It is not every day that an editor critically scrutinizes his own edition and openly admits mistakes. Three years ago, when Christoph Flamm published Mussorgsky's Pictures of an exhibition in a new edition, he had some old readings corrected on the basis of a Soviet facsimile. However, these new variants were difficult to understand and critics reacted skeptically, especially as the facsimile was barely legible in places (see also SMZ 3/2014, page 24).

In his introduction to the work, Christoph Flamm now retracts these new readings. A sympathetic move! And that's not the only thing to praise: On almost 180 pages, the booklet provides just about everything worth knowing about Mussorgsky's unique piano cycle. It starts with Viktor Hartmann, whose paintings at a memorial exhibition were the direct inspiration for the work. They cannot always be clearly assigned to Mussorgsky's subjects. (For example, the portrait of an Italian peasant was long mistaken for the poor Jew "Schmuyle"). It is about the influential art critic Vladimir Stasov, to whom Mussorgsky dedicated his work. And, of course, it is about the music itself.

This leads to interesting cross-comparisons with other Russian compositions from that time. The linguistic ambiguity of some of the headings (e.g. Bydło) is also discussed, and even old metronome markings were tracked down. These apparently come from Stassow and are at least partly astonishing (120 for the quarters in Baba-Jaga?). In addition, there are references to the reception and thus of course also to the numerous transcriptions, of which Ravel's orchestral version still remains the dominant one. Flamm makes all these interesting facts read like a thriller, and the excellent illustrations do the rest.

In short: this paperback is a must for anyone who wants to delve deeper into Mussorgsky's immortal piano cycle!

Christoph Flamm: Modest Mussorgsky. Pictures at an Exhibition - Memories of Viktor Hartmann, Bärenreiter Werkeinführungen, 178 p., € 14.95, Bärenreiter, Kassel 2016, ISBN 978-3-7618-2221-0

As team players, many choir directors are of course also familiar with the Champions League opening music, which Zadok the Priest (HWV 258) from the Coronation Anthems by George Frideric Handel as the official anthem. In addition to this intense, 6-minute work, Bärenreiter Verlag has now also published The King shall rejoice (HWV 260, duration approx. 12 minutes) in the Urtext of the Halle Handel Edition. Handel wrote the festive, richly orchestrated and magnificent four Coronation Anthems (total duration approx. 40 minutes) on the occasion of George the Second's coronation in London in 1727. The English musicologist and contemporary Charles Burney once described its overwhelming splendor of sound both aptly and flippantly as the "great woof-woof style". It is to be hoped that the other two, less well-known Anthems will also soon be published in such a fantastic new edition (orchestral material, piano reduction and score) to provide oratorio choirs with further alternatives to the well-known Messiah to give.

With the Missa votiva by Bach's contemporary Jan Dismas Zelenka, which is unfortunately performed far too little, has been published by Breitkopf & Härtel in another highly recommended Urtext edition. The performance material is based on the scholarly-critical editions of the series The heritage of German music, from which the informative preface and critical report are also taken. Zelenka's masses are spectacular masterpieces of Baroque choral literature, which in their colorful variety are in no way inferior to the works of Johann Sebastian Bach. This 70-minute mass with its slim orchestration (2 oboes, strings and basso continuo) is the ideal find for ambitious chamber choirs looking for something special oratorically.

The famous Great Mass in C minor (KV 427) by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart undoubtedly fits into a musical-historical line between Bach's Mass in B minor and Beethoven's Missa solemnis. It was published this year by Carus-Verlag in an exemplary new edition. Unfortunately, as Mozart's most personal and largest-scale mass, the opus remained unfinished and, as a torso, has posed many puzzles ever since. For this reason, there have been numerous attempts to complete, edit and even recompose the fragment in the course of its reception history.

Now the musicologist Uwe Wolf from Carus-Verlag and the well-known conductor Frieder Bernius have joined forces and created a version that sets new standards in a congenial collaboration between scholarship and practice - something that is unfortunately practiced far too rarely. With great respect for the existing sources, this new edition continues the tradition of the versions by Eder, Beyer and Maunder of not adding any new movements to the torso, be it through the so-called parody method or original compositions, as in the versions by Wilby, Levin or Koopman. Particularly refreshing are the newly added trumpets and timpani in the Credo and the reorganization and careful correction of the counterpoint in the Osanna. In addition to the complete performance material, there is also an elegant facsimile booklet for better allocation of the additions/arrangements and an excellent CD recording with the Kammerchor Stuttgart under Bernius (Carus CD 83.284).

