. The Swiss set to music The Ros' by Angelus Silesius, and the Hungarian responds with another setting sung by Sarah Wegener.

Finally, another artist joins the conversation. Poet Philippe Jaccottet recites seven of his poems, which Holliger takes on in a "Lecture pour hautbois et cor anglais". In it, he follows the words, but with each Air a bit further, into the microtonal and in the last piece Oiseaux ... It is music that reaches out into the distance and seeks out a distant horizon.

Short pieces are practical. Be it to supplement or structure a concert program, be it for instructive work in the university sector or be it to look over the shoulders of the composers a little more closely as they work. Two collections with numerous, predominantly short pieces by György Kurtág and Heinz Holliger, which were written over a fairly long period of time, should therefore attract a great deal of attention.

Under the title Signs, Games and Messages (Signs, Games and Messages), collections for violin, violoncello and clarinet, for example, have already been published. Now György Kurtág's solo and chamber music works for oboe and cor anglais are available, which deserve a closer look. His writing moves in an interesting field of tension between very precisely notated and very freely intended. Detailed articulation indications, such as various slurs (hierarchically or alternatively conceived), contrast with an extensive renunciation of bar lines or overly precise tempo or rhythm indications. Some ossia passages offer the performer options. In Kurtág's music, the most precise characterization possible is always central: here, a wide variety of verbal indications help, such as più sonore, raddolcendo, con slancio, disperato, pochiss. più intenso or again and again rubato and parlando.

The most extensive and best-known work in the collection is In Nomine - all'ongheresea magnificent monody that exists in a slightly different form for numerous instruments. But some shorter pieces also deserve in-depth study, such as the Sappho fragment or the two-part Hommage à Elliott Carter. In the chamber music works, a clarinet instrument is often added (in no less than three cases it is the contrabass clarinet). As a very short duo, the fierce Versetto for cor anglais and bass clarinet, but also the infinitely slow and (except for a brief outburst) infinitely quiet Rozsnyai Ilona in memoriam for cor anglais and contrabass clarinet. The two duos for soprano and oboe and cor anglais are also extremely poetic, Lorand Gaspar: Désert and Angelus Silesius: The Ros'. All the works in this extraordinary and magnificent collection are dedicated to Heinz Holliger, who penned the other edition, which is reported on here.

His collection consists of ten duos for oboe and harp, which were originally composed for his own use. They are playful, sometimes very short works, birthday presents for Robert Suter, Elliott Carter or Peter-Lukas Graf, for example, some of which have now also been arranged for other melody instruments (flute, carinette, saxophone). Two longer and very demanding pieces stand out at first glance from the "Albumblätter-Miniaturen": firstly, the work that gives the edition its title Un bouquet de penséesdedicated to his esteemed teacher Émile Castagnaud on his 90th birthday, an expansive dialogic song from 1999 for oboe d'amore and harp; on the other hand Surrogò, all'ongheresededicated to György Kurtág in 2006, a buzzing and shimmering composition (these expressions can be found in the subtitle!) of a highly energetic character for cor anglais and harp, which dissolves into a tonal nothingness at the end.

In addition to this extremely worthwhile compilation, the previously published Mobile for oboe and harp. On the one hand, the new edition is indispensable, as significant changes have been made to both the harp and oboe parts. On the other hand, the work now loses a decisive characteristic feature: the twelve short parts were printed on one large page in the first edition and could be played in three different sequences. If now, with the new edition, an entire booklet (in which the three versions are printed one after the other) is played through and, in addition, the transitional fermatas have to be constantly leafed through, the quasi-improvisatory character of the performance, for which the title Mobile stands. The reviewer takes the liberty of recommending that the individual parts be slightly reduced in size and glued onto a large cardboard as in the first edition. With good placement, the two musicians could even play from a music box, which would allow for even more lively and spontaneous interactions.

György Kurtàg: Signs, Games and Messages, solos and chamber music works for oboe and cor anglais, Z. 15 074, ca. Fr. 52.00, Editio Musica Budapest 2018

Heinz Holliger: Un bouquet de pensées, 10 pieces for oboe (oboe d'amore, cor anglais) and harp (individual pieces also for flute/alto flute, clarinet, soprano/alto/tenor saxophone and harp), score and parts ED 9467, € 55.00, Schott, Mainz

id., Mobile, for oboe and harp, playing score ED 5384, € 28.00, Schott, Mainz

This first of eight planned volumes of César Franck's collected organ and harmonium music presents four early works and two fragments. For many organ players, these are certainly new discoveries, as the works are not included in the canon of the composer's twelve "great" organ works.

