Born in 1974, Bernhard Ruchti works as an organist, pianist, organizer and composer. He has been active as a church musician in the Protestant Reformed parish of St.Gallen Centrum since 2003. He has been the main organist at St. Laurenzen church since 2013. His commitment to the American Wurlitzer organ is particularly exciting, writes the city. Ruchti had an instrument from 1923 delivered from the United States to the St. Georgen parish hall and installed.

The city's sponsorship awards, each worth CHF 10,000, go to Bernhard Ruchti and Michael Finger for his work in the independent theater scene, Alena Kundela for her work in the local independent dance scene and Claudia Vamvas for her literary work.

The recognition prize is endowed with CHF 20,000 and is awarded to people who have made a special contribution to the city and its inhabitants through their cultural work. This year it goes to Martin Leuthold, Creative Director of Jakob Schlaepfer AG, for his work in the applied arts.

In terms of audience figures, "The Magic Flute" (27 productions) was only surpassed by the musical "Starlight Express" (441,623 spectators) with 239,744 visitors. Humperdinck's opera was staged 26 times and Bizet's box office hit 21 times.

Overall, the work statistics for musical theater show the following breakdown in German theaters: 899 opera productions are offset by 121 operetta productions, and 253 musical productions. Opera thus accounts for 70 percent of musical theater productions, operetta for just under 10 percent and musicals for 20 percent.

The 2015/2016 work statistics are based on data on works and productions, including performance and audience figures. 464 theaters from Germany, Austria and Switzerland reported their figures to the editorial team, which collected and processed them for all genres.

The Werkstatistik 2015/2016 (cost: 25 euros + postage) and the June issue "Der Sinn der Zahlen" of the magazine Deutsche Bühne (8.40 euros + postage) can be ordered at: sekretariat@die-deutsche-buehne.de.

According to the organizers' press release, the festival generated around 40,000 admissions, 10 percent less than last year. However, the decline in audience numbers was small in view of the poor weather conditions. However, the first, still rain-free weekend got off to a very good start. If the rain had not set in, it would probably have been a record year.

There were performances by Jon Cleary, Glen David Andrews and the New Orleans Jazz Vipers. Jazzascone also expanded its musical spectrum this year with artists such as Paolo Belli, Opé Smith, Nina Attal and the Englishman Randolph Matthews, who received the event's 2017 Audience Award with his Afro Blues Project. Special attention was also paid to the work of great established jazz personalities such as Bruno Spoerri.

According to the Federal Office of Culture, the first version from 2012 has been expanded by 34 entries to 199, primarily taking into account living traditions in the cities.

There are the following new entries in the music section: Chlefele, Naturjodel und Jodellied, Open Air Festival Culture, Folk Music Practice in Graubünden and Zurich Technoculture.

The FOC also writes: "As with the first inventory, the Confederation and the cantons worked together to update the list. The Confederation coordinated the overall project with technical support from the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts. The cantons identified their living traditions and made almost 90 suggestions for the national list. The cantons also took up suggestions from the population. A steering group discussed these suggestions and made a selection. The steering group is made up of representatives from the federal government, the cantons, the cities, the Swiss UNESCO Commission, the Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia and academic experts.
Experts are currently preparing the documentation on the living traditions on the list on behalf of the cantonal cultural offices. In spring 2018, the updated list will be published as a web inventory with comprehensive documentation."

 The clarinettist Shuyue Zhao and the pianist Igor Andreev each won a prize of 8,000 francs. Shuyue Zhao studied at the Bern University of the Arts with Ernesto Molinari. She spent seven years in New York at the Juilliard School with Charles Neidich. Igor Andreev began his training at the St. Petersburg Conservatory. He continued his studies at the Bern University of the Arts in the class of Tomasz Herbut.