George Frideric Handel: Zadok the priest. Coronation Anthem HWV 258, edited by Stephan Blaut; score BA 10258, € 14.95; piano reduction BA 10258-90, € 4.95; Bärenreiter, Kassel 2016

id.: The King shall rejoice; score BA 10259, € 24.95; piano reduction BA 10259-90, € 10.95

Jan Dismas Zelenka: Missa votiva ZWV 18, edited by Reinhold Kubik; score PB 5577, € 89.00; piano reduction EB 8053, € 19.90; Breitkopf & Härtel, Wiesbaden 2016

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Missa in c KV 427, completed and edited by Frieder Bernius and Uwe Wolf, score CV 51.651/00, € 85.00; piano reduction CV 51.651/03, € 16.00; facsimile booklet CV 51.651/02, € 29.80; Carus, Stuttgart 2017

The book title Profession conductor is unspectacular. And this is exactly how the author presents himself with his language: direct, clear, comprehensible and hard on the subject, therefore with many details that are enlightening for the concertgoer, because in many intermission conversations one can learn how vague the knowledge about what happens "behind the scenes" and about the conditions of the concert business often is. Ralf Weikert, born in St. Florian (Austria) in 1940, who trained in Linz and Vienna (with Hans Swarovsky) and became chief conductor in the then German capital Bonn at the age of twenty-eight, was also chief conductor at the Zurich Opera House for almost ten years (1983-92) and has lived in Switzerland for a long time. He deliberately speaks of a profession, not a vocation - and of course he also means female conductors, as he emphasizes in the foreword - what a relief that the tedious double entendres are dispensed with!

Weikert focuses on the craft and thus the everyday aspects of this demanding and fascinating activity. In his remarks, he is thinking primarily of aspiring conductors and musicians and explains that much of this can be learned and that a convincing repertoire of works can only be kept ready to play with a lifetime of intensive work; however, he also shows that certain prerequisites must be fulfilled in order to be able to meet the requirements.

He then deals with the individual problem areas in a clearly structured manner, first in the music itself and the associated sheet music - this is also clearly documented with inserted score pages -, then he devotes himself to the music business, the acoustics in various rooms and the orchestral set-up; furthermore, he clearly distinguishes between the situation of the opera or concert conductor. He has extensive experience in both areas, having conducted at the Met in New York, in San Francisco, in Korea, in Japan and in many renowned opera houses and concert halls in Europe. He also addresses the current problem of the dominance of opera direction over music, giving numerous, mostly negative examples, but never loses his composure and subsumes them under "imponderables". A few succinct but nicely formulated memories of unexpected events and encounters are also included when he talks about the most beautiful profession he can imagine. However, the "feu sacré" cannot be learned.

Ralf Weikert: Beruf Dirigent, with disco/videography, index of persons, 189 p., hardcover, € 19.99, Böhlau, Vienna and others 2017, ISBN 978-3-205-20530-2

According to the study, one in four young people between the ages of 12 and 19 regularly make music (24%). This puts music-making in fourth place among the most popular non-media leisure activities among young people, ahead of attending sporting events (15 percent) or parties (5 percent). Making music is significantly more popular with girls (29%) than with boys (18%).

A long-term comparison of the last ten years (2007 to 2017) shows that making music is one of the few activities that has increased in popularity among young people (plus 5%). Only activities with the family show a higher increase (plus 14%). However, a closer look also shows that young people at lower secondary schools (15 percent) are significantly less active in making music than those at grammar schools (28 percent).

On the award-winning CD, Edoardo Torbianelli, lecturer in fortepiano and historical performance practice at the HKB, plays the piano/wind quintets by Mozart and Beethoven on the fortepiano together with the Ensemble Freitagsakademie Bern. The ensemble performed live on Radio France on the gala evening alongside other famous names in classical music.