The Fantaisie (Pièce) in A major was published in 1990 by Joël-Marie Fauquet (Editions musicales du Marais) and in 2008 in an edition corrected for certain printing errors by Bernhard Haas (Butz-Verlag). Fantaisie en ut majeur (early stages of the later C major Fantasie from the Six Pièces) and a Pièce en mi bémol majeur was published in 1973 by Schola Cantorum in an edition by Norbert Dufourcq. The charming Andantino in G minor was published in an anthology during Franck's lifetime, later also as a single edition, but was not given an opus number by him. In this respect, therefore, only the fragmentary works that have survived and are unfortunately not "complete" enough for a performance - a piece in E flat major, of which only the last five and a half pages have survived, and the beginning of a Prière (without conclusion) - are real new discoveries. Nevertheless, these are highly interesting testimonies to the composer, whose biographical background (for example, his "career start" as a piano-playing child prodigy until a fundamental rift with his father) and compositional development from sophisticated salon musician to mystic are still too little recognized. It is clearly recognizable that Franck conceived these works for early Romantic instruments (Saint-Roch 1842, Saint-Eustache 1853) and visibly struggled to formulate his tonal intentions because they did not yet correspond to Cavaillé-Coll's later standard and the more or less schematic "registration scenarios" possible with it. The composer's tonal language also occasionally still seems somewhat clumsy and (for example, in the accompanying figures) strongly inspired by the piano, but here and there certain "typical" Franck phrases already shine through.

The editor's excellent foreword now makes these connections accessible to a German and English-speaking audience, as Joël-Marie Fauquet's benchmark biography (Fayard 1999) is only available in French. The exemplary musical text and the detailed critical report provide a wealth of details on the works, their genesis and realization, and document editorial decisions in the light of already known editions. It will therefore be interesting to see whether new insights into Franck's "canonical" works already available in original editions (French publishers, reprinted by Butz) and new critical editions (Wiener Urtext, Henle) can be gained from the subsequent volumes.

César Franck: Complete Organ and Harmonium Works, Volume I: Early Organ Works / Fragments, edited by Christiane Strucken-Paland, BA 9291, € 29.95, Bärenreiter, Kassel

Wiener also received the special prize for chamber music for the best interpretation of the first movement of the Trio No. 1 in D minor op. 49 by Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy. The jury of critics particularly praised Wiener's musical and expressive intelligence as well as his unique approach to the compositions.

Simon Wiener received violin lessons from the age of four and a half. From 2010 to 2014, he was a student of Zakhar Bron. He then continued his master's studies with Renaud Capuçon at the University of Lausanne, where he completed his soloist diploma with distinction in 2018. He is currently a student of Ilya Gringolts at the ZHdK in Zurich.

Held every three years, the Augsburg Leopold Mozart Competition is one of the most prestigious violin competitions. It is a member of the World Federation of International Music Competitions (WFIMC), Geneva.

The organizers were delighted: there was a large turnout on 5 June at the Allresto in Bern, with around 35 representatives from various music associations and parliament listening to David Vitali, head of the "Culture and Society" section at the Federal Office of Culture (FOC). The meeting was hosted by the Parliamentary Group for Music (PGM) and its president, National Councillor Stefan Müller-Altermatt. The invitation with the title The new cultural message hot off the press: the federal government's proposals and the demands of the music sector - harmonious or dissonant? enclosed were the Comments and questions from the Swiss Music Council on the Culture Dispatch 2021 ff.

The Swiss Music Council (SMR) had already developed the basis for this paper together with its members in summer 2018 and discussed the seven core concerns of the music sector arising from these consultations with the BAK and Pro Helvetia on September 6, 2018. In summary, these were: 1. appreciation of music in general, 2. debate on fair compensation for authors' and performers' rights vs. internet freedom, 3. enabling cross-sector projects, 4. start-up funding, 5. long-term development strategies for the three genres of folk music, contemporary music and classical music, 6. promotion of Swiss music abroad and 7. implementation of Article 67a "Musical Education" of the Federal Constitution.

