In addition to the acoustically high-quality rehearsal room in the former church hall of the First Church of Christ Scientist Basel, the new building offers opportunities for workshops and educational programs. The premises are not intended for concert performances. In addition, the offices of the SOB will also be located in the same building. The new rehearsal house can be used by other orchestras in addition to the SOB. The SOB will be responsible for subletting and managing the space in future.

The renovation is scheduled for completion at the end of 2019. This will allow the Basel Symphony Orchestra to begin rehearsals in the new premises together with the office in spring 2020.
 

Ever since Iannis Xenakis created the spatial sound composition Concret PH for 425 loudspeakers and John Cage's random sounds for American art galleries in the 1960s, countless experiments have been carried out with the aim of creating a meaningful relationship between music and architecture. Some with strategic planning such as the Music for a housewhich Stockhausen staged with fourteen assistant composers in Darmstadt in 1968, some rather casually and on an improvisational basis. "Making space acoustically tangible" is the all-encompassing formula. It implies that the composition renounces autonomous laws and tends towards "musique d'ameublement", as Erik Satie once ambiguously put it. The musical performance approaches the sound installation, and for the audience, situational perception takes precedence over structural or semantically related musical listening. In the case of half-baked concepts, this can end in banalities, but it can also lead to enlightening results.

The latter was the case with the sound event that Francesco Hoch performed on the last Saturday in August at a lofty height of 1700 meters above sea level on Monte Generoso. This was not only due to the carefully conceived music, but also to the architectural object to which the composition was functionally tailored: the "Fiore di pietra" (Stone Flower) building by architect Mario Botta. The ambitiously designed new mountain station of the cog railway with panoramic restaurant, exhibition and conference rooms was inaugurated last year and has since attracted excursionists, hikers and architecture enthusiasts from all directions.

View from above into the depths of the sound space. Photo: Max Nyffeler

In addition to an elevator, the four floors of the spherical building are connected by an artfully angled, daylight-bright staircase that opens up to the usable spaces in a variety of ways and constantly opens up new perspectives both inside and out. This visually and acoustically equally inspiring ambience was now the setting for the Colorazione musicale per il Fiore di pietrathe "musical coloring of the stone flower", as Francesco Hoch called his music. The sound action lasted half an hour and was repeated three times that afternoon.

The eight musicians required for the piece were distributed in pairs across the four floors: the low instruments cello and bassoon at the bottom by the entrance, oboe and piccolo at the top and the "middle" instruments violin, flute, clarinet and cor anglais in between. The staircase is separated from the outer wall on one side by a space around one and a half meters wide, which not only allows a view from top to bottom, but also creates the conditions for the sound to mix easily in the vertical. Thanks to this spatial permeability, the eight voices merged into a common sound sculpture that varies depending on the location. Walking up and down the four floors, you could experience how the horizontal layers of sound alternately came to the fore and then disappeared again in the overall sound, and anyone sitting down in one of the adjacent rooms perceived a kind of static distant sound that was only constantly changing in its inner structure.

Francesco Hoch with his score. Photo: Max Nyffeler

The composer had worked out a precise score for the eight performers. As is usual in such spatial sound experiments, the material is simply structured: short melodic phrases, mostly scale components or repetitive patterns that constantly change and form a kaleidoscope-like whole. However, durations and entries are precisely defined in the score, so that the overall course is formally structured; during the performance, coordination across the four floors was ensured by a click track. The half-hour composition is divided into three ten-minute parts according to the A-B-A' pattern. The parts with Petalo (petal), which form the compact frame, differ in their opposing dynamics and density ratios, and in their internal structural progressions they emulate the blossom-like forms of Botta's stone flower. In the three-part large form, the composition could perhaps be compared to a blossom that slowly closes and opens again.

Excerpt from the score by Francesco Hoch. Photo: Max Nyffeler

The three performances were followed by a panel discussion that focused neither on musical nor architectural issues, but on shared biographical experiences. The participants were all born in 1943, the same year as Francesco Hoch, and therefore 75 years old: a lawyer, a musician, a writer, a surgeon, a painter and the composer - all from Ticino. The only one missing was Mario Botta, who was currently in St. Petersburg. A generation that was actively involved in shaping the post-war decades from different perspectives and in very different fields looked back in an intelligent and inspiring way.