Simone Meyer (violin class Bartek Niziol), Grigory Maximenko (violin class Patrick Juedt), Marek Romanowski (double bass class Ruslan Lutsyk), Mischa Kozlowski and Harun Bugra Yüksel (piano class Tomasz Herbut) and Ruben Santorsa (guitar class Elena Càsoli) also successfully completed their Master's degree in Specialized Music Performance Classical Music.

The VBMS supports the canton in the quality assurance of music schools, in the further training of music school teachers and school management and in the settlement of cantonal contributions.

According to the cantonal music school law, the canton and the municipalities support "the recognized music schools with contributions to lessons attended by approved music students from entry into kindergarten until the age of 20 or until the age of 25 if they are still in training".

According to the canton's Department of Education, the 29 recognized music schools in the canton of Bern teach a total of around 20,000 pupils.

Sometimes it is regrettable that the crazy times of experimental choral music of the 1960s and 1970s are over, when new ways were sought with space notation, improvisational elements, aleatoric and all other possible forms of sound production. In comparison, some of today's choral music comes across as somewhat streamlined, market-adapted, interchangeable and surprisingly traditional, sometimes a little overdressed. The accusation of a neo-romantic style can therefore not be dismissed out of hand, and some people perceive the flat, cuddly atmosphere of the many strongly repeated seconds, sevenths and non-chords as musical "soft porn".

On the one hand, new "mystics" such as Arvo Pärt, John Tavener or Jan Sandström naturally gave choral music interesting new impulses towards the end of the 20th century. On the other hand, there are the prolific pop stars among choral composers such as Eric Whitacre, Morten Lauridsen or Ola Gjeilo, to whom the above-mentioned attributes can be applied more readily, but who also capture a certain zeitgeist with their film music-like sound world. This category of choral music, which is very popular with many choirs and audiences because it is relatively easy to perform, sounds good and is stylistically moderate, also includes the choral works of the Swede Mårten Jansson, the Briton George Arthur and the German Max Beckschäfer.

A large number of a cappella works by Mårten Jansson for mixed choir, male and female choir have already been published by Bärenreiter (cf. Review SMZ 12/2014, S.19). New additions are now a Missa brevis in the unusual key of E flat minor and a Missa Popularis. The Missa brevis is consistently set for 4-part mixed choir and is in the tradition of the short mass (without Credo). It is recommendable, easy to master and its concise brevity makes it suitable for use in church services as well as for integration into a concert program. The instrumentation of the Missa popularis is Ikea modularly variable: it can be performed with female choir (SSA) and string quartet or mixed choir (SSATB) with string quintet. It has its roots in Swedish folk music and uses a different type of dance as a source of inspiration for each movement. The result is a rhythmically lively piece lasting approx. 25 minutes, which does not place too many demands on the choir and strings.

A number of exciting new church music works by the young award-winning English composer George Arthur have been published by Universal-Edition Wien. Ave maris stella and Hail Mary are calm and beautiful meditations for mixed choir of medium difficulty (with partial voice divisions) on these famous and frequently set texts. They are joined by the short motet All Angels and the clever arrangement of the English Christmas carol I Saw Three Ships. There are some audio samples on YouTube, recorded by choirs under the direction of the composer.

Also published by Universal-Edition are the Five Christmas motets for 4-part mixed choir a cappella by Max Beckschäfer, who has a somewhat more individual style than the other two composers. They are partly reminiscent of the Christmas motets by Francis Poulenc, but are varied short pieces on less well-known Latin texts of the Christmas season and form a small cycle lasting 10 minutes. An interesting alternative for a varied Christmas concert program or as individual motets in church services.