Vitali began by explaining the background to the cultural message published on May 29 and referred to the continuity of its strategic development lines "Cultural Participation", "Social Cohesion" and "Creation and Innovation", before moving on to innovations. He focused his remarks on the implementation of the music article, for which his section is responsible. The Youth and Music program is to be further expanded and a talent promotion program is to be set up in collaboration with music schools and music academies. The introduction of a talent card based on the Youth + Sport model is planned. To this end, the BAK is requesting CHF 25.6 million for the entire funding period - around CHF 8 million more than in the previous period. In addition, a fourth paragraph is to be added to Article 67a of the Federal Constitution on music, which currently reads: "It [the Confederation] may promote musically talented individuals through specific measures." Christine Bouvard, President of the Swiss Association of Music Schools, emphasized the lack of binding nature of this optional formulation in the subsequent question and answer session.

All other aspects of the draft relating to music were merely touched on, as neither a representative from the BAK's "Cultural Creation" section nor from Pro Helvetia were present. The delegates of Sonart - Music Creators Switzerland formulated the expectation that the organizations of professional creative artists should not be limited in the cultural message exclusively to their role as trade union service providers. They must - like their partner organizations abroad - also be perceived as the only nationally active and therefore indispensable mediators of networking, discourse and content exchange, even if the funds for the latter no longer flow from the federal treasury.

Now is the time to seize the opportunity of the consultation process and to formulate the specific concerns clearly and unambiguously. The Swiss Music Council will draft a template for its members. They are free to edit the template as they wish or write their own statement. These can be sent to the following address by September 20, 2019 StabsstelleDirektion@bak.admin.ch be sent. The Cultural Dispatch is expected to be adopted in February 2020, after which it will go to Parliament and enter into force on January 1, 2021.

The fifth graders stand on the stage with concentration. Some are playing percussion instruments, one girl has put a guitar on her lap and is plucking on it. A group of children whistle and make sounds with their mouths: humming, squeaking, popping, clicking. A child lets water run into a container, the sound is amplified by microphones.

The piece that can be heard here was created by the children as part of the Klangradar project. The concept: composers visit a school for three months and embark on a sound expedition together with the pupils. Klangradar and the results of this year's project phase on the theme of "Happiness. A search for sound traces" were presented at the conference Setting out into new worlds of listening. School & sound research on May 23, 2019 in Berlin. The event was organized and hosted by the Young Ears Network.

As composer Cathy Milliken explained in her introductory keynote speech, anyone who wants to lead such a collaborative composition process must have the paradoxical ability to lead and follow at the same time. Because only those who really engage with the soundscapes that the other participants bring with them can create "new" music and go beyond the limitations of their own ideas of sound.

Music educator Barbara Balba Weber from Bern University of the Arts also emphasized that openness is one of the qualities needed for such music education projects. In the encounter between students, teachers and professional musicians, very different ideas of what music is come together - and in the best case, merge into an unheard-of new whole. Every timbre, every idea of sound has its place, and so collaborative composing becomes an exercise in democracy, diversity and equality.

How sound experiments can be incorporated into everyday school life was presented in a tour of "Sound research in school practice". For example, the "Soundwalk". Led by musician and cultural scientist Manuel Schwiers, a group moved through the Kreuzberg summer afternoon listening. What does the transition from the backyard to the street actually sound like? What sound environments do I encounter as I move through the city? And what influence do I have by focusing my attention on different aspects of the city's sound? Is this perhaps already a kind of composition? After several intensive phases of listening, such questions were discussed everywhere, and it became clear that simply listening to the environment, for which no further materials are necessary, can offer many possible approaches for working with pupils - at least if they succeed in engaging in this kind of heightened perception.

The composer Steffi Weismann makes the pupils' surroundings sound in a slightly different way, namely by having them build their own instruments from everyday objects. One of her discoveries: the squeaking noises that polystyrene makes when it is moistened and rubbed against glass panes. Weismann also builds instruments with the children from buckets, plastic packaging and rubber bands, which are used in the composition projects.

How apps can be used for educational sound work was presented by musician Matthias Krebs, who is exploring the sound possibilities of the Elbphilharmonie building in Hamburg together with pupils. They use tablets to create short video sequences that can be digitally edited, combined and looped to create their own sound sequences.

The sound artist and gallery owner Knut Remond expands the dimensions of what sound actually is to include sculpture. His experiment presented at the conference: go out, listen to your surroundings - and then transform what you hear into a "sound sculpture" with the help of plasticine or clay. What sounds might be created when these sculptures are in turn interpreted by musicians?

