The Classical:NEXT is a forum for artists and professionals from various fields of classical and contemporary music. From event organizers and festivals to publishers, labels and associations to agencies and music creators: 1200 music professionals from 45 countries took part in the sixth edition last May (see short report in the Schweizer Musikzeitung). Next year's seventh Classical:NEXT in Rotterdam will once again offer the opportunity to expand your own international network. It will also feature an extensive program with showcases, conferences and project presentations. The tendering process is currently underway:

Deadline for submissions is Friday, September 29, 2017.

Musicians can apply with their stage projects for a showcase performance, and speakers can propose their ideas for conference contributions and project presentations to a jury. Those selected will be given the opportunity to present themselves to a large, international audience of experts at Classical:NEXT 2018.

Classical:NEXT will take place at Congress Center de Doelen, Rotterdam (NL), from 16 to 19 May 2018. We are looking for music contributions, projects and conference formats from all areas of classical music creation, from early to new music, from the concert, label, publishing or media sector.

Applications can be submitted electronically via the trade fair's online proposal system: www.classicalnext.org.
 

The prizewinners are Jonas Inglin (classical music profile), Laurin Moor (jazz profile) and Noelle Egli (jazz profile).

Trombonist Jonas Inglin from Baar ZG achieved very good grades in all module areas. Together with Christoph Vogt (Bachelor of Arts in Music graduate, classical music profile), he also completed a Bachelor's project entitled "tailor-made". The two students commissioned various works for composition and consequently premiered them. Jonas Inglin is now starting his Master of Arts in Music Education.

Under the title "Konrads kleiner Kurs in Sachen Selbstverzweiflung", double bass player Laurin Moor from Lungern OW has realized a radio play project in which music, text and dance were brought together. Laurin Moor is now continuing his studies in the Master of Music and Art Performance. He is also engaged at the Lucerne Theater, where he is directing "Feeling Gatsby", a co-production with the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts.

Noelle Egli from Wolhusen LU worked on the joint Bachelor's diploma project "Sechsundfünfzig Prozent" (Fifty-six percent) in the music degree program and also achieved the highest grade A in the pedagogical degree.

In his role as Director of the International Festival for New Music Forum Valais and as President of the Swiss Society for New Music (ISCM Switzerland), the man from Upper Valais has been a member of the Board of Swissfestivals, the umbrella organization for Swiss cultural festivals, since 2013. Its members include the Lucerne Festival, the Zurich Film Festival and the Locarno Film Festival.

The EFA is the umbrella organization of European festivals and one of the largest and most important festival organizations at European level. An EFFE Hub is a national hub of the EFFE (Europe for Festivals, Festivals for Europe) interest group.

At the end of the 1970s, Leggewie lived in Algeria, where he witnessed how raï, the folk and popular music of the Maghreb state, was increasingly flourishing. Both Raï and genres as diverse as Afro-beat and Balkan pop have been subsumed under the term "world music" for decades. In the view of the two editors, this is an outdated term, "a colonial relic". They prefer the term global pop. According to Leggewie and Meyer, it stands for "a collective category of all conceivable styles and regional origins of non-Western, especially non-Western music".

In an interview with WDR, Leggewie said that the book demonstrates "the courage to leave gaps". Indeed, the almost 400-page work is not an encyclopaedia, but a source of reading with over forty contributions from various authors - including Johannes Rühl, artistic director of the international music festival Alpentöne in Altdorf. While the first part of the volume endeavors to explain terms such as folklore, transculturality and world music, the following section offers well-researched but not exhaustive portraits of influential figures such as the ethnomusicologist Brian Shimkovitz, who makes hundreds of African music tapes accessible on his blog, or the US guitarist Ry Cooder. Over the past decades, Cooder has curiously explored different styles such as Tex-Mex, Mali blues and Cuban son, and in 1996, with the album Buena Vista Social Club the rediscovery of forgotten Cuban musicians such as Ibrahim Ferrer.

Chapter three then looks at the market conditions behind the music. In his text "World Music Festivals and the Festivalization of World Music", Klaus Näumann, professor at the Institute for European Ethnomusicology at the University of Cologne, describes how world music events suggest the illusion of global harmony and mutual acceptance. In reality, however, a white, left-leaning middle class celebrates only those things (music, clothing, etc.) that do not run counter to the ideal. In the largest and concluding part Global Pop brief outlines of numerous genres such as Rembetiko, Highlife or J-Pop. These are not intended for specialists in the respective styles, but for the uninitiated and the interested. The book is exemplary, i.e. the focus is entirely at the discretion of the two editors. Accordingly, it would be all too easy to criticize the fact that neither tango nor gamelan - the music ensembles of Indonesia - have found their way into the book. But that is ultimately a minor matter, because: With Global Pop Leggewie and Meyer may not have succeeded in writing the definitive book on the subject, but it is one that arouses curiosity and encourages not only further reading, but also listening to the artists mentioned.

