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.

"Instead of patting an artist on the back with an award after the fact, we are now investing more of the money available to us in the future," said Urs Schnell, Director of FONDATION SUISA, a year ago, explaining the new funding policy adopted by the Foundation Board. The aim is to promote rather than judge and "to focus more on the future".

No sooner said than done. The first call for applications for "Get Going!" resulted in over 90 applications. This huge interest in something completely new was simply overwhelming for him, says Schnell. "We really struck a chord with the times. We couldn't have expected it to this extent, as such an openly formulated call for applications was an innovative shot in the dark despite all the analysis."

Bertrand Denzler, Michael Künstle, Beat Gysin and the duo Eclecta (Andrina Bollinger and Marena Whitcher) were the first recipients of the "Get Going!" award. They were awarded CHF 25,000 each because they were able to convince the expert jury with their creative visions. As the start-up funding is not tied to a result, it allows the musicians to work free from financial and time pressure. "I believe that in an increasingly hectic environment, time has become a precious commodity that should not be underestimated," says Schnell, explaining one of the advantages of "Get Going!".

Call for applications "Get Going!" 2019 from the end of June

From the end of June, creators, authors and musicians who can demonstrate a clear connection to current Swiss or Liechtenstein music creation can once again apply for a "Get Going!" contribution. In 2019, four such start-up grants of CHF 25,000 each will be awarded by an expert jury.

It is also important to mention that "Get Going!" neither competes with nor affects FONDATION SUISA's other funding programs, in particular the current application system, existing partnerships, trade fairs and events abroad and classroom music-making.

"On the contrary," explains Schnell, "the new model is an important start-up aid that complements the previous funding. We want to identify new creative spaces and prevent certain projects from falling between a rock and a hard place in future."

Urs Schnell knows that the deliberately open wording of the "Get Going!" call for proposals could be a little confusing at first: "In recent decades, musicians have been conditioned by traditional funding instruments to think in terms of applications. Our aim with the new focus is to move towards the artists as a funding body in order to bring free creative thinking back into focus with this reversal." To demonstrate the possibilities of "Get Going!", portraits of the recipients of last year's "Get Going!" grants will therefore be published on the FONDATION SUISA website as well as on the SUISA blog over the next few weeks.

> www.fondation-suisa.ch

> www.suisablog.ch

The Haute Ecole de Musique Vaud Valais Friborg (HEMU) is an educational institution recognized for its demanding and comprehensive training, as well as for its complicity with professional circles and its commitment to musical life. Multidisciplinary and multi-style, it covers all training profiles in classical, jazz and contemporary music. The HEMU is located in the heart of Europe and French-speaking Switzerland, and offers university-level education to more than 500 students of 39 different nationalities. Emphasizing both theory and practice, its Bachelor's and Master's study programs are established in such a way as to promote good access to the professional world. Its teaching staff, made up of many internationally renowned artists, guarantees its students high-level supervision. Historically present in the Lausanne Conservatory (before the Bologna reform), classical music has been taught at the HEMU for more than 150 years. Alongside it, the jazz and contemporary music departments, offered exclusively in French-speaking Switzerland, were created in 2006 and 2016 respectively. tradition, creation, research and development always with the aim of achieving, and helping to achieve, excellence. Each year, the HEMU produces more than 300 public performances: concerts, workshops, etc. The masterclasses given by prestigious musicians and the partnerships concluded with world-renowned institutions provide students with rewarding educational experiences and, above all, allow them to create a network. Its Bachelor and Master studies are accredited by the Swiss Confederation and recognized internationally. Since 2009, the HEMU has been part of the 'Music and Performing Arts' area of the Western Switzerland University of Applied Sciences (HES-SO), the largest network of higher professional training in Switzerland, which had nearly 21,000 students. at the start of the 2018-2019 school year.

Matthias von Orelli - Noémie L. Robidas, violonist and until now Director of the Living Spectacle Department of the Toulouse Institute of Fine Arts, is the new General Director of these two institutions. Québécoise, she is the beneficiary of a wealth of professional experience as a musician, teacher, researcher and director of the establishment.

Madame la Directeur, I am delighted that you have taken the time to talk to us. You took over the management a few months ago. What are your first impressions?

I am happy and delighted to be at the bar of such a great musician who welcomes musicians from a very young age until they receive their Master's degree. I have the impression of being able to contribute to an ecosystem of music. I found the professorial and administrative teams motivated and ready to work at the HEMU-CL. I also got to know the students, who are many and full of talent! This is a great source of inspiration for me!

