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

The sextet was composed in 1924 for Janáček's 70th birthday Mládí as a suite in the rare instrumentation for flute, oboe, clarinet, bass clarinet, horn and bassoon. He added the bass clarinet to the classical wind quintet, which is strongly rooted in Czech music. Although the bass clarinet has a similar range to the bassoon, it is capable of a very idiosyncratic colorfulness, oscillating between noisy roughness and mysterious murmuring, and here it brings an even darker foundation to the work. The registers are now divided into two balanced descant, middle and low registers. The strong character of the individual instruments, with their oscillating tonal oscillations in the transitional areas of the registers, contribute greatly to the fascination of this work, which repeatedly recalls the opening passages of Sacre du Printemps where the same instruments dominate.

Transferring this score into the rather monochrome world of the string quartet with its homogeneous sound is a risk, as the arranger, the composer Kryštof Mařatka, notes self-critically. It is fair to say that this unusual but excellently crafted work is a new piece, which in turn has much in common with Janáček and his original string quartets. The first quartet, Kreutzer Sonata, was created in 1923 before Mládíthe second shortly before Janáček's death. In both, he uses instrumental and musical techniques that are unparalleled by other composers and make these works icons of expressionist classical modernism. It goes without saying that Mařatka studied these scores thoroughly and even took the liberty of incorporating some of the techniques he found into his string arrangement, even though the source material for wind instruments naturally does not contain them. This freedom of transformation may be criticized, but it makes it possible to bring the piece into the aesthetic proximity of the string quartets and to give it an originality that is modelled on Janáček. Fortunately, such experiments are no longer frowned upon as a matter of principle today, adding a new "little" family member to the canon of Janáček's quartets that is well worth hearing.

Leoš Janáček: Mládí / The Youth, arranged for string quartet by Kryštof Mařatka; parts, BA 11543, € 19.95; study score, TP 521, € 19.95; Bärenreiter, Prague 2017

The Basel composer Ernst Levy (1895-1981) first became widely known as a pianistic child prodigy. In the first half of the 20th century, he was even regarded as one of the most important pianists. He also received recognition as a music theorist, but his compositional output, which includes 15 symphonies as well as numerous pieces of chamber music and piano works, was hardly appreciated. In the USA, he pursued a university career as a professor of piano, which meant that he was not forced to compose in a particularly market-oriented manner and to take care of the performances of his works. The Sonata for flute and piano was created by Levy in 1932, but it was not premiered until 1939 at a concert in Carnegie Hall in New York with the composer himself at the piano.

The sonata, which consists of one movement and lasts just under 17 minutes, contains the classic three-movement structure in the order fast-slow-fast and is typical of Levy's compositional style, which he describes as follows: "The main characteristic of a sonata, which is inherent in its concept, is that of becoming, of development. We are not, so to speak, the same at the end of a work as we were at the beginning."

After an elegiac flute solo at the beginning, a gripping triplet motif is heard, which is accompanied by pulsating triplets from the piano. This is followed by cantilenas in both instruments, which are interwoven and imitate each other. It is interesting that the 4/4 meter written at the beginning is constantly changed so that, as the editor Timon Altwegg describes it, it soon seems like an ironic joke and a "constantly changing, quasi inhaling and exhaling musical organism" emerges from it. In the middle of the sonata follows a slow section with delicate piano passages and a cantilena by the flute, which is only sporadically accompanied by chords. It leads into a bold final section entitled "Vivo e leggiero", in which the opening motif is heard again in the flute shortly before the end of the piece.

With this sonata, Ernst Levy has created a multi-layered and interesting work that deserves a place in today's concerts.

Ernst Levy: Sonata for flute and piano, edited by Timon Altwegg, first edition, BP 2803, € 14.00, Amadeus-Verlag, Winterthur 2017

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

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.

The productivity of violinist Sebastian Bohren is almost unstoppable. By his own admission, he strives to approach a piece interpretatively in such a way that it ideally "sounds as it is". In the case of Dmitri Shostakovich's Sonata op. 134 (1968) also extends the framework for this.

Originally set for violin and piano and written for the violinist Igor Oistrakh, the piano part was later transferred to a large string orchestra plus percussion. A legitimate trick. Above all, however, it was an undertaking to which Sebastian Bohren and the Camerata Zürich under the direction of Igor Karsko devoted themselves with delightful playfulness at a concert in Brugg's Stadtkirche. This live recording for Sony Classical bears witness to this.

Shostakovich's Opus 134 is both a psychogram and a tonal document of the times. In 1968, the composer was also living in a climate of fear and oppression, and was also under the influence of the violent suppression of the Prague Spring. Conducted in a sparse twelve-tone sequence, the first movement no longer provides any emotional refuge due to the lack of a basic key. The second, fast movement unleashes a ghostly dance of death. The final movement then seems like a reduced conclusion - with idiosyncratic variations on a stoic passacaglia and cleverly adapted baroque borrowings.

The performers of this new recording are united by an audible desire for objectifying clarity: Sebastian Boren's playing stands at every moment as a shining fixed star at the center of the brilliantly captured sonic events. His tone radiates all the more forcefully from an inner calm and testifies to deep spiritual concentration. Often cool and lacking in vibrato, he condenses a laconic gesture in the exposed solo parts, but also claims an unshakeable sovereignty in the most heated, virtuosic outbursts. The Camerata Zürich, with its cuttingly precise and at the same time sensually breathing interplay, creates the best conceivable sound environment for the commendable undertaking of bathing Shostakovich's stirring late work in a "rejuvenated" interpretative light.

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.

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.