Global Pop - Das Buch zur Weltmusik, edited by Claus Leggewie and Erik Meyer, 392 p., Fr. 31.00, J. B. Metzler, Stuttgart 2017, ISBN 978-3-476-02636-1

Fender amplifier, electric guitar and, first and foremost, the microphone: even the cover picture of Music active makes it clear what is in demand at the upper school: rock and pop. But not only that. The new teaching aid offers a varied and concentrated insight into the world of music with lots of ideas for the classroom.

Let's briefly visualize the situation on site: Twenty young people, twelve or thirteen years old, some still half a child, others in full puberty, the boys with a voice change, and everyone is somehow embarrassed. So how do you teach music at secondary level I? How to start? With a song, a dance, a reflection on a work?

"Beat the stuff" - building from movement

The first prize of CHF 16,000 went to clarinettist Shuyue Zhao and the second prize of CHF 14,000 to violinist HannaH Walter. The clarinettist Azra Ramic received 10,000 francs for third prize. Shuyue Zhao, born in China in 1990, studied at the Bern University of the Arts (HKB) with Ernesto Molinari. In June of this year, she was awarded the Eduard Tschumi Prize for the best soloist examination at the HKB.

Born in 1989, HannaH Walter completed a master's degree in contemporary music at the Basel University of Music with distinction in 2016. She is currently completing a Master's in Transdisciplinarity at the Zurich University of the Arts. Azra Ramić, born in 1989, completed a Master's in Music Performance for clarinet at Bern University of the Arts in 2013. This was followed by a Master's degree with distinction in bass clarinet at the same university in 2015.

The Concours Nicati, an interpretation competition for contemporary music in Switzerland for professional musicians, is held every two years at the Bern University of the Arts.
 

Culinary delights play an important role in many great and famous operas. In Gioacchino Rossini's Cinderella opera "La Cenerentola", for example, sumptuous feasts are celebrated, while in Giuseppe Verdi's opera "Falstaff", people meet in the famous final scene Andiamo a cena to the great banquet and in Umberto Giordano's "La Cena delle Beffe" the Cenathe big dinner, even appears in the title of his famous opera.

Also in the Restaurant Opera the name says it all. Here, opera guests can enjoy a relaxed dinner just a few steps away from Zurich Opera House. David Krüger, Head Ambassador Kitchen, and Pascal Gloser, Head Ambassador Restaurant, take care of the guests' well-being as hosts and conjure up creative dishes using regional products. The 3-course menu is served punctually and guaranteed within 60 minutes if booked up to 90 minutes before the performance. Otherwise the restaurant will take care of the bill.

In addition to the "Opera Guarantee", hotel guests can now purchase their opera tickets directly at the hotel. For selected performances, the Hotel Ambassador à l'Opera offers two premium tickets - seats in the middle of the second front row.

There must have been hundreds and hundreds of concepts that the Ensemble Neue Horizonte Bern has performed and tested over the decades, scores that often only consist of verbal playing instructions that leave great scope for the imagination, but which nevertheless need to be interpreted precisely. This is how experience is formed, and everyone has to (re)gain it for themselves from the pieces. As interest in conceptual music has risen sharply in recent years, it is only fitting that Urs Peter Schneider, one of the musicians of Horizons, has now compiled a compendium from his wealth of experience: The volume published by Aart-Verlag Conceptual music iis on the one hand an anthology, by no means complete, as a list of further conceptual pieces points out, and on the other an incredibly rich reader. The big names are there, Fluxus, Cage, Wolff, but also a lot of Helvetic and some things that have already been forgotten.

The book, which was created as a research project at the Bern University of the Arts, admittedly offers no history of conceptual music, no definitions and delimitations (not even of current trends) and therefore no theory, but nevertheless classifies the printed concepts according to a simple letter system. On LaMonte Young's famous piece Draw a straight line and follow it about: A2 (everyday actions), H1 (postures), K6 (continuity), M5 (minimalism), N2 (nuances), N3 (sobriety), R2 (space), R5 (recipe), S2 (writing), S9 (stillness), T1 (dance), U3 (unicum) - and this gives us an idea of a typical Schneiderian order, a kind of theory, or at least of what is important and characteristic of concepts. Thirdly, a commentary section classifies at least some of the concept pieces, explains, considers, reports on performances and makes it clear that this is a very practice-oriented selection. From then on, this anthology is an absolute must for performance teaching.