You have known Switzerland for a long time. Has your perception of the country changed since you took up this new post?

Switzerland is a country where I've been living permanently for a dozen years and which I actually feel close to, probably because of my Swiss origins. However, from a professional point of view, I feel more at home in the Swiss countryside than in France, where I spent the last 7 years. I believe that this is due to the fact that the values of simplicity and accessibility to the hierarchy have been restored there, but this doesn't mean that the functions are disrespected. I also hope to see this collective search for consensus in Switzerland. However, the emphasis is different! (rires)

You are confronted with an institution that has gone through a period of crisis and tension, which has forced the former director to resign. Has this affected your work?

I would like to inform you that this does not affect my work at all. I'll help the team to hoist the big cloud after the break. Some people are still worried that the wind will blow again, but that's normal. What I sense is that the whole world wants to see what's ahead! This accompaniment to change is inherent in all new governance, it is a challenge that I am ready to tackle!

You are originally from Canada and have been working in France for a long time: what are the differences - or similarities?

I got to know the music scene in Switzerland through the network of conservatories and music schools, where I had the opportunity to continue my training for many years. I was also initiated into the new developments in music at the school after a 6-month replacement at the HEP-Bejune. As far as the musical scene itself is concerned, I would like to get to know it now. I think that musicians in Switzerland, like in Europe, have the chance to have the support of the state, many musical structures and a public that appreciates art and culture. In the North of America, musicians often have to carry out all their projects and initiatives independently. Entrepreneurial qualities are almost as important as talent for a musician's success.

You have a very international career. How do you perceive the Hautes Ecoles de Musique Suisse in an international comparison?

There are many establishments that offer high quality training programs which, according to me, are highly competitive internationally, which also explains our great attractiveness and the fact that our students come from all over the world!

The Swiss music schools are also facing some major challenges. What are the most important and urgent ones in your opinion?

I believe that the main challenge for the future of our schools lies in their ability to adapt to a constantly changing professional environment. Our higher education institutions must not only be attuned to the needs of their students, but also anticipate the context in which their graduates will be confronted in the next 10-15-20 years. Nowadays, it is no longer enough to be an excellent instrumentalist to succeed and live music. It is therefore necessary to provide our students with a wide range of skills to ensure their professional success. To this end, we must also question certain of our pedagogical habits and revise our study plans carefully.

Recently, a Swiss journal declared that many musicians often live for music, but not from music. In Switzerland, few people choose music as a profession. On the one hand, this is due to the fact that children in Switzerland are not specialized from a very young age, which is essential for music, but they are offered different options. On the other hand, many Swiss people are not only able to live "for" music, they want to live "from" music. Where do you see your school in this context?

This is a big question! I believe that the HEMU-CL has a role to play in boosting the Swiss music ecosystem in Switzerland by better supporting the talents of the region. Present in the cantons of Vaud, Valais and Fribourg, I believe more than ever that the HEMU-CL must act in synergy with conservatoires and music schools so that we can create a desire among young people to surpass themselves by providing them with models, by creating mentoring systems, by encouraging the teachers and directors of the various institutions to work even harder in the classroom. We need to find ideas of competition for ideas of complementarity.

Digitalization is an omnipresent topic. Where do you see the opportunities of this technology for your high school?

I would like to point out that we are a little behind schedule on this front. Whether it's digital learning environments, applications, the creation of digital learning communities or working in a recording studio, there are several opportunities to explore that are efficient and much more accessible than one might think. Furthermore, we will be inaugurating a large-scale studio in Flon this spring! However, we must ensure that all these technological innovations remain at the service of education and music.

You said that you want a constructive dialog within the institution and that innovation and creativity are just as important to you as excellence. What does this mean in terms of concrete implementation?

I believe that today we do not represent all the ecological and social issues of the future. In this sense, while excellence remains for me a fundamental value for the HEMU-CL, it seems to me primordial to create musicians who are more open to the issues of the world today and capable of contributing to the evolution of our society through their art. Concretely, we must teach them to diversify their practices in terms of aesthetics, we must provoke encounters with other forms of art, with contemporary creation, with diverse publics. The students must certainly learn to defend a musical heritage, an aesthetic and their instrument, but they must also develop an inventiveness that must always be renewed. This is one of our biggest challenges as a school!

Although I like several musical styles, my heart always comes back to an inexhaustible source of inspiration: Jean-Sébastien Bach... and, being a trained violinist, when I have a little free time (laughs), I dive back into happiness in the manuscript version of his Sonatas and partitas. His simple pen already lets the music be heard.

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.

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.

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.