Francesco Hoch at musinfo.ch

The FHNW School of Music now consists of three institutes: School of Music|Classical Music (previously School of Music), School of Music|Jazz and School of Music|Schola Cantorum Basiliensis. The establishment of the institutes is intended to give jazz a more distinct profile in terms of content and funding, as well as its own development opportunities in teaching and research.

At the end of November/beginning of December, the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis is organizing a symposium on early music between historical sources and the aesthetic present under the title "Darf man das?" ("Is it allowed?") and is exploring the core question of its own work: the question of the conventions of historical performance practice in the context of contemporary culture.

At the beginning of September, a music education symposium will ask how inspired music lessons can succeed and in March, the first results of the Swiss National Science Foundation SNSF project of the same name will be presented at the symposium "Music and Migration" at the Hochschule für Musik, Klassik.

The Swiss jazz clarinettist, bassist and composer Paed Conca is active in numerous bands and projects. Since the early 1990s, he has been working with the Blast4tet (with Dirk Bruinsma, Frank Crijns and Fabrizio Spera), with whom he has recorded several albums. Praed is a duo with the Lebanese Raed Yassin, other duo formations of Conca are So nicht with Dani Lieder and Otholiten with Dirk Bruinsma.

Christian Kobi is a lecturer in improvised music at the Bern University of the Arts (HKB). Since 2003 he has been the initiator and artistic director of the festival for improvised music - zoom in. He is a member of the saxophone quartet Konus Quartett and co-founded the label for new music Cubus Records in 2006.

Sassy J, who presents the Patchwork Club Nights at the Dampfzentrale in Bern and has brought acts such as Steve Spacek, Little Dragon, J'Davey, PPP, Georgia Anne Muldrow and Slum Village to the federal city, also regularly plays internationally, including at the legendary Plastic People (COOP) in London and the Sonar Festival in Barcelona.

Björn Meyer is a Swedish bassist and composer. He collaborates with the Swiss composer and woodwind player Don Li, among others, and is an occasional guest lecturer at the conservatories in Stockholm, Zurich, Bern, Lucerne and Lausanne. His first solo album was released on ECM in fall 2017.
 

In an age of acoustic pollution, Deutsche Bahn is using music as a weapon, explains Christian Höppner, Secretary General of the German Music Council. Instead of providing sufficient staff to enforce the house rules and ensure safety, people are being overstimulated by continuous sound and thus kept away.

The claimed "perceived gain in security" is a farce and the eviction of homeless people and drug addicts has already not worked in Hamburg. This attempt to instrumentalize music in public spaces is unspeakable and discriminates against composers, regardless of the style.

The German Music Council is calling on Richard Lutz, Chairman of the Board of Deutsche Bahn, to put an end to this sound bombardment.

It is 14 square meters in size, this Tonhalle in miniature. Perhaps 20 people sit in it: four string players at the front of the stage, an estimated 16 in the audience. At the entrance to this beautifully put-together mini-concert hall, an actor moderates. He provides information about the "string quartet" with two violas, for example about the past of this "Henosode Quartet" in a student flat share. Between the mostly sparse sounds, the building is explained, which has special acoustics and a very special interior sound system. Then the performer Thomas Douglas repeatedly pulls the door open. He is annoyed by barking dogs or the seemingly endless ringing of the church bells of the village church in Rümlingen.

Art sometimes has a strange life of its own - this also applies to this Tonhalle project by Swiss composer and theater director Ruedi Häusermann. The disturbing environmental noises do not come from animals, churches or motorcycles, but from loudspeakers positioned around the Tonhalle. The theme is thus set. It's about inside and outside. Here the devoutly quiet concert hall, there the uncontrollable, sometimes annoying environment that intrudes into the sacred musical sphere. Häusermann makes the interplay amusing, but unfortunately too stretched out. The same or slightly varied gags come too often. What works at first becomes increasingly stale. It's a nice theme, just too long.
 

Long is also the sound hike as part of this year's Rümlingen motto "In scene. 7 landscape operas". The nature-loving excursion takes three and a half hours with steep climbs and very different music stations. A giant soprano (Eva Nievergelt) in a red robe stands at an altitude of around 750 meters. She sings excerpts from opera arias, short episodes from Arnold Schönberg's Expectationfrom George Bizet's famous opera Carmen or from Benjamin Britten's Peter Grimes. The fragments last barely longer than 1 minute. They are accompanied by an accordionist who, hidden under Nievergelt's dress, plays sounds by Swiss composer Mischa Käser. It all sounds sparse, reduced, not exactly cheerful. The operatic swansong character is matched by the costumes scattered around the forest: worn-out clothes from an apparently bygone era with cassette recorders inside. They should sound lo-fi, the noisy recordings of operas from the last few centuries, says Mischa Käser. He has imagined the empty costumes as extinct opera singers, so to speak; what remains is the live singer as the last representative of a dying genre.