Urs Peter Schneider: Conceptual Music. An annotated anthology, ed. by Thomas Gartmann and Marc Kilchenmann, 370 p., Fr. 35.00, Aart-Verlag, Bern 2016, ISBN 978-3-9524749-0-7

Book launch and concert
Sat. October 21, 2017, 7 p.m.
Bern University of the Arts, Great Concert Hall,
Papiermühlestrasse 13d, 3014 Berne
Students of the HKB, Ensemble Neue Horizonte Bern
Management Urs Peter Schneider

Telemann's chamber music double concerto for two violas accompanied by a third viola is a good opportunity for group lessons. As the composer was a friend of Bach, who was working in Weimar at the time, when he wrote this concerto in Eisenach, he placed four chorale-like columns with B-A-C-B in the upper voice at the beginning of the G minor middle movement and was inspired by Vivaldi's chromatic expressiveness in the subsequent Adagio. The two outer movements in B flat major are easy to play - only up to the 3rd position - and are well placed. Continuo score and bass part complete the edition.

With this realization of a cello concerto, Johann Baptist Vaňhal (1739-1813, Czech: Jan Křtitel Vaňhal) took a stand against the stepmotherly treatment of the viola at the time. The cheerfully animated concerto is of medium difficulty and only requires 1st to 3rd position for the solo part. The fingerings are good, but unnecessarily copious. The cadenzas created by the editor are considerably more difficult than the solo part. They extend into the 6th position and use numerous double stops; they could be simplified. Overall, however, the new edition is a stroke of luck for viola players.

Georg Philipp Telemann: Concerto B-A-C-H for 2 solo violas, viola III (da braccio/da gamba) and b. c., reconstruction by Klaus Hofmann, EW 1013, € 17.50, Edition Walhall, Magdeburg 2016

Jan Křtitel Vaňhal: Concerto in C major for viola and orchestra, edited by Vilém Blažek, piano reduction and solo part, BA 11531-90, € 14.95, Bärenreiter, Prague 2016

Why is the piano literature for the left hand alone so much more extensive than that for the right hand?

There are anatomical reasons for this: with the thumb as a melody guide, the left hand is far better able to operate the entire width of the keyboard. In addition, pianists are obviously more likely to injure their right hand when practicing improperly and are then forced to restrict themselves to the left for a while. Alexander Scriabin, for example, practiced his Prélude et Nocturne composed for the left hand.

Above all, however, we have Paul Wittgenstein to thank for the majority of these works. The Viennese pianist lost his right arm in the First World War and yet was determined to continue his career against all odds (including from his family). Wealthy from home, he was able to commission works from the most famous composers of the time. Prokofiev, Hindemith, Britten, Richard Strauss, Franz Schmidt and many others wrote piano concertos for his needs, the latter even wrote chamber music. However, none became as famous and is played as often as Ravel's.

This was not initially foreseeable: Wittgenstein apparently only realized over time what a masterpiece he had received. And as the commissioner, he felt entitled to alter entire passages to his liking, which naturally infuriated Ravel. In her introduction to the new Bärenreiter edition, Christine Baur is able to convey this dispute and much more about the creation and reception of this extraordinary work in an exciting way. The excellent edition not only corrects some long-standing errors in the Durand edition, but also provides a wealth of additional information worth knowing based on sources from Wittgenstein's private collection, which editor Douglas Woodfull-Harris was able to consult. In particular, the insight into Wittgenstein's requests for alterations confirms that he could not really comprehend Ravel's ingenious way of writing for the left hand.

If you would like to find out more about Wittgenstein's fate, we recommend the volume Empty Sleeve. The musician and patron Paul Wittgenstein (Studien-Verlag, Innsbruck et al. 2006), but above all Concerto for the left hand by Lea Singer (Hoffmann und Campe, Hamburg 2008): an exciting and well-written artist's novel!

Maurice Ravel, Concerto for the left hand for piano and orchestra, edited by Douglas Woodfull-Harris; score, BA 7881, €, 48.95; piano reduction, part(s), BA 7881-90, € 36.95; Bärenreiter, Kassel 2016

The Hungarian composer Kamillo Lendvay, born in 1928, honored the 50th anniversary of Béla Bartók's death in 1995 with the composition of a Study for solo viola, which was finally published in 2015. It makes expressive use of the entire range of the viola up to the middle of the A-string; beginning thoughtfully, moving forward in various tempi and exciting rhythmic combinations, sometimes asymmetrically moving, sometimes metrically pounding and ending calmly - an exciting solo lasting around 7 minutes!

