Kaos Protokoll's second album with the tongue-twisting title Questclamationmarks was just three years ago, but a lot has changed in the band since then: Mark Stucki has been replaced on saxophone by Simon Spiess and keyboardist Luzius Schuler is also new. As a result, the trio has grown into a quartet. According to press material, the new album, Everyone Nowhere, between "post-future beats" and "modern spiritual jazz". The line-up changes have not completely overturned the sound of Kaos Protokoll, but have left an audible mark: The music seems more meditative and spherical. The first track is already a sign of this, Flash Frame, which combines muscular rhythms with drawn-out sounds of the bass clarinet and frenetic keyboard playing - and seems as cool as it is bold.

Kaos Protokoll repeatedly show their preference for electronic music. This lends the songs penned by bassist Benedikt Wieland a certain aloofness. However, melancholy moments constantly break through it. The formation particularly appreciates dealing with contrasts: While Waiting room oscillates between quiet melancholy and noise elements, works its way The Cosmos In My Backyard sometimes free jazz, sometimes elegiac art rock. As the four musicians are able to contrast abstract soundscapes almost incessantly with gentle melodies, the record gains both sharpness and tension. On the eight new songs, Kaos Protokoll constantly give free rein to their ideas. This is wild and curious, but not entirely coherent. The experiment of ending the album with a kind of rap called SunRaColtraneSolar is a daring decision, but the only non-instrumental number turns out to be a charming foreign body.

Henle-Verlag has recently published the most important works of horn literature by Mozart, Beethoven, Schumann and others in Urtext editions. The new edition of the Morceau de Concert by Camille Saint-Saëns is, like the previous ones, excellently edited and provided with a foreword by the editor Dominik Rahmer, which provides detailed information about the special features of the piece. It was composed in 1887, at the time of the transition from the natural horn to the valve horn and is therefore of instrumental-historical significance. It was not easy for composers and horn players of the time to say goodbye to the natural horn and the transition to the valve horn was a smooth one. Henri Chaussier, the hornist at the premiere, therefore designed an instrument in which a valve block was fitted to the natural horn. This allowed him to switch to valve horn within the piece. Chaussier gave very detailed introductions to this system before concerts. The findings of this performance practice can or should also be taken into account on our modern instruments.

Camille Saint-Saëns: Morceau de Concert in F minor op. 94 for horn and piano, edited by Dominik Rahmer, HN 1284, € 13.00, G. Henle, Munich

Especially if we don't have much experience with improvisation ourselves, we find it difficult to integrate this enormously enriching field of learning into our lessons. However, Thomas Silvestri's series Piano-Vamps for Improvising (Vol. 1-3) has provided me with wonderful material that has given me many new impulses and ideas for my lessons. The pieces are all based entirely on his teaching practice and only offer as much explicit theory as is necessary to get into playing quickly. Short ostinato bass figures (vamps) are presented in the booklets, which can be improvised on. The corresponding scales (major, minor, blues scale, pentablues scale etc.) are deliberately listed separately in the last part of the booklets with the intention of memorizing them first and making them your own. There are also many typical "patterns", which should be practiced as building blocks and can later be incorporated into improvisations. The aim is to build up a repertoire of good-sounding phrases and to get a feel for the different keys over time. Also highly recommended are the suggestions on how individual keys can be practiced not only as a so-called "scale", but also how, using the keyboard pattern as a guide, you can start on any note in order to diatonically transpose small motifs, intervals or chords of the scale, for example. As a result, the scales are increasingly viewed as a "tone reservoir" that starts somewhere and ends somewhere, as is naturally the case when improvising.

Also with www.silvestrimusic.ch have appeared Jazzy Tunes for Piano-Soloin versions for beginners to advanced players. These are collections of "jazzy" piano pieces, many with an improvisation section. The booklet in the intermediate difficulty range (Intermediate Vol.1), for example, offers numerous tips on scales and patterns in addition to the pieces. The author also shows how to create an improvisation sketch with notated and free passages. The individual pieces can be listened to as audio samples using a QR code.