About 50 meters below Mischa Käser's whimsical but very successful opera fragments, the play In the forest by Manos Tsangaris. The main characters are a percussionist and a singer. First there are verbal and non-verbal musical dialogs between the two near the audience. Then the large forest space comes into play. The singer moves away and continues to sing, strolling through the forest. Figures scurry back and forth behind trees, timpanists stand ten to twenty meters away. Tsangaris is a multi-talent. He incorporates lighting effects, which unfortunately do not come into their own in bright light. Nevertheless, this forest scene also makes an impression.
 

Photo: Kathrin Schulthess

Eva Nievergelt as the last representative of a dying genre in Mischa Käser's opera fragments

No, it's not boring in Rümlingen. The festival not only offers space in the forest, but also freedom. Composers such as the young Italian Clara Ianotta enjoy the fact that they can experiment far away from predetermined concert formats, which are usually determined by instrumentation, duration and frontal presentation in front of a seated audience. The Rümlingen concept emphasizes above all the changed listening situation. Yes, it makes a big difference whether your body is involved, whether you are physically exhausted and can simply look at the mountains and clouds. The Austrian composer Peter Ablinger makes a special point of listening outdoors. Seven of his so-called "Bedouin tent cubes" stand at the edge of the forest. The sides of the square wooden frames are covered with fluttering white fabric sheets. Inside are carpets that give free rein to the imagination. Without art and operatic heaviness, you can simply gaze at the clouds, think of Gustav Mahler, Beethoven's Pastoral or - even if it is the Swiss forest - Richard Wagner's Forest weaving.

The report by the Federal Statistical Office on the Cultural behavior in Switzerland (An in-depth analysis - 2008 surveyNeuchâtel 2011) states: "In Switzerland, one in five people plays a musical instrument" and adds that almost half of the Swiss population (47 %) have completed at least one year of non-professional music training. This means that around 43 % of former music students go on to continue making music.

However, the investment of public funds cannot be justified by the musical activity in adulthood alone, but primarily by the gain in musicality and culture. If former pupils listen to music more frequently and consciously, they contribute to the preservation and further development of the musical tradition and its dissemination.

The CAS study (Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts - Music) Long-term effects of instrumental and vocal teaching at music schools examined the sustainability of music lessons using a sample of people who were enrolled at the Olten Music School or were members of the youth music program in the 2004/2005 school year. A total of 99 out of 491 people invited took part in the survey.

Compared to the above-mentioned federal statistics on cultural behavior in Switzerland, 63 % of the former students are still musically active today. It is also noteworthy that 8 % of the people who took part in the survey earn their living from music today. However, it was mainly people interested in music who took part in the survey.
 

Of the participants, 80 % were members of an ensemble in the 2004/2005 school year; most of them (66 %) played in an ensemble at music school or in youth music, the rest with friends or family.

Ensemble activity at music school is not in itself an indicator of later music-making, alone or with others. However, people who have already made music privately with friends and family members at school are very likely to continue doing so as adults, because making music with friends has a special intrinsic motivation that continues into adulthood. This is not an argument against promoting ensembles at the music school itself, but the creation of infrastructure (rehearsal rooms) or performance opportunities for private bands and ensembles should also increase the sustainability of music lessons.

Music lessons as part of education are very popular with the participants: 90 % stated that they would like their own children to take lessons at music school if the opportunity arose: a strong vote for its importance.

According to the participants in the study, the benefits of music lessons are not limited to musical skills: The acquisition of discipline and concentration was mentioned almost as frequently as the learning of practical music skills and music theory knowledge. In addition, they described musical and cultural education, performance skills and the ability to focus as important contributions of instrumental lessons to their personal development.
 

According to the laudation, Vital Julian Frey stands for "technical brilliance and ease". With his openness to experimental and open-minded working methods, he brings his instrument closer to a wide range of audiences, according to the cultural commission's reasons for awarding the music prize to Vital Frey. The prize money amounts to 10,000 francs.