Founded in 1993, the Freitagsakademie Bern is under the artistic direction of Katharina Suske. It plays music from the 17th to the early 19th century, each on instruments of the respective era and in various formations. The permanent core of musicians includes Leila Schayegh (violin), Vital Julian Frey (harpsichord), Balasz Maté and Daniel Rosin (violoncello), Jonathan Rubin (lute) and Jan Krigovsky (violone).

Herren is a graduate of the MA Music Pedagogy. He received the prize for his musical integration project Music without borders. In three workshops for music, rhythm and dance, interested asylum seekers from asylum centers in the Bern area were taught musical content, which was finally performed together with the KMB youth wind orchestra in the packed Kulturcasino Bern.

Manuel Herren has used the "unifying language" of music to build bridges for mutual understanding and to allow all participants to take part in a personal, cultural and musical exchange.

Website of the project: musikohnegrenzen.ch

The management of the Culture Department and the Culture Secretariat are to comprise a total of 120 full-time equivalents. The City of Aarau is advertising the position of the future head externally. The new head of department will also be responsible for all commissions in the cultural sector, which are also being restructured.

Other tasks include supporting budgeting and ensuring controlling functions, overseeing City Council business in the cultural sector and representing cultural issues within the city administration and vis-à-vis the City Council and third parties.

The city's cultural sector has grown over the last twenty years. Aarau has developed into a city of culture and has made a name for itself with its cultural activities far beyond the borders of the canton and the country, writes the city. With the creation of the new department, "a strengthening of the organizational and management structures, a level-appropriate processing of specialist issues, the uniform processing of cross-sectional functions and increased organizational flexibility can be achieved".

Born in Aarau in 1988, Cinzia Catania grew up in Lenzburg and discovered her passion for jazz in the Jazzaar project. She studied for a year in Groningen with Dena DeRose, Alex Sipiagin, Don Braden and Mark Gross, among others. When Dena DeRose gave up her teaching position in Groningen, she decided to follow her teacher and mentor to Graz to continue her studies at the Jazz Institute of the University of Music and Performing Arts Graz.

In 2014, she completed her Bachelor's degree in jazz singing with Summa Cum Laude. This was followed by a master's degree in vocal pedagogy at Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts with Susanne Abbuehl, among others, which she successfully completed in 2016. She is currently completing her second master's degree in composition, also at Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts, with Ed Partyka and Dieter Ammann as her main lecturers.
 

The members of the band project Dana receive a sponsorship award for their exceptional musical talent. The lead singer from Biel writes soul-pop songs herself and performs them with her band. The 20-year-old's remarkable voice, together with the energetic music of the four-piece band, wowed the audience, according to the citation.

Dana Burkard has been studying music and singing in London since this fall. However, she regularly returns to Bern and is working with the band on the release of her new CD, which is due to be released in 2018.

Before the actual founding meeting, the members of the Swiss Association of Musicians (STV), the Swiss Music Syndicate (SMS) and the Swiss Musicians' Association (MSS) met. They each individually decided by an overwhelming majority to merge to form "Sonart - Musikschaffende Schweiz" as of January 1, 2018. All formal agenda items and the approval of the founding minutes were passed without opposition, swiftly and with great approval.

The new interdisciplinary association for (primarily) freelance musicians has around 1,600 members and will be led by an interim presidency until the first ordinary general meeting in spring 2018: Käthi Gohl Moser (STV), Christoph Trummer (MSS) and Marianne Doran (SMS). The other Board members are Christian Kobi and Dragos Tara (STV), Salomé Christiani and Jaël Malli (MSS) and Anja Illmaier and Matthias Spillmann (SMS).

Once the new association has been consolidated, one of its main tasks will be to provide profession-specific services for freelance musicians - in line with the requirements of the Federal Office of Culture for the eligibility of cultural organizations to receive support. In addition to other activities such as information, representation and safeguarding interests, three specialist commissions (new music/composition, jazz/impro, pop/rock/electro) will deal in greater depth with the association's previously specific content-related concerns.