Mårten Jansson: Missa brevis in E flat minor SATB, choral score BA 8521, € 4.95, Bärenreiter, Kassel 2016
id., Missa Popularis for choir SSA (TB ad lib.) and string quartet (double bass ad lib.), score BA 7420, € 24.95; piano reduction, BA 7420-90, € 13.95

George Arthur: Ave maris stella, for mixed choir a cappella, choral score UE 21716, € 3.50, Universal Edition, Vienna 2016
id., Ave Maria, for mixed choir a cappella, UE 21715, € 3.95
id., All Angels, for mixed choir a cappella, UE 21714, € 2.95
id., I Saw Three Ships, for mixed choir a cappella, UE 21717, € 3.50

Max Beckschäfer: Five Latin Christmas motets for mixed choir SATB a cappella, UE 37125-37129, € 2.95-3.50 each, Universal Edition, Vienna 2016

It all starts with a thunderclap was the name of the education project of the Basel Chamber Orchestra, the choir of Muttenz High School and classes 2Ea and IBK 1f of the Center for Bridging Courses in Basel. It was the choirmaster and school musician Christoph Huldi who gave the Basel Chamber Orchestra the bold idea.

Together with director Salomé Im Hof, over a hundred young people explored the question of how death is dealt with in different cultures in forty workshops and countless intensive lessons. Dance, scenic and musical snapshots were created. The encounter with the refugees was particularly fruitful, as one high school student said when asked what he liked best: "Working with the bridge class! Communicating with people who speak Turkish, Somali or Persian. That connects people."

Death is undoubtedly a "hot" topic that the young people had to deal with and master: it is not exactly a favorite in young people's minds and Arthur Honegger's brilliant oratorio La Danse des morts on a text by Paul Claudel, which was premiered by Paul Sacher in Basel in 1940, is difficult music for young people, as Huldi explains in conversation.

Claudel was inspired by Hans Holbein's Basel Dance of Death cycle and put together a series of Old Testament texts. The oratorio begins with the vision of the resurrection of Israel, in which God brings the bones lying around back to life. An instrumental roll of thunder at the beginning of Honegger's music symbolizes the presence of God. It also gave the music theater evening its title.

The creation of the world, the resurrection of the people of Israel and the Christian understanding of the resurrection from the dead combine to create a magnificent musical work of art. However, it was not only the theme of the cycle that was delicate for the young protagonists, but also Honegger's setting. Rhythmically delicate motifs, contrapuntally elaborated sequences, from marches to bizarre waltz rhythms or popular songs such as Sur le pont dʼAvignon pervade the work; and this with a complex harmonic structure.

How did Christoph Huldi manage to keep the young people "happy"? "For one thing, I enjoy the trust of the students who know my projects," he explains. "They trusted that what we were planning was something good. On the other hand, I combined the Funeral Music for Queen Mary by Henry Purcell, resounding choral music that is good and enjoyable to sing."

Undoubtedly a good idea, as only two students dropped out. What's more, this "palatable" choral music audibly appealed not only to the pupils but also to the audience. Purcell's conciliatory music from youthful throats noticeably lightened Honegger's gloom. The hour-long musical theater thus proved to be a coherent "Gesamtkunstwerk" performed and sung at a high level.

Director Salomé Im Hof achieved an impressive feat with her theatrical realization of the material. She had the action unfold at three tables where the bizarre dance party took place or gluttony was practiced. She dramatized Holbein's portrayal in a stringent manner, in which all people, regardless of age and status, are equal before death. Here, different cultures faced the end, high school students from Muttenz and class members from the Center for Bridging Opportunities in discreet black street clothes.

The choir of around 80 people, positioned in the nave and in the gallery, not only commented on the action, but also provided a harmonious soundtrack. Percussive interludes or wildly jumbled sequences interrupted the Honegger oratorio, which was actually performed relentlessly. The young people's concentration and courage to move in the middle of the audience made for an exciting performance.

The Basel Chamber Orchestra under the direction of Thomas Herzog and with Christoph Huldi as co-conductor put in just as much effort as the soloists. There was the astonishing Colin Rollier, who breathed youthful vigor into the Récitant, and the baritone Robert Koller, who sang the Lamento with a little too much vibrato. The ending of La Danse des morts with a sobbing and screaming chorus, which died away in pianissimo, was a nightmarish success.