Frey lives and works in Steffisburg. As a soloist, his concert activities have taken him to the most important international stages and festivals. He has performed at the Lucerne Festival and the Rheingau Music Festival. In 2016, the busy musician took over the directorship of the Bachwochen Thun. Vital Julian Frey is also an ensemble leader, teaches at the Thun Region Music School, is an organist and cultural representative of the Reformed parish in Steffisburg. In 2000, he was awarded the Cultural Promotion Prize of the City of Thun.

George Steinmann grew up in Thun and lives and works in Bern. The visual artist, musician and researcher studied painting, music and Afro-American studies in Basel and San Francisco. He has been active as a musician on tours and at festivals in Europe since 1966 with his own bands and with well-known musicians such as Mike Henderson.

The City of Thun awards the Grand Culture Prize in recognition of outstanding cultural achievements of supra-regional importance. The Grand Culture Prize is endowed with CHF 15,000.

Klosters and Davos are separated by just thirteen kilometers by car and four hundred meters in altitude. There has been a music festival in Davos for 33 years now, and Klosters also founded one a year ago. On the first Saturday in August, Klosters comes to an end and Davos begins at the same time. Can that work? Most probably yes. Admittedly, there still seems to be a slight lack of good neighborly communication, and it has been said here and there that these summer festivals in the Alps are slowly coming to an end; but firstly, the program concepts of Davos and Klosters are completely different, so that they don't steal each other's thunder, and secondly, the market is far from being oversaturated. The classical music audience, often apostrophized as conservative, is extremely keen to travel during the vacation season and appreciates listening to music in a different environment, close to nature and away from the stress of everyday urban life.

So the people in charge in Klosters thought it was a good idea to add a new company with its own face to the established festivals in Verbier, Gstaad and neighboring Davos. The festival is supported by a local initiative group, around sixty volunteers ensure that everything runs smoothly and the budget of around 600,000 francs is largely financed by private individuals. After a trial run limited to one weekend last year, the program this time presented nine orchestral, chamber music and soloist concerts with works ranging from baroque to easily digestible modern classical music. Preference is given to performances in a traditional concert setting with internationally renowned names that guarantee a high standard of interpretation, including Swiss performers; experiments such as those in Davos are avoided. The halls, a multi-purpose hall with five hundred seats and the old village church with three hundred seats, as well as the very spacious showroom in the studio house of visual artist Christian Bolt, were filled to over eighty percent capacity on average. A kind of welcome tent has also been set up at the station, where people can meet informally and listen to alternative sounds ranging from jazz to folk music during the day.
 

Many of the wealthy visitors come to Klosters for a long weekend, and the catchment area extends beyond Switzerland to Vienna. However, the regular visitors are vacation guests and second home owners from Klosters and the surrounding area, including a striking number from England. English is practically the second language not only in the village, but also at the festival, which is also reflected in the name: Klosters Music Festival. Prince Charles, who has been spending his winter vacations here for decades, has written a foreword for the program booklet, and where the royals have their blessing, nothing can really go wrong.

The locals have recognized the advantage of this English connection and have hired a top-class artistic director in David Whelton, the long-time, now retired artistic director of the London Philharmonia Orchestra. Just as Martin Engström was able to make use of his connections to the record industry when setting up the Verbier Festival, Whelton is now also drawing on the artist contacts from his time with the orchestra. He is assisted by Raluca Matei, manager of the Camerata Zurich, as head of organization.
 

Photo: Max Nyffeler

Setting up the two grand pianos in the Christian Bolt artist studio for the Lithuanian piano duo Vilija Poskute & Tomas Daukantas

The pianist Nikolai Luganski, the Tetzlaff Trio and the Lithuanian piano duo Vilija Poskute & Tomas Daukantas set striking accents in this year's program. The Bernese early music ensemble Les Passions de l'âme with its director Meret Lüthi gave an exciting insight into the heyday of the Austrian Baroque with works by Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber, Johann Joseph Fux and father and son Schmelzer. Some pieces referred to the Turkish siege of Vienna and the liberation in 1683 with the help of the Polish cavalry - program music with the noise of battle, the patter of horses and victory chorales. Accompanied by the Basel Chamber Orchestra, Russian soprano Julia Lezhneva shone with arias from the opera seria period; she is still the intonation-sure trilling lark she was at the beginning of her career around 2010, when she first appeared with Marc Minkowski in Salzburg, even if her feather-light soprano voice has since tended more towards mezzo.