Thomas Silvestri: Piano-Vamps for Improvising Vol. 1, Blues, Funk, Jazz, Valse, Tango, Pop, Bossa, Classic, Choro, Flamenco ... and more; booklet Fr. 20.00; PDF Fr. 10.00; self-published by Thomas Silvestri, www.silvestrimusic.ch

Books on the history of jazz are usually three times as thick as this 200-page tour d'horizon. In it, the experienced jazz journalist and pianist Ted Gioia not only describes styles and performers one after the other, but also spreads out a catalog of criteria that are decisive for him when judging jazz performances. Fats Waller, when asked for a definition of jazz, replied: "If you have to ask that question, you'd better keep your hands off it!" And Duke Ellington said: "Listening is the most important thing in music." Ted Gioia admits that, as a thirty-year-old, he was inspired for his first book on the history of jazz by the newsletters of the influential wine connoisseur Robert Parker in Napa Valley: the ability to describe the nuances of taste of fine wines in flowery metaphors, and in breathtaking variety, showed the jazz author how to approach the difficult task of putting music into words.

In his latest work, Listening to jazz, understanding jazz, Ted Gioia allows himself to be looked over the shoulder: his way of critical listening and judgment is not only based on personal taste, but follows clear criteria that lie in the music itself. He describes parameters such as rhythm, pulse, phrasing, pitch and timbre, dynamics, personality and spontaneity in concise chapters that are easy to read thanks to the wealth of metaphors and Anglo-Saxon humor. One apt tip, for example, is to listen to performances that are still imperfect under the heading "Student Jazz Band". This sharpens your ear and allows you to really appreciate the greats of the profession. In the chapter on the structure of jazz, the author gives an insight into his work with music students and shows instructive examples of how more complex jazz pieces can be divided into their formal parts and how these can be characterized by the instrumentation. Today, we benefit from the fact that practically all the music titles and performers mentioned in this book can be found on the World Wide Web. Ted Gioia provides a series of listening recommendations in each chapter. From the origins of jazz and the development of its styles, he moves on to a description of the main innovators, from Louis Armstrong to Ornette Coleman. This is followed by the chapter "Listening to jazz today" and an appendix with "Jazz masters at the beginning and in the middle of their careers". The index at the end of the book helps with orientation in this diversity.

The first jazz records were released a hundred years ago in New Orleans. Recordings (often live or uncut) are valuable contemporary documents and contributed to the spread of this music across all continents. However, the essence of a jazz performance lies in the spontaneity of the live experience. Every event is unique! Ted Gioia has retained his attitude to this to this day: "Almost anything can happen tonight - almost anything! (...) The musicians themselves hardly know what they are about to play; the anchoring of jazz in improvisation makes for strange and wonderful progressions on stage, perhaps as early as the next song."

This concise but extremely rich book helps both the beginner and the connoisseur to deepen their knowledge and - it whets the appetite for more jazz!

Ted Gioia: Listening to Jazz, Understanding Jazz, translated from the English by Sven Hiemke, 207 p., € 24.95, Henschel/Bärenreiter, Leipzig/Kassel 2017, ISBN 978-3-7618-2426-9

Guitarists Raoul Morat and Christian Fergo studied with Frank Bungarten at the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts, where they also joined forces to form a guitar duo. The duo formation can open up much more piano literature to the instrument than the solo guitar, for one obvious reason: as the guitar soloist only has one hand to produce the sound - he has to shorten the strings with the other - he lacks the harmonic and contrapuntal richness of the two-handed piano literature. However, two guitars ensure lossless reproduction of the piano part. The two have already ventured into Schubert's works in 2016, when they performed a Winter journey-cycle. So now Impromptus, Moments musicaux and Valses sentimentales, which will have appealed to many a guitarist. One of the Moments musicaux was already arranged by the important guitarist Francisco Tarrega in the 19th century. Now Morat and Fergo are presenting an entire collection of these character pieces, probably not entirely coincidentally on an Austrian label called Challenge Records.