A black and a red grand piano stand on the stage of the Lucerne Hall in the Lucerne Culture and Convention Center (KKL). Every seat is already taken an hour before the opening of Piano Off-Stage. The presentation of the eight jazz and blues pianists, who also play in Lucerne hotel bars on the evenings, has been a cult event of the week-long Lucerne Festival Piano since its introduction in 2003. Here you can sit around the pianists free of charge and watch them improvise. You can even take your beer to your seat. Alessandro d'Episcopo is the first pianist to enter the ring. With the quiet jazz number dedicated to his daughter Lunita the evening starts on a contemplative note before the classically trained pianist Ayako Shirasaki from New York develops more swing. The audience did not experience a battle of vanities on stage, but a friendly atmosphere and a wide stylistic range between jazz, blues, boogie-woogie and ragtime. The young Swiss Maurice Imhof presented a grooving James Bond medley, while Lluís Coloma from Barcelona turned the piano into a pounding rhythm machine with virtuoso bass lines and accentuated chords. Things get even more exciting when presenter Andreas Müller-Crepon mixes two pianists together for sessions. It's improvised fun with fascinating musical dialogs before they stroll back to the bar arm in arm after their work is done. At the very end, all eight pianists stand and sit at the two grand pianos and play a blues together. Creative jostling on the keyboards! And the audience marvels and enjoys.

The recital by Güher and Süher Pekinel also features two (black) concert grand pianos on the stage of the large hall. The Turkish twin sisters have been among the top international piano duos since the 1980s. Unlike their colleagues, they do not sit opposite each other when playing, but offset to one side. Without eye contact, they rely solely on their ears when playing together. Güher Pekinel's powerful inhalation on the first piano is enough - then the two sisters start playing Mozart's Sonata for two pianos in D major KV 448 together with millisecond precision. It's fascinating how congruent the unison passages and final chords are. With Martha Argerich, Evgeny Kissin and Daniil Trifonov, this year's fall offshoot of the summer festival once again presents exceptional artists from the piano scene. The so-called Keyboard Day, which combines three recitals with a lecture by Martin Meyer on Debussy interpretation, is an attempt to reach a different audience through lower admission prices and shorter concerts. The debut series with Beatrice Rana, Aglaia Graf and Christopher Park in St. Luke's Church, which takes place at midday, is also more casual. There is no champagne here, but "only" good music from young talents. Christopher Park has already played at the Freiburg Tent Music Festival this summer and has just made his debut with the SWR Symphony Orchestra with Mozart's A major concerto KV 488. The German-Korean pianist is a clever designer who always strikes a narrative tone in his playing. The work composed for him Trurl-Tichy-Tinkle (2016) by Olga Neuwirth is a virtuoso play with contrasts, which Park celebrated with relish in the well-filled Lukaskirche. In Stravinsky's Petrushka the daredevil pianist imagines an entire orchestra at the grand piano. Only in Franz Liszt's one-movement Dante Sonata does he pile up the mountains of chords too high. In the many fortissimo passages, the piano sound becomes hard and metallic. There is a lack of nuances and the right balance.

The Venezuelan pianist Gabriela Montero is a good example of how sensitively one can deal with color nuances and dynamic differentiation. Her Children's scenes by Robert Schumann are bright, authoritative miniatures. Her interpretation of the second Shostakovich sonata combines relentless motor skills with powerful but never brutal outbursts of sound. The pianist has become known for her improvisations. A visitor sings the Swiss folk song from the gallery of the KKL There on the Bärgli, there stands a white ghost. Montero plays the melody twice before turning the theme to a minor key and taking it apart piece by piece. Bachian counterpoint meets the highest art of variation. Montero constantly invents new characters before she charmingly summarizes the whole thing and brings it to a heroic conclusion. The Mexican revolutionary song La Cucaracha treats them in a similar and yet completely different way. In the end, she ends up with ragtime - and could easily keep up with her jazz colleagues. Before the concert, Rossano Sportiello had already demonstrated at the red grand piano in the foyer how to play Beethoven's Ode to joy to a relaxed jazz ballad.

According to the canton's press release, Sonja Kuhn and Katrin Grögel cover the profile for the management of the Culture Department due to their respective professional backgrounds and broad experience. Sonja Kuhn was previously deputy head of the Culture Department and Katrin Grögel was responsible for cultural projects in the Culture Department.

With the top-sharing model, the Department of Presidential Affairs is responding "to socio-political changes and to the demands of highly qualified employees to take on responsibility in management functions as part-time employees". Sonja Kuhn and Katrin Grögel will each work 70 percent of the time. They will be jointly responsible for all management decisions and transactions in the Culture Department. Mutual deputization is also integrated into the model.