The final highlight was two evenings dedicated to Robert Schumann with the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen under Paavo Järvi. With a passionate interpretation of three symphonies, the cello concerto played with devotion by Steven Isserlis and the rarely programmed concert piece for four horns and orchestra, with the quartet German Hornsound as soloists, the Bremen orchestra filled the audience with enthusiasm. However, they also showed the limits of the hall's acoustics, both upwards and downwards: In the orchestral fortissimo, the transparency of the sound diminishes, and in quiet passages, the ventilation plays an unmistakable part. In order for the festival to fully exploit its undoubted future potential, additional investment in infrastructure is probably unavoidable.

In addition to top-class interpretations, the Swiss Stradivari Quartet is always characterized by creative and unusual concert forms and venues. This was also evident at the recently concluded Stradivari festival in Gersau and the surrounding area. It opened with the Mythenkonzert in the Mythensaal of the Waldstätterhof Hotel in Brunn. The cellist and leader of the quartet, Maja Weber, made an excellent start with Sergei Rachmaninov's Sonata in G minor op. 19 as a duo with pianist Per Lundberg and - expanded into a trio by violinist Xiaoming Wang - with Franz Schubert's Trio in B flat major D 898.

At the concert in the parish church in Gersau, the Stradivari Quartet, completed by Sebastian Bohren, violin, and Lech Uszynski, viola, presented a tried and tested combination of works with Maurice Ravel's and Claude Debussy's string quartets. Between the two French compositions, the Trois pièces pour quatuor à cordes by Igor Stravinsky provided a refreshing and invigorating contrast that probably even irritated some members of the audience. However, the standing ovation at the end of the concert also made it clear that they had experienced an excellently interpreted musical program.
 

At the matinee on Rigi Scheidegg, the Stradivari Quartet played tangos by Astor Piazzolla on a stylized ark with a 360-degree panoramic view. Unusual concert environments always offer the opportunity for unusual musical experiences. This, and not the cheap attempt to be "different", is the reason why the quartet does not shy away from surprising concert venues. It goes without saying that the different performance conditions often pose challenging interpretational demands. However, the audience felt none of this.

The Gersau lake stage and the evening atmosphere over Lake Lucerne provided the setting for the Serenade on the Lake with Felix Mendelssohn's String Quartet in A minor op. 13 and Franz Schubert's Octet for clarinet, horn, bassoon, string quartet and double bass in F major D 803. The fascinating ensemble of nature, outstanding compositions and inspired and committed performers provided a musical experience of a special kind: intimate chamber music, passages of symphonic gesture, virtuoso and sometimes brilliant solo performances as well as audible and visible, clever dialogue and communication alternated.

The concerts at Tell's Chapel and on the Rütli, Switzerland's most famous meadow, were also characterized by the respective genius loci. At the former, for example, a version of the overture to Gioacchino Rossini's opera William Tell and on the Rütli, true to the concert motto "Musical Swiss Delicacies", works by Adolf Reichel (Walk(String Quartet No. 2 in C major) by the composer Othmar Schoeck from Brunner and other Swiss composers. As a musical reference to the four cantons around Lake Lucerne, folk music pieces from Uri, Schwyz, Unterwalden and Lucerne were specially arranged for the Rütlikon concert. "Can and should we do that?", chamber music purists may ask. The answer in both cases is yes, if the result is presented so respectfully and coherently and the concert circumstances invite it. In any case, there was not a trace of ingratiating folksiness to be heard.

The Gersau Nauen "Republik" offered another very unconventional concert platform. The audience on the traditional former transport barge was joined by 70 other people who had traveled from China especially for the so-called Stradivariclass as part of the Gersau Stradivarifest. They listened to the sounds of the quartet on board a social boat moored on the "high seas" at Nauen. Once again, it was interesting to experience works in an environment that allowed different facets of the compositions to be experienced than in the usual concert venues. This exploration of acoustic potentials and extra-musical effects on perception is a matter close to the Stradivari Quartet's heart.
 

Photo: Denise Gerth

Tangos in the Arche on the Rigi Scheidegg

The musicians of the quartet and pianist Per Lundberg offered lessons for talented children and young people from China for the first time under the Stradivariclass label. The 30 or so pupils experienced a true master class atmosphere in individual lessons. Here and by attending concerts with their teachers, they learned some of the secrets of successful professional musicians. The young Chinese talents presented what they had learned in a concert at the Parkhotel Vitznau. With this new offering, the Stradivari Quartet, which tours China, Korea and other Asian countries several times a year, provided a platform for an exciting artistic, social and cultural exchange. It is to be hoped that this latest commitment will be repeated in the coming years. Allow the author one idea: What if the quartet members were to offer coaching for young string quartets or trios?