At first you are a little startled: the first Impromptu from Schubert's Opus 90 begins in the original with a quadruple octave G in fortissimo. This sounds rather pathetic on two guitars. However, the further the guitar duo Morat-Fergo work their way through the musical text, the more you get caught up in the maelstrom of the music and the more and more you are fascinated. The guitars have a wealth of sound techniques at their disposal, harmonics, vibratos, pizzicati, the sounds of different positions of the plucking fingers and so on. The Lucerne duo uses them wisely and extremely tastefully to make Schubert's music iridescent in all its colors. The result is a filigree, transparent sound that makes the selected pieces appear delicate, but also modern.

The duo thus expands the repertoire of the instrument, which is truly not blessed with high-quality works from the late classical and early romantic periods, in an extremely convincing way. They strive for additional historical rootedness by recording the pieces on copies of guitars from Schubert's time. However, this hardly guarantees that the pieces are contemporary, even if the sound of the historical instruments can point to the time when the originals were written. However, it can be assumed that these piano works would have sounded strange if played on guitars at that time. The appeal of the arrangements lies in general interpretative and creative principles, rather than in efforts to make historically-informed music. The result is convincing because it illuminates the music in a timeless and intelligent way. The two recorded the CD in a concert hall at Marienmüster Abbey, partly financed by crowdfunding.

When the String Quartet op. 80 in F minor is examined more closely as the first work and leads to the question "Why does the minor gender predominate so conspicuously in the instrumental area (...)", the author is moving in the area of his earlier publication from 2015, Music and farewell. There he had united astonishing insights in a series of works from the Middle Ages to the present under the common aspect of death. Mendelssohn's Opus 80 irritates us in its ruthlessness towards form; it was composed shortly after the death of his sister Fanny - and a few months later he too died. With this structure, Gülke wants to counter the verdict of "perfectionism" and "smoothness" right at the beginning, which is still used against Mendelssohn in descriptions of his works today. And he ends this section with the sentence: "This early death is also one of the catastrophes of music history."

Gülke does not avoid the questions, he even provokes them immediately when he is not with the octet and the music for the Midsummer Night's Dream The composer does not continue with the works that are popular and recognized today, but uses the Piano Sonata op. 6 and the String Quartet op. 13 by the not yet twenty-year-old to point out independent references to great role models. His talent for analyzing and yet vividly describing the course of the music proves itself even where he "only" limits himself to (for him) conspicuous details, which, however, always lead to an illuminating individual insight.

With the cryptic Schumann quote as a subtitle, which he completes on the very first page, "He is the Mozart of the 19th century, the brightest musician who sees through the contradictions of the time most clearly and reconciles them first", Gülke focuses on the composer's significance for the period of 'Romanticism'. At the same time, he points out the difficulties in assessing his oeuvre as a whole and his biography: "Mendelssohn remains a hot potato."

The privileged family situation, the sensational early talents of the siblings Fanny and Felix, the one-sided encouragement of the boy and the associated blocking of his sister's creativity are presented in an unembellished way, as are Felix's numerous sacred works, which were intended to prove the seriousness of his conversion to Christianity, but which were then to be realized with the two oratorios St. Paul and Elias but showed that he did not want to favor any of the religions - from his Reformation Symphony he distanced himself and did not release them for printing.

The most extensive chapter, "Im schönen Zugleich von Kunst und Religion" ("In the Beautiful Simultaneity of Art and Religion"), concentrates on this area of sacred music, where Gülke wants to pinpoint the contradictions most clearly: "Many compositions, complementary to the Reformation Symphony and to the Hymn of praiseseem like attempts to undermine the spiritual/secular distinction from the secular side." And elsewhere: "Nowhere in Mendelssohn's works do reception and evaluation contradict each other as sharply as in sacred music." Gülke therefore devotes the most detailed examination of his works to the two oratorios, but points out: "In trying to listen as deeply as possible to Mendelssohn's music, we risk understanding him differently than he wanted to be understood."