But instead of Honegger's "nothing", this performance had a pleasantly softened and satirized ending with the last part of the Funeral Music by Purcell. To Thou knowest, Lord, the secrets of our Hearts a comic video showing dancing and jumping skeletons flickered on a screen, eliciting a smile from the audience.

Situation on the train to Salzburg: a woman opposite is reading this Max Lichtegg biography, which I have just received for review - it is lying on the table at home. I still remember Lichtegg as Tamino when I was sixteen. As my counterpart goes to get coffee, one of the two women in the next compartment asks me what a nice book she's reading. When I mention the title, the other laughs: "Oh, that was my childhood crush! How we waited outside the municipal theater until he finally came out after the performance!" So they still exist, the people who knew the tenor and had a crush on him. But this fan here is already well over eighty.

Lichtegg's great times were the post-war years up to 1960, when he sang Tamino, Don Ottavio and Belmonte everywhere. However, he also sang the leading role in the German-language premiere of Igor Stravinsky's The life of a libertine (The Rake's Progress) or sang "Schönen Hermann" at the Vienna Volksoper in Paul Hindemith's News of the day. However, he became popular through his roles in operettas, and he remained so into old age thanks to his masterly song recitals, in which he presented not only the greats - Schubert and Schumann - but also unknown composers such as the Hindemith pupil Bernd Bergel or the Galician Vesque von Püttlingen, who set dozens of Heine songs to music. The fact that Max Lichtegg also wrote the libretto for a CleopatraThe fact that during the war years he performed with the refugee and later conductor Georg Solti as accompanist at the piano and that in old age he still sang witty songs of his own production (to his own texts) are interesting details from this multi-layered singer's life, which began in 1910 in Poland as Munio Lichtmann and ended in 1992 in Switzerland as Max Lichtegg.

Alfred A. Fassbind describes it in great detail and has listed all roles and engagements as well as all record, film, radio and television productions in tables. Reviews and playbills from Vienna, Berlin, Hamburg, San Francisco, Los Angeles and elsewhere are included. If only the author had not spread out his almost complete archive with all the pretty letter documents and local playbills, but had left out a lot, it would have been a readable book with some attractive photos and documents.

Alfred A. Fassbind: Max Lichtegg - Only committed to music, 560 pages, Fr. 36.00, Römerhof Verlag, Zurich 2016, ISBN 978-3-905894-31-8

Little is known about the life of the composer Johann Christian Schultze (around 1740); for a long time he was placed in the pre-classical period due to a confusion with a namesake. His surviving oeuvre is also limited: five overture suites for two recorders and basso continuo plus a recorder concerto that has long been known. A further concerto has now been added to this oeuvre.

Klaus Hofmann presents the three-movement concerto in B flat major as a first edition. Like the one in G major, it is in the late Baroque style. The first movement begins with a heroic triadic break and consists mainly of scales and arpeggios, while the string writing is reduced and does not make high demands on the orchestra. The middle movement, an expressive adagio, is characterized by a sighing melody in the flute part floating above the pizzicato quavers of the strings. Surprisingly, after the freely improvised cadenza (for which there is also a suggestion by the editor), it ends in a dramatic string tutti, which again takes up the chordal breaks of the first movement. The rondo-like third movement is based on the first movement and adds large leaps in the solo part as a new difficulty. The sparse continuo figuring only appears in the tutti sections and has also been added by the editor for the solo parts. This concerto is a welcome addition to the repertoire for recorder players, even if - or perhaps because - the technical demands are limited.