Since taking office in March 2011, Michael Kaufmann has "significantly shaped and developed" the Department of Music at Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts in terms of content, culture, strategy and organization, the university writes.

Under his leadership, forward-looking projects have been implemented in the four service areas of training, continuing education, research and services, cooperation with partners in the field and third-party donors has been greatly intensified and the course has been set for the opening of the new music building at the Südpol site in Kriens in 2020.

In addition, as Head of Interdisciplinarity, Michael Kaufmann has been a strong advocate for cross-university topics. In this area, which is particularly important in the strategy of the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts, he dedicated himself to the development and expansion of the interdisciplinary focus areas and currently the two new interdisciplinary topic clusters "Space and Society" and "Digital Transformation of the Working World".

As the Fondation Suisa writes on its website, musicians should now receive grants to enable them to work, develop and evolve without financial pressure. The focus is not necessarily on the result of the work on a particular piece, but rather the contribution should be a stimulus for something new. In this way, the foundation is moving away from the usual award criteria and looking to the future.

While an expert jury awards a contribution of 80,000 francs every two years as part of the "Carte Blanche" project without a call for applications, applications can be submitted for "Get Going!". The Fondation Suisa awards four grants of CHF 25,000 each per year. The award is aimed at authors, writers and musicians who can demonstrate a clear connection to current Swiss or Liechtenstein music creation.

This year, the application deadline is August 31. You can only apply online:

https://www.fondation-suisa.ch/de/werkbeiträge/get-going
 

Franziska Burkhardt is currently the managing director of the Progr cultural center in Bern and will hand over this position at the end of October. She previously worked at the Federal Office of Culture. In addition to her work at the Progr, she led the process of developing the city's new cultural strategy on behalf of Bern's municipal council, the city's executive body. Her task will be to represent Bern as a city of culture in all its facets, both internally and externally, with a high-profile cultural policy, forward-looking cultural promotion and open dialog.

The handover between the previous head of department Veronica Schaller and Franziska Burkhardt as of February 1, 2019 is geared towards the current renewal of the four-year contracts between the city and its cultural institutions: By the end of January 2019, Veronica Schaller will have completed the key cultural policy dossier "Priorities and use of funds 2020 to 2023" on the administrative side.
 

At the heart of the "Cultural agents - for creative schools" project are so-called cultural agents who are deployed at participating schools over a period of four years. The agents are familiar with culture, are often artists themselves and are experienced in working with children and young people. Their task is to develop and implement a comprehensive cultural education program together with the pupils, teachers, school management, parents, cultural professionals and cultural institutions. Six elementary schools per canton or cantonal association can participate.

The total cost of the project is CHF 4.3 million, of which CHF 3.4 million is covered by the Mercator Switzerland Foundation. The participating cantons cover the costs of the art fee, which amounts to CHF 12,500 per school and school year. The schools provide the necessary human resources and can voluntarily contribute additional funds to finance the projects at the schools.
 

Other festivals have an "Artist in Residence", Davos has an "Artist in Rest". This is exactly the kind of counterpoint and questioning that artistic director Reto Bieri is aiming for. He also has exactly the right person for this unique position: Patricia Kopatchinskaja. The radio asked: "When does she play?" - She doesn't play at all, but lets her violin rest. From time to time, she speaks on the festival's own radio station, Ruhe, on which "the current peace and quiet on site" can be heard: the trickling of water, barbecues on the Stafelalp, dishwashers in the Hotel Schweizerhof.

Patricia Kopatchinskaja is a phenomenon of calm for him, Bieri explains. They once played a piece together, something terribly difficult. He had practiced for half a year. When they met three days before the performance, the violinist confessed that she had not yet looked at the piece. They then went through it together, very slowly, and set it up. "Now I have to sleep," Kopatchinskaja then said. "We had hardly done anything," reports Bieri, "but when we met again in the evening, she had mastered the piece!"

This year's entire festival, entitled "Heute Ruhetag" ("Today's day of rest"), aims to track down tranquillity, or rather indulge in it. The subtitle "Young Artists in Concert" indicates what the festival has been doing since it was founded in 1986: it gives young musicians on the threshold of professional life the opportunity to work and perform in selected ensembles for two weeks.