Peter Gülke: Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy, "Der die Widersprüche der Zeit am klarsten durchschaut", 139 p., with illustrations and bibliography, € 29.99, Bärenreiter/Metzler, Kassel/Stuttgart 2017,
ISBN 978-3-7618-2462-7

Why not get to know the late Baroque harpsichord suites, which cannot quite compete with those of Bach and Handel? There is no doubt that this genre is a species that died out from 1740 onwards and was no longer used in music for the fortepiano, but piano players also benefit from knowledge of such literature, which was probably still part of the repertoire of the later so-called classics. The discovery of 26 previously unknown suites (Parthien) by Gottlieb Muffat (1690-1770), the Viennese organist and imperial music teacher and son of the violinist and organist Georg Muffat (1653-1704), in the holdings of the Berlin Singakademie, which were returned from Kiev in 2001, is tantamount to a sensation.

The harpsichordist Glen Wilson has published five of them for the first time; a sixth was previously available in Christopher Hogwood's edition (Ut Orpheus, 2009). This shows that it is worthwhile studying this composer, who has so far been known mainly thanks to his 1739 works under the title Componimenti musicali printed eight suites. The six new suites, which have only survived in manuscript form, can compete in terms of extravagance, scope and technical demands with the Componimenti but Gottlieb Muffat proves himself to be an expert in the various musical languages of the time, all of which he integrated into his preludes, dance movements and character pieces.

We must be grateful to the editor for his careful discussion of Muffat's ornaments in the preface and main text, which contribute greatly to the brilliant effect of these pieces. Most players would probably need similar assistance with the arrangement of the endings and the insertions of so-called "petites reprises", which require solutions that are not necessarily found in the notes. Muffat was known for his consistent division of the notation between the two playing hands or staves. Fortunately, Wilson has retained this in modern clefs (G2 instead of C1). However, it remains problematic when two rhythmically identical figures in the same bar take up unequal amounts of space in modern engraving (e.g. in the Ballet of the A minor Suite) and notes that are not played simultaneously are almost directly above each other in both staves (e.g. Adagio, Allemande of the D minor Suite). The original print of Muffat's Componimenti musicali would teach us how to print music in a beautiful and user-friendly way even today.

Gottlieb Muffat: Six Suites for Harpsichord (Clavier), first edition, edited by Glen Wilson, EB 8904, € 26.90, Breitkopf & Härtel, Wiesbaden, 2017

In cooperation with the Lucerne School of Business, Guidle has published the practical handbook Cultural professionals and the digital transformation has been published. It provides background knowledge and solutions to questions about the right content strategy, the right channels, building a community and other topics relating to social media. The authors, Barbara Kummler, lecturer at the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts, and publicist Clemens Maria Schuster, entrepreneur and lecturer at the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts, provide many valuable tips and practical instructions. 

The 180-page guide is available as a paperback for CHF 39 (plus shipping) or as a free PDF version at: www.guidle.com/de/buch-bestellen
A reading sample and the table of contents are also available on this website.

According to the German Music Industry Association (BVMI), the number of audio streams grew by a good 40 percent year-on-year in 2018 to a total of 79.5 billion, reaching a new all-time high. Although 48.2 million CDs were sold, 23% fewer than in 2018, the compact disc was still the second most important market segment in Germany in the year 36 following its market launch, as shown by fans' purchasing behavior.

Downloads ranked third with 49 million units, including 7.5 million albums and 41.5 million individual tracks. Vinyl records sold a total of 3 million units last year, a slight decline of 7 percent, but vinyl still clearly has its fans in the niche market and therefore also plays a role for many artists when planning their release formats.

Physical music videos (DVD/Blu-ray) also made it into the top 5 most used or sold music formats with 2.6 million units sold. - This preliminary sales trend calculation covers the number of units purchased and streamed in 2018. The BVMI is expected to report the overall market development based on sales at the beginning of March 2019.

According to the press release from the University of Applied Sciences Würzburg-Schweinfurt, the focus is on the activation of brain functions that are impaired in old-age depression. Together with 13 European partners from the university, clinical and industrial sectors, interdisciplinary work is being carried out in the fields of neuroscience (University of Geneva, Reha Rheinfelden), gerontopsychiatry (University of Würzburg, University of Tours, University Hospital Tours), music intervention (University of Cambridge, University of Jyväskylä, University of Aalborg, Würzburg-Schweinfurt University of Applied Sciences) on this development. A Finnish and a French small and medium-sized enterprise and an IT engineering team (University of Barcelona, University of Genoa, FHWS, University of Augsburg) are also involved.