For artists who receive a grant from the city or canton of Zurich and can prove that they pay 6 percent of the grant into the tied pension scheme, the funding bodies will make a contribution of the same amount in addition to the grant. This regulation applies to work years, work contributions, work scholarships and open-space contributions. It applies from a support contribution of at least CHF 10,000 per year, funding body and artist.

The City and Canton of Zurich are also working with the cultural institutions they support to ensure that those working in the arts and culture are offered a pension solution from the first day and franc. When renewing decrees, agreements or subsidy contracts, the request to establish a binding pension scheme in their companies and projects is included. Project managers are invited to include contributions to the tied pension scheme under personnel costs in addition to social costs.

However, the contributions for cultural promotion will not be increased overall. This means that there are correspondingly fewer funds available for the direct support of creative artists and cultural projects. At first glance, this is painful, write the city and canton. However, if it is possible to "sensitize cultural workers to the issue and thus prevent them from becoming dependent on welfare in old age", then these investments will pay off in the long term.

The trio Puerta Sur consists of Marcela Arroyo (vocals), Andreas Engler (violin) and Daniel Schläppi (bass). Thomas Schläppi is also co-owner of the Catwalk label, on which the ensemble releases its recordings. The most recent is "Tres Mil Uno", which reduces orchestral world music from Argentina to chamber music format.

The BMW Welt Jazz Award has been presented in Munich since 2009. The first prize is endowed with 10,000 euros, the second with 5,000 euros. An audience prize is also awarded. Six ensembles perform in competition concerts between January and March. In 2014, the Swiss ensemble Hildegard lernt fliegen won first prize.

"The Bern symposium from September 13 to 16, 2017, was all about Beethoven, with not only the established research focus on interpretation at Bern University of the Arts (HKB), but in particular three current projects supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation providing the occasion and framework for the four-day forum: While the project "From Lecture to Interpretation" examines the transformation of interpretation practice using the example of Beethoven's solo piano works, "Annotated Scores" focuses on the conducting scores and orchestral materials with notes of those works that were important to Richard Wagner in his perspective on the conductor. A third research project, "Embodied Traditions of Romantic Musical Practice", deals with instructive 19th-century music editions in their description of practical musical details and attempts to transfer these to the present day using the "embodiment" method. Based on this thematically wide-ranging field, Beethoven's works and their interpretative realization were always the focus, but at the same time fundamental concepts and methods were clarified and aspects of arrangement as interpretation, organological questions and, last but not least, music-theatrical elements were considered. A total of forty-five lectures thus formed an informative whole - supplemented by concert lectures and film documentaries, which fitted perfectly into the program and at the same time pointed beyond it.

"The true reproduction is the X-ray photography of the work. Its task is to make visible all relations, moments of context, contrast, construction, which lie hidden beneath the surface of the sensual sound - by means of the articulation of the sensual appearance." - With these words by Theodor W. Adorno, Thomas Gartmann, Head of the Research Department at the HKB and the Bern Graduate School of the Arts, welcomed the musicologists, musicians and audience to the university's concert hall.

The first five lectures then focused entirely on 19th century piano music - together with the question: "What does interpretation mean, what can interpretation achieve?" John Rink (Cambridge) showed that interpretation is not only a field of tension between musical text and performance, but that "creative" performance of music should also be differentiated from pure interpretation, among other things by means of notation-specific peculiarities in Chopin's piano works. Despite this highly specific, sometimes idiosyncratic notation, the Chopin interpreter should, according to Rink, not neglect his own ingenuity - this is the only way to create interesting, but also questionable and therefore debatable interpretations. The two following presentations by Carolina Estrada Bascunana (Tokyo) and Manuel Bärtsch (Bern) were also dedicated to musical expression beyond the musical text. Both in the case of Enrique Granados' pupils and in various interpretations of Beethoven's op. 111, source-critical work with various editions, pedagogical handbooks and recording systems such as the Welte piano rolls proved to be indispensable in order to get close to the individual interpreter and to be able to place his or her playing style in a possible tradition. Common to both lectures was the critical perspective on the "sacred interpreter who moves in an auratic, metaphysical context" (Bärtsch) - a view that should be revised. While Georges Starobinski (Basel) also devoted himself to the last sonata op. 111, among other things, and dealt with the performance designation "semplice" in Beethoven in a fine and detailed presentation, Kai Köpp (Bern) focused on methodological approaches to interpretation research. The diverse genres of sources (user interfaces from organology, instructions, sound documents and moving images) examined in the various research projects at the HKB provided rich illustrative material for locating historical interpretation research between historical and systematic musicology.