The last concert I hear during my stay in Davos is a matinee in St. Paul's Church. It's called "Closed today because of death" and combines works by composers who had to deal with false or even deliberately falsified death notices. For example, an arrangement of the funeral music that Cherubini wrote on the death of Haydn. However, Joseph Haydn had not died at all, but his brother. The composer let it be known: "If I had known about the ceremony beforehand, I really would have traveled to Paris." Friedrich Gulda, the eccentric composer and pianist, had forbidden obituaries and then tested whether the press would adhere to them with a false death announcement. The Geza Anda Prize winner Claire Huangci, who plays some of his short pieces with great verve, reproduces this rebellious and stubborn spirit.

I'm sitting in the gallery, surrounded by many young festival participants. They watch attentively as their colleagues play. When Thomas Reif, Ruiko Matsumoto and Michael Schöch tackle the last movement of Haydn's C major Piano Trio Hob XV:27 very quickly, a murmur goes through the rows, which turns into enthusiastic applause at the end. Because the three of them bring their breakneck speed to the finish with joy, mischief and precision.

In conversation with the person sitting next to me, I want to know what she will take home with her - apart from her musical progress. The young violinist Maria Elisabeth Köstler doesn't have to think twice: "Less is more! Both in a program and in the work." She has already taken part in various summer academies. Not only was the accommodation often precarious, she also had to rehearse and perform in five different ensembles. It was hectic and the result was unsatisfactory. Here, on the other hand, you sometimes have a day off to go hiking or make music with others. You can really get to know each other in the chamber music group. This is exactly what Reto Bieri strives for. He emphasizes that he thinks very carefully about who he wants to bring together with whom. And in the end, the audience can also sense this fine-tuning.

Köstler mentions another important experience: "How to create coherent programs in which everything relates to each other." There is indeed a lot to learn in Davos. The titles and cross-references are not just decoys in the program booklet. In the concerts, narrator Tom Tafel and Reto Bieri himself tie literature, local and world history together with the music to form plausible packages. Goethe's "Über allen Gipfeln ist Ruh" is hiked from the stone desert on the Jakobshorn to the valley - with appropriate music at every stop. Thus integrated, the audience also responds curiously to impositions, for example when the event, which is supposed to be a short echo of the hike, ends at around ten o'clock with the announcement that the concluding piano work by Morton Feldman lasts 70 minutes! Of course, not everyone stays, but it's no problem if some of the audience prefer the peace and quiet of their own homes. In the first days of the festival, Feldman's six-hour String Quartet No. 2 with the note: "Entry and exit possible at any time." Finches were available so that the public could enter quietly.

The chamber opera, which will be performed on the first weekend of the festival, is rather noisy and has already been rehearsed in advance due to the lengthy preparation time. The choice of subject matter is immediately apparent from the theme of tranquillity: Tim Krohn's episodic tale From the life of a top-quality mattress. In eight stages from 1935 to 1992, people love and play, argue and suffer on a mattress. What in the book expands into a kind of kaleidoscope of the 20th century by concentrating on small episodes does not quite succeed in Leo Dick's musical theater version of the same name. The means and techniques used are too mixed and not specific enough.

Reto Bieri on the road with Goethe's "Über allen Gipfeln ist Ruh". Photo: © Yannick Andrea

"A festival has to grow out of the location, it has to have something to do with the place and the people, otherwise there's no point." Bieri took over the management in Davos five years ago with this conviction. That's why the festival titles are always verbal finds from the area. Even more important: the people from the village and the vacation guests should be involved. The open singing, for example, developed from this endeavor. In the beginning, only a few people came, but it has since become a popular, in some cases downright longed-for part of the festival weeks. The festival as a whole, previously perhaps more of a private event for people from the lowlands, has opened up. But as much as Bieri has the audience in mind, he doesn't see himself as a selfless mediator: "Now I'm going to say something provocative: I actually did everything just for myself! And not to be successful, but because I enjoy every little detail! I have the feeling that by doing it for myself, it can also be appreciated by others."

So why is Reto Bieri leaving after five years? "We've really made a difference here, not just me, the whole team. Now we have to manage it. New things are coming. And if I can breathe, then I'll breathe elsewhere too." From next year, pianist Olivier Schnyder will head the Davos Festival.