The Würzburg-Schweinfurt University of Applied Sciences is also involved in a project investigating interventions for people living with dementia. From May 2019 to April 2023, a training program for family caregivers of people with dementia to learn and apply music interventions in home care will be developed and its effectiveness tested. The relevant consortium consists of the University of Melbourne (consortium leader), Anglia Ruskin University Cambridge, FHWS, Oslo University of Music and the University of Krakow. Thomas Wosch (Faculty of Applied Social Sciences at the University of Applied Sciences Würzburg-Schweinfurt) can provide further information.
 

The resolution is based on the motion "For the future of music in Brandenburg: Adequate wages for freelance musicians and vocal soloists" by Ulrike Liedtke, cultural policy spokesperson for the SPD parliamentary group and Vice President of the German Music Council. It was adopted after intensive discussions between the four parliamentary groups of the CDU, SPD, Die Linke and Bündnis 90/Die Grünen. From 2020, the minimum fee standards will apply to state-funded projects, and from 2021, institutionally funded orchestras will also be obliged to comply with the minimum standard when engaging temporary staff.

Christian Höppner, Secretary General of the German Music Council, welcomes the decision. He sees it as a forward-looking signal to strengthen the economic framework conditions for freelance musicians. The situation of freelance creatives in artistic and music education professions is "predominantly disastrous in the fourth strongest industrial nation in the world". The current decision of the Brandenburg state parliament in favor of freelancers is "a blueprint for the other state parliaments to guarantee social security for artists that does not lead to poverty in old age."

Under the direction of Lawrence Foster, several soloists will perform with the Lucerne Symphony Orchestra at the award ceremony - for example Nelson Freire (Lifetime Achievement Award), Javier Perianes (Artist of the Year), Matko Smolcic (Young Artist of the Year), Eva Gevorgyan (Discovery Award) and Stephen Waarts (Orchestra Award).

This year's winner of the ICMA "Special Achievement Award" is Numa Bischof Ullmann, who as artistic director of the Lucerne Symphony Orchestra "has shaped the Swiss orchestral scene for many years with his innovative artistic ideas, his tireless enthusiasm and his foresight", as the jury writes in its laudation. The Orchestra Award, which is presented by the respective host orchestra, goes to the young violinist Stephen Waarts.

The ICMA have been awarded annually since 2011. They are awarded by independent media professionals. In recent years, the ICMA awards have been presented in countries such as Finland, Italy, Germany and Poland.

The competition will be further developed under the direction of Weithaas and Wille. The next competition will take place in Hanover in fall 2021. Krzysztof Wegrzyn, the founder and previous artistic director, will remain closely associated with the competition as honorary president.

In Antje Weithaas, born in 1966, the Foundation has recruited the first prizewinner of the first Joseph Joachim Violin Competition in 1991 for the position of conductor. Weithaas was artistic director of the Camerata Bern for almost ten years and was responsible for its musical profile. Her own CD recordings include the complete recordings of the solo sonatas and partitas by Johann Sebastian Bach and the solo sonatas by Eugène Ysaÿe.

Oliver Wille, born in 1975, continues the competition's close cooperation with the Hanover University of Music, Drama and Media (HMTMH). He has been a professor of string chamber music there since 2011. Wille is also a founding member of the Kuss Quartet and has been the director of the Hitzacker Summer Music Days since 2015.

Five people, three men and two women, trapped in a house or a hut, far away, in deep snow. No escape. And it keeps on snowing. The world premiere of Beat Furrer's new opera could not have been more topical than in these January days, when the Alpine region is sinking under the white masses. The initial situation is typical of the Russian writer Vladimir Sorokin, who has already described similar situations in other stories, for example in The snowstorm from 2010. And as always, it doesn't just stick to the bare reality. Certainly, there are brief love scenes, almost romanticized in a hut, there is a quartet over warming tea. Peter is afraid of medical treatment if he is rescued half-frozen. But there are also three ensembles of loneliness, Jacques sings an arietta about dark matter, Silvia tells how a buzzing hornet grew in her viola and blew up the instrument. A dead woman appears, the situations become increasingly unreal, surreal. Did the table burn? Did the five of them eat the snow? In the end, the material takes us into the cosmic-fantastic. The uncertainty of the situation leads to uncertainty about the universe. That is Sorokin.