László Stachó (Budapest) ventured into the 20th century by comparing recordings by pianists in the Liszt tradition such as Eugen d'Albert, Béla Bartók and Ernő Dohnányi with those of Igor Stravinsky and positioning their interpretations between a language-bound and a more metrical-structuralist approach. It was clear from the audio documents that Igor Stravinsky corresponded most closely to this objective approach to music-making, which was particularly characteristic of the period between the wars. However, Stachó did not stop at merely analyzing the interpretations; he also made the connection between the observed modernist aesthetics and "music as a spatially extended object": it was up to the interpreter to mediate between time and space and to decide whether to play with a broad or narrow structure. After a further contribution, which examined Anton Webern's music from the perspective of tempo and intonation, the audience was able to attend Robert Levin's (Boston) concert lecture, one of the highlights of the symposium. Under the title "Wende zur Moderne. Beethoven as the executor of C. Ph. E. Bach", the world-famous pianist and musicologist gave an eloquent, intense and direct musical and linguistic presentation. Starting with a performance of some of Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach's piano fantasies, he demonstrated their influence on composers such as Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven. Levin's synthesis of practice and reflection alone was highly impressive. However, the artist took the "turn to modernity" quite literally when he explicitly addressed the young participants and listeners, advocating a commitment to new music. After all, being involved as a performer in the performance of new repertoire means taking part in the writing of musical history.

Approaching the complex relationships between work, composer and performer, especially when the work was created decades ago, naturally requires conscientious methodological work. The second day of the symposium therefore focused on the diversity of these methods. Clive Brown (Leeds) addressed the gap between practice-oriented research and professional music-making: Many of today's commercial sound recordings would testify to little understanding of the relationship between notation and performance as this was seen by composer and performer in the 18th and 19th centuries. Based on one of his specialist areas, interpretation research in the field of string instruments, Brown showed how he envisioned bridging this gap by means of historically informed editions and the teaching of historical playing techniques. Neal Peres da Costa (Sydney) also demonstrated how informative a comparison between a surviving recording and the edition of the recorded work can be - extensively - at the piano during his lecture. His method of imitating historical sound documents was able to highlight improvisational elements and rhythmic freedoms that were part of Carl Reinecke's or Jan Ladislav Dussek's playing - admittedly without any of this being evident in the musical text at the time. The presentation by Sebastian Bausch (Bern) once again dealt with the scientific and aesthetic significance of piano rolls, albeit from the special perspective of oral history, the questioning of specialists in the field of reproduction pianos and their appropriate regulation. This large chapter was rounded off by a lecture by Olivier Senn, who presented a new method of computer-aided measurement of agogics - and thus dealt with a fine interpretative detail that was and is relevant across epochs and styles. He demonstrated how a tempo curve can be derived from musically expressive timing using the example of Debussy's recording of the Danseuses de Delphes from the year 1912.

"I have transformed a single sonata of mine into a quartet for violin instruments [...], and I know for certain that no one else will be able to imitate me so easily." The block "Arrangement as interpretation" was introduced with Beethoven's own words. Thomas Gartmann dedicated a detailed analysis of voice leading, dynamics and articulation to Beethoven's own quartet arrangement of his Piano Sonata op. 14 No. 1 and pointed out the scientific value of this arrangement. Michael Lehner (Bern) drew attention to a central but hitherto little-researched medium of dissemination from the 18th to 20th centuries. The cultural technique of score playing was examined as an "interpretation through reduction", in particular on the basis of the recordings that Gustav Mahler and Richard Strauss made of their own orchestral works. What conclusions can be drawn from phrasing, tempo and rhythm with regard to the orchestral version?