The conference proved that there is no shortage of ideas for sound experiments. And in the panel discussion "What does the school of the future sound like?" it became clear that more and more schools are getting involved in such projects, even if the fixed structures of everyday school life do not exactly make this easy. The conference participants certainly took home some inspiration as to how they too can contribute in future to making schools sound like diversity, community and a new beginning.

Labhart, who was born on Lake Constance in 1944 and has lived in Endingen in the canton of Aargau for many years, has worked as an editor and journalist for radio, television and print media. He has worked as a freelance music researcher, dramaturge and curator for over 40 years. During this time, he has conceived and designed dozens of exhibitions, organized concert series by Aargau and international composers and written monographs on Aargau artists such as Peter Mieg, Martin Ruf and Werner Wehrli. With the support of his wife Dora, he has also amassed a large archive of specialist literature, scores, autographs, recordings, concert programs and much more over the decades.

With the new recognition award created in 2017, the Aargau Board of Trustees honors special achievements in the field of cultural mediation. As with the Canton of Aargau Art Prize, the Canton of Aargau writes that the aim is not least to draw the attention of a wider audience to work that is often less in the spotlight.

Florian Scholz will start next season as artistic director designate and will assume overall artistic responsibility at the Konzert Theater Bern from 2021. Swiss theater director Roger Vontobel will also be joining the KTB from this season onwards

KTB writes that Scholz's work at a multidisciplinary theater was a key factor in his selection: as the director of the Theater des Landes Kärnten and the City of Klagenfurt, he has brought around 15 new productions to the stage each season with over 250 permanent employees in the fields of opera and music theater, drama, dance as well as children's and youth theater in around 200 performances. He is responsible for all genres and, as artistic director of the Carinthian Symphony Orchestra, is also responsible for concerts.

Before his directorship at the Stadttheater Klagenfurt, Florian Scholz, who completed a postgraduate degree in theater management at the University of Zurich, worked as Director of International Relations and Special Projects at the Bavarian State Opera under Nikolaus Bachler in Munich (2006-2012). Among other things, he was responsible for curating the special program of the Munich Opera Festival. Prior to this, he worked at the Opéra National de Paris as assistant to Gerard Mortier and at the Deutsches Nationaltheater Weimar as venue manager and at the Schaubühne Berlin as assistant director to Thomas Ostermeier. Between 1995 and 2000, after studying at the Ernst Busch Academy of Dramatic Arts in Berlin, the Heidelberg native worked as an actor on various German-speaking stages.

Acting director Roger Vontobel joins Florian Scholz's team. Born in Zurich in 1977, Vontobel studied drama directing at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater Hamburg. He has directed at the Schauspiel Essen and the Deutsches Schauspielhaus in Hamburg as well as the Münchner Kammerspiele, the Deutsches Theater Berlin, Maxim Gorki Theater, Schauspiel Köln, the Royal Danish Theatre in Copenhagen and the Théâtre National de la Colline in Paris. From 2011-2016, Vontobel was in-house director at Schauspielhaus Bochum and has held the same position at Schauspielhaus Düsseldorf since 2016.

The director was selected by the search committee in a multi-stage process. It was chaired by Nadine Borter, President of the KTB Foundation Board. Other members of the search committee were Anna Badora, Georges Delnon, Marcel Brülhart, Markus Hongler, Ueli Studer, Hansueli Glarner and Giulia Meier.

While the budget restructuring program was the reason for this extraordinary measure five years ago, the necessary conditions are no longer met today, writes the city. The temporary increase in the municipal tax rate, which was also decided as a restructuring measure, has therefore been reversed by the Grand Municipal Council with reference to the easing of the city's financial situation.

As a result, the City Council considered it appropriate and contractually advisable to cancel the subsidy cuts to the two affected institutions, Musikkollegium Winterthur and Swiss Science Center Technorama, from 2019. The City Council is responsible for reversing this cost-cutting measure. The Grand Municipal Council has also approved the budget adjustment requested by the City Council.

The reversal is all the more justified, according to the city, as the contributions for all other subsidized cultural institutions have already been adjusted by the Grand Municipal Council as part of the overall assessment of the fixed-term contracts on the one hand, and as part of the museum concept on the other.