Eight years ago, he sketched this story for Beat Furrer. Dorothea Trottenberg translated it, and Händl Klaus, long one of the most sought-after librettists of contemporary music, created a linguistic-musical textual basis from it, on which Furrer has now based his new opera Purple snow can play out a whole range of musical forms in a more varied and entertaining way (than before): Duets, which certainly have something operatic about them, arettas, ensembles, all with a high degree of text comprehensibility, by the way; plus choral singing in the background (with the Vocalconsort Berlin), in which Furrer introduces a doomsday scenario by Lucretius (not for the first time) - as a kind of ancient commentary on current events. In between, the orchestra blossoms in all colors from pale white to bright red and back to violet. Matthias Pintscher brings the music to life lucidly with the Staatskapelle Berlin, and an outstanding vocal quintet with Anna Prohaska, Elsa Dreisig, Gyula Orendt, Georg Nigl and Otto Katzameier performs on stage. State opera level in the most positive sense.

That is one fascination, the other comes from the congenial staging by Claus Guth and his team. Everything fits together perfectly with the music and text: Set design (Étienne Pluss), costumes (Ursula Kudrna), video (Arian Andiel) and lighting (Olaf Freese). It's wonderful to watch the snow drift by. It opens up an additional level.

The moving overture, for example, is accompanied by a projection of a blurred snow flurry, out of which a concrete painting slowly emerges: the "Return of the Hunters", created for a cycle of monthly depictions in 1565 by Pieter Brueghel the Elder, the painter of everyday life with all its playfulness and brutality, with its highs and lows. Here he tells of the joys and hardships of winter. The image is an essential part of the play and appears several times. At the beginning, in the spoken description of the undead Tanja (Martina Gedeck), but also later again and again, together with other Brueghel images. When the characters leave their hut, they are transported out of time into a 16th century setting. Brueghelian figures pass by in slow motion, in patina-clouded colors, in a dusky blur.

The different levels come together here in a dreamlike, somnambulistic way: in a kind of magical realism, narrative and at the same time impassable, with a floating emotionality. Opera does what it does particularly well, it exaggerates, it takes the ground of reality from under its feet. Furrer's new work is contemporary and yet it gets lost ... Where? The Latin "Nix" - snow combines with the German Nichts. There.

And why is the opera called Purple snow? In the final scene, the people, not only the occupants of the hut, but also other figures from Brueghel's tableaux are found on the surface of the stage. In an end-time vision, the light - the moon, the sun, Mars - rises again. The snow shines purple. It's beautiful, the people sing, but they don't understand the phenomenon. Something has changed, something has happened, but we don't know what or why.

The TapTab music venue will now receive CHF 25,000 a year from the city (previously CHF 10,000). These increases will make a targeted contribution to the consolidation of operations and strengthen the competitiveness of the region's most important cultural center, writes the canton. The cantonal contributions to the TapTab music room (CHF 20,000), the Kumpane association (CHF 26,000) and the Haberhaus Bühne association (CHF 25,000) remain unchanged.

The agreements are valid from 2019 to 2023 with the Kultur im Kammgarn association and the TapTab Musikverein and from 2019 to 2022 with the Kumpane association and the Haberhaus Bühne association.

The previous service agreements between the canton and the city of Schaffhausen on the one hand and the service providers on the other have proven their worth, according to the official announcement. The renewed service agreements are also contracts that have been in place for several years.

It had also been known for some time that the financial support for the Kammgarn cultural center was no longer appropriate in relation to its supra-regional importance. Both the canton and the city of Schaffhausen have therefore increased their contributions. The city's contribution to culture at Kammgarn has increased from CHF 70,000 to CHF 110,000 per year, while the canton's support has risen from CHF 90,000 to CHF 100,000 per year.