This was perfectly followed by the concert lecture by Ivo Haag and Adrienne Soós (Lucerne): Like the piano reductions, the four-hand arrangements of orchestral works were also a tried and tested means of publicizing their own compositions. On this afternoon, the piano duo placed the arrangements of Brahms' symphonies at the center of practical performance questions. After the forum was opened up to young people interested in research that evening in small presentations on a wide variety of topics, a small master class was even held: the specialists in interpretation research took on cellist David Eggert (Bern) and pianist Gili Loftus (Montréal), who - naturally at a Beethoven symposium - played works by the composer, but in the context of the period around Clara Schumann and the performance practice prevailing at the time.

The third day of the symposium was thematically peripheral and yet much closer to our time. The speakers led by Leo Dick (Bern) presented the results of their research in the fields of music theater, choreography, dance and literary studies. The resulting change of perspective on Beethoven's work and person proved to be just as exciting and informative as the overarching concept of "mise en scène as interpretation" in its various and transdisciplinary forms.

Various experts in the field of organology, the study of instruments, took the participants back to Beethoven's time and the achievements of piano making at the time. Giovanni Paolo Di Stefano (Amsterdam) provided an overview of the building traditions in the centers of Vienna, Paris and London. An instrument not directly associated with Beethoven, the organ, was brought into play by Stefano Molardi (Lugano). He traced the composer's early years of organistic training by analyzing later works - the pianistic imitation of the Fauxbourdon or the Imitatio Tremula Organi, for example, are important clues, according to Molardi. Martin Skamletz (Bern) pointed out an instrumental and musical detail: In the years after 1800, the original five-octave range of pianos expanded, which naturally had an effect on the disposition of the composed works. Skamletz illustrated this reciprocal relationship with a large number of musical examples and placed them in the context of contemporary events. Patrick Jüdt (Bern) also carried out differentiated source work in the context of the String Quartet op. 18/6. In a vivid lecture, in which the four young musicians of the Quatuor Ernest were taken by the hand just as much as the audience, he worked out the dynamics and intensity of Beethoven's sforzati in the Scherzo from op. 18/6. Music theorists of the 18th and 19th centuries were given a "say" in their statements on metric and melodic accent.

Writing processes and the results of transcription were discussed on the last day, September 16. Federica Rovelli (Bonn) reported on the obstacles that can influence the edition of Beethoven's sketchbooks: In addition to the mostly fragmentary state of the sketches, it is primarily the temporality of the writing, the chronology of the writing process, which cannot be represented in a simple transcription; what has been written can be represented, but not the writing itself. In addressing this problem, Rovelli presented software used in the Beethoven-Haus in Bonn that reveals the different layers of writing in a facsimile. Thanks to its transparency and visual comprehensibility, this graphic program can be used by an international circle of scholars.

For once, Johannes Gebauer (Bern) did not focus on textual criticism, but on tracing the history of the development of performance practice. In detailed work, he compared different editions of, among others, the Caprices by Pierre Rode, whose peculiarities, additions and changes not only provide clues to certain playing traditions, but can also bring us closer to the editors of the respective editions.

The Bern research project "Annotated Scores", Richard Wagner's perspective on peculiarities in works of his time, determined the last presentations of the symposium. Chris Walton (Bern) shed light on Wagner's performance of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony in 1846 and the numerous suggestions for changes that he made. The fact that, as the latest research in Bern shows, Wagner himself did not fully implement these changes did not prevent many later conductors from seeing Wagner's indications as a benchmark. Lena-Lisa Wüstendörfer (Basel) dealt with a very similar phenomenon in the reception of Beethoven: in 1904 Gustav Mahler FidelioBeethoven's only completed opera - in a version he redesigned, which was still regarded by Viennese audiences as the true version even after Felix Weingartner succeeded Mahler and advocated greater fidelity to the original. Fidelio used.

The four-day symposium was rounded off by Roger Allen (Oxford), who spoke about Wagner's interpretation of Beethoven's Piano Sonata op. 101. Wagner characterized the first movement of this sonata as a perfect example of the expression he coined "infinite melody", also with regard to the lack of strongly cadential sections. Allen drew highly speculative connections between Beethoven's work and Wagner's prelude to Tristan and Isolde and revealed possible compositional influences from the piano sonata by way of comparison. Allen also drew a bow to days gone by when he quoted Wagner on Beethoven: in this sonata, the latter had traced "the very essence of music". In Allen's own words, the Bern symposium was also about "music as expression", about music's ability to express itself and leave an impression.