The violin school initiated by Erich and Elma Doflein for their violin school 44 Duets for two violins in ascending difficulty were composed by Béla Bartók in 1931. Universal published 36 of them in 1994, Atelier-Editions Röhm recently published them all in two volumes and Editio Musica Budapest (EMB) last year in one volume for viola. Everything is a fifth lower and otherwise identical to the violin version. The special thing about EMB is that the publishers have made a CD of the duets in the viola version: Voices from the Past: Béla Bartók's Duos & Original Field Recordings, Tantara Records, 2013, because Bartók placed great importance on these duets - as well as his Microcosm for piano - folk melodies that he recorded in Algeria, Hungary, Serbia, Romania, Slovakia and the Ukraine, some of them with an Edison phonograph on wax cylinders. These recordings can be listened to on the CD for a deeper understanding and the lyrics of the songs can be read in the booklet in the original languages and in English.

Kamillo Lendvay, Study for viola, Z. 14953, Fr. 18.80, Editio Musica Budapest 2015

Béla Bartók: 44 Duos for 2 Violas, transcribed by Donald Maurice and Claudine Bigelow, Z. 14970, Fr. 22.70, Editio Musica Budapest 2016

The traces of Ernest Chausson's Piano Trio (1881) lead to Switzerland: the 26-year-old composer, who had bitterly turned his back on all academic institutions in Paris after his unsuccessful application for the Prix de Rome, spent the summer at the country estate of his mentor Berthe de Rayssac in Montbovon, Canton Fribourg. There, in the picturesque Pays d'Enhaut, he began sketching and working on his most extensive and ambitious composition to date as soon as he arrived. It may also have been a defiant reaction to the defeat he had previously suffered. In this Opus 3, Chausson found himself as a composer, and it is fortunate that he no longer submitted to academic rules and was not discouraged by the initial lack of recognition. However, he subsequently showed his trio to César Franck and Emanuel Chabrier, played it to the painter Odilon Redon and took their advice to heart. The work was premiered in April 1882 at a concert of the Société nationale de musique, but was not published for the first time until 1919, twenty years after the composer's early and tragic death, by the Parisian publisher Rouart-Lerolle.

The 30-minute work with its four movements is surprisingly entertaining, in contrast to Chausson's more famous "Concerto" for piano, violin and string quartet op. 21, which is 45 minutes long. The cross-movement quoting of themes in the manner of leitmotifs in the Piano Trio op. 3, as well as the harmony, are reminiscent of Chausson's role models César Franck and Richard Wagner. However, his musical language also points to the following generation of composers, above all Claude Debussy. Ernest Chausson occupies an important place in French music!

The new Henle edition of this piano trio is mainly based on the first edition of 1919, as there are no further sources. There is no longer an autograph, only a few sketches of themes and structural models. As always, Henle's music is easy to read, practical at the turning points and even contains a dictionnaire (French/German and French/English) of the original French performance and tempo markings in each part. The indication of the time signature in the second movement in fast 3/8 time, entitled "Vite", is also extremely useful: the first bar of a counting unit is always indicated with a one. This makes rehearsing much easier! The piano part was provided with fingerings by Klaus Schilde, the string parts contain no technical indications. However, the printed phrasing sheets can largely be used as a technical realization.

Ernest Chausson: Piano trio in G minor op. 3 for violin, violoncello and piano, edited by Peter Jost, score and parts, HN 1277, € 29.00, G. Henle Verlag, Munich 2016

Have you ever heard folk music from the Belgian provinces? When I tried out the pieces in this new booklet, it really "took my sleeve in"!

Marinette Bonnert and Tommaso Huber have published a booklet for accordion solo M2 (standard bass) with easy to moderately difficult dances from Flanders and Wallonia. They present a colorful cross-section of the repertoire of very elegant, airy and filigree folk and dance music, especially from the 18th century. This music has been handed down in manuscript, printed or oral form in various sources. Marinette Bonnert herself comes from Belgium, describes herself as an ambassador of Walloon music and has carefully selected the pieces for this publication. Suites consisting of contra dances alternate with individual dance movements such as minuets, polkas, waltzes and schottisches. Tommaso Huber comes from Austria, has played the accordion since childhood and studied double bass. In the foreword, the two go into more detail about the origins of the music and in a separate, introductory section they explain and illustrate the type of bass notation in minute detail. The melody parts of the individual pieces are often monophonic, but are carried by a harmonically interesting bass. The arrangements are extremely appealing and can also tempt you to add your own embellishments or inspire interpretations with the single-tone accordion - a truly great and valuable enrichment for all those who feel drawn to the folk music of other countries!

Marinette Bonnert and Tommaso Huber: Dances from Flanders & Wallonia, 23 easy to moderately difficult characteristic dances for accordion M2, UE 36123, € 14.95, Universal Edition, Vienna 2016