Johann Christian Schultze: Concerto in B flat major for treble recorder, strings and basso continuo, edited by Klaus Hofmann, score, EW 986, € 21.80, Edition Walhall, Magdeburg 2016

As soon as I leaf through the booklet, the short teaching pieces by the Czech composer Peter Graham (*1952, real name Jaroslav Štastný) are fresh in my mind, and the music with its unconventional texture immediately arouses my curiosity. On closer study, these pieces reveal themselves to me as fascinating miniatures which, for all their apparent lightness and brevity, have great expressive power. Some of them expand the sound spectrum through pedal effects or the resonance of muted keys, and further examples such as Stravinsky, Debussy, Satie or Janáček come to mind. As he writes in the foreword, Peter Graham is convinced that, with the right guidance, children can differentiate between sounds and rhythms in a much more sophisticated way than they have to in conventional teaching literature. That is why he calls his pieces Subversive Etudes.

The challenge lies in the fact that we, as teachers, get right into the middle of deciphering and discovering together with the pupils. By clapping, patting and tapping and with the help of Indian rhythm syllables (taka, takita, takadimi), complex rhythmic patterns are mastered and only transferred to the instrument when the idea is right. In the appendix, piano teacher Iva Oplištilová provides valuable methodical notes on how to work through the pieces.

Peter Graham: Subversive Etudes for piano, BA 9585, € 17.95, Bärenreiter, Prague 2015

In one of the most famous paintings of the Biedermeier period, Carl Spitzweg's Sunday walkthe father holds up his top hat with his walking stick. It's easy to imagine him taking a csakan out of it at the next idyllic resting place and blowing a pleasant little song on it. Around 1800, this recorder built into a walking stick came into fashion, and Ernest Krähmer, oboist in the Viennese court orchestra, became its most important virtuoso and teacher. His entire printed compositional oeuvre is dedicated to the csakan.

Krähmers 24 solo pieces in all major and minor keys from 1837 are gems of early Romantic original music for recorder. In terms of content, they represent the musical repertoire of Vienna at the time, but in terms of technique they are in line with the instrumental schools that had become fashionable. Sophisticated etude works were no longer reserved for chordal instruments. The use of keys with more than three or four accidentals, which were unfavorable in terms of fingering technique, was intended to practice fluency, difficult fingering combinations or scales and triads through all keys, while also training musical taste.

Krähmer went with his 100 practice pieces for the csakanThey contain detailed instructions on articulation, sound and dynamics and place high demands on the playing of the soprano recorder, not only because of the use of all the accidentals and the large size of the pieces.

Ernest Krähmer: 24 solo pieces in all major and minor keys for recorder (flute/oboe/violin or other melody instruments), edited by Helmut Schaller and Nikolaj Tarasov, DM 1491, € 15.95, Doblinger, Vienna 2016

Concert hall organs lead a miserable existence. At most, they are caressed and struck (toccare l'organo) a few times a year as a soloist or with orchestral accompaniment. Nevertheless, the queen of instruments is enthroned above the prestigious halls like the buffet with Rosenthal crockery and silverware in a bourgeois salon. The French also refer to the organ case as a "buffet". The old masters from Schnitger to Silbermann built their works in a closed case, usually made of solid oak, and gave it a "fermen Stand" on the rood screen. They knew why. Because the sound must first gather behind the façade before it is emitted into the nave as a mixture of pipes and stops. This is rarely the case with modern, secular organs, whose ranks of pipes stand at attention at the front like naked tin soldiers.

With concert hall organs, the playable literature is limited to just under three centuries. Early music with its half-tone lower, even mean-tone tuning cannot be played on it with accompaniment. Baroque orchestras carry their own chest organs onto the podium to perform Handel's solo concertos. The large organ is condemned to a "tacet", just as when a keyboard and pedal lion like Cameron Carpenter prefers to perform his escapades on his own pre-programmed electric organ rather than on the pipe organ in the hall.

Basel's Stadtcasino and Zurich's Tonhalle will both be getting new organs in the next few years following their renovations. Their predecessors have already served their purpose after just a few decades. They will be replaced rather than preserved. Their lifespan is short, and the reverberation time in concert halls is also short compared to the seconds-long reverberation in cathedrals. A hall organ is therefore far from being able to develop its sounds from the solo register to the tutti in the same spatial manner.

Hamburg's new landmark, the Elbphilharmonie, has a giant organ weighing 25 tons thanks to a donation of two million euros from entrepreneur Peter Möhrle. Its pipe fronts are installed in the form of a 15 x 15 meter square on four floors in the Great Hall. Like the Fisk organ in Lausanne Cathedral, they can be played with either old or new action. High up on the console by the façade, the keys are connected to the pipes using mechanical action; below on the orchestra podium, an electrical connection is used. The mobile console is equipped with a digital control system. It allows any number of presettings for the registrations via touchscreen, which extends like a cutlery drawer.

With 69 stops, everything is there to make organists' hearts beat faster at pitches from 16 to 16,000 Hertz. The mysterious names range from a Vox angelica to Principale major and minor, a fourfold Harmonia aetheria, a striking orchestral clarinet, a sixfold Nonencornett, an 8-foot Stentorgambe and the 32-foot reed stops Trompete and Posaune in the pedal.

4765 pipes set the tone. Their lengths range from 1 to 32 feet, specifically from 11 millimetres for the highest to almost 11 meters for the lowest note. The pipes are even coated for those with a nose of wonder, children's hands and blind people who want to touch them. However, the front pipes do not flaunt themselves at the front like traditional organ cases, but are veiled like a Queen of Sheba. Only when the shutter sills are opened do they shine in the dazzling light.

The four manuals are assigned to: Choir, Hauptwerk, Schwellwerk, Solowerwerk and Pedal. The builders, the Bonn-based company Klais, are particularly proud of the Fernwerk, whose four reed stops installed above the acoustic reflector send out their signals to visitors from the hall's firmament.

So how does it sound, the new Klais organ? This could be tested extensively during the six-hour organ night that opened the Hamburg Organ Summer 2017, after the Latvian titular organist Iveta Apkalna had already presented her queen in January.

13 male and 2 female organists played and registered the concert hall organ according to all the rules of the art in works ranging from Bach and Vivaldi to the Romantics Mendelssohn, Franck, Pierné, Widor and the modern classics David, Eben, Reda and Messiaen to a world premiere by Wolf Kerschek. The Jacobi organist Kerstin Wolf, who danced on the organ bench during the shimmering pieces by the Frenchman Thierry Escaich, the Dutchman Ad Wammes and the South African Surendran Reddy and let her feet bounce as if she wanted to dance the tango with the Queen, was original.

Players have different opinions of the new concert instrument. The church organists first have to get used to the electronics. The sound combinations range from soft to loud, from a whispering pianissimo to a menacing tutti with open swell stops. Everything is emphasized "pomposo"; the individual sounds are audible. There is a lack of subtle tonal mixing, which is due to the short reverberation time of 2 seconds, but also to Yasuhisa Toyota's acoustic aesthetics. The shell-shaped walls are designed to achieve even audibility in all 2100 seats up to the upper tiers of the Weinberg architecture in the 25-metre-high auditorium. The over-presence has its price. The organ radiates little tonal warmth. The coolness of the acoustic concept is projected into the room like air conditioning at the same temperature. One almost wistfully longs for the old organs from Hus to Cavaillé-Coll, on which the literature from the Renaissance to the late Romantic period comes into its own and fills the church rooms with intonationally balanced splendor.

Organ infographic (from the Elbphilharmonie press kit; see legend below)

The contributions are awarded to young music professionals by the Département de la formation, de la jeunesse et de la culture (DFJC). Support is being offered for the first time this year. There is a partnership with the Fondation romande pour la chanson et les musiques actuelles (FCMA), which can continue the support.    

Applications may be submitted by persons under the age of 35 who are Vaudois or live in the canton of Vaud, have been practicing their musical activities professionally for at least five years and operate within professional structures, i.e. have a label, a publishing house or professional management. 

The closing date for applications is August 1. Interested parties can find more information at www.vd.ch/bourses-culture