Andreas Züst (1947-2000) was a legendary figure in Swiss and European art life. He was a universalist with a tireless thirst for knowledge and a great lover of books. The Andreas Züst Library brings together all his passions in around 10,400 books on subjects such as weather, geology, astronomy, physics, botany, art history, anthropology, polar expeditions, photography, painting, literature, music, kitsch, UFOs and much more.

Libraries have always offered access to a universe of possible conceptions of the world. According to Walter Benjamin, even a modest book has the potential to become a "book of destiny", depending on the relationship its owner develops with it.

With this in mind, the Andreas Züst Library offers three studio residencies twice a year for a period of one to four weeks. The scholarship is interdisciplinary and is aimed at domestic and foreign artists from the fields of visual arts, literature, new media, music, stage, dance, design, architecture, film, photography and art-related sciences. Accommodation is provided by the Panoramaherberge Alpenhof, where the library also has its permanent home. The former hotel, located on St. Anton in Appenzell, is a cultural freighter, accommodating cultural workers as well as visitors from all over the world. The place is often busy and sometimes not at all and is ideal as an inspiring retreat and workspace with room for exchange. 

Applicants are asked to explain their specific interests and motivation for a residency. We are looking for projects that deal with the library as a whole or one of its sub-areas. The scholarship sees itself in the tradition of libraries as places of knowledge in all its diversity. Application deadlines are May 31st for the following November and October 31st for the following April.
 

Further information: www.bibliothekandreaszuest.net

Over three days (March 3 to 5, 2017), lectures, master classes and concerts will take place in condensed form, mainly in the rooms of the Toni-Areal - with the participation of two old masters of the saxophone, Frederick L. Hemke (Chicago) and Iwan Roth (Lugano) - according to Mlekusch the "father of the classical saxophone in Switzerland" - as well as young stars of the scene such as Nikita Zimin (Moscow).

During the day, students from all saxophone classes at Swiss universities will present concerts, some of them interdisciplinary projects. In the evenings, successful alumni and their current projects are presented alongside the guests, such as the Ensemble Nikel with Patrick Stadler, the Trio Saeitenwind with Jonas Tschanz or Too Hot To Hoot with Kevin Juillerat from Lausanne. 

The concert programs focus on contemporary music, including some world premieres, but also on arrangements such as "Le Sacre" by Stravinsky for saxophone orchestra and percussion. There will also be a performance by "Five Sax" with musicians from Poland, Belgium, the USA, Italy and Chile.

The monthly rent, including ancillary costs, is CHF 160 per band. Bands, the majority of whose members are under 20 years of age, benefit from a reduced rate. The rental period is limited to three years.

Applications can be sent to the Department of Culture, City Hall, 9001 St.Gallen or by e-mail to kultur@stadt.sg.ch by October 14, 2016. Applications should include details of the individual band members (please state instruments and place of residence) and the band's musical activities. Bands with members who are resident in St.Gallen have preference.

Further information:
Barbara Affolter and Kristin Schmidt
Co-Head of the Department of Culture of the City of St.Gallen
071 224 51 60

Othmar Schoeck was associated with Brunnen throughout his life. The men's choir, music society, orchestra and Singkreis Brunnen were in contact with the composer or his family in one form or another in the past. At the start of the festival, these societies performed works by Schoeck, appropriately enough in the Hotel Waldstätterhof, where Schoeck's mother, the hotelier's daughter Agathe Fassbind, came from.

Some of the compositions performed by the four clubs in the packed Mythensaal were written by Schoeck for local occasions, such as the Brunner Standschützen March (1922) and Song of the young warriors and Choir of priests and priestesses (1906/07) for the Schwyzer Japanesenspiel 1907.
Schoeck biographer Chris Walton gave the laudatory speech, which brought the man and artist very vividly to life. Grandniece Isabel Schoeck, District Mayor Othmar Reichmuth and President of the Board of Trustees Richard Wyrsch welcomed the audience and emphasized the significance of this event from their own perspectives.

The exhibition "Alfred Schoeck - adventurer, landscape painter and hunter" can be seen in the Galerie am Leewasser from August 27 to September 24, framing the Othmar Schoeck Festival, so to speak. This offers an insight into the life of the family and conveys and reflects on the composer's work. In addition to chamber and symphony concerts, a performance in the Villa Schoeck and guided tours, the competition for song duos and the symposium on opera are particularly worthy of mention. Dürande Castle to emphasize. The preliminary rounds of the competition on September 6 and 7 are open to the public, the final concert (tickets on sale) will take place on September 9. The symposium in collaboration with Bern University of the Arts, which is also open to the public without prior registration, begins on Friday, September 9 at 2 pm and runs until Sunday, September 11 at 4 pm.

To mark the 70th anniversary of the liberation of the concentration camps, Pan-Verlag published the composition Light over shadow for two flutes by the composer Michael Schneider (*1964). Schneider, whose work ranges from chamber music and vocal music to orchestral works, received important inspiration from János Tamás during his time at grammar school and then studied composition with Dimitri Terzakis in Bern.

Light over shadow was composed as early as 1993 in a master class by Edisson Denissow during the International Music Festival in Lucerne, where it was premiered by Kathrin Rengger and Katja Marty in the same year. The composer dedicated the duo to Elfriede Frank, the second wife of Anne Frank's father, who herself survived the Holocaust but lost her husband and three children. In the foreword, he describes her as a vital and open-minded woman whose life was overshadowed by the loss of these family members. A poem by the poet Ossip Mandelstam (1891-1938), who was persecuted under Stalin, entitled Into the distance is the motto of the play. Powerlessness and violence on the one hand are juxtaposed with hope, humanity and the power of poetry on the other.

In this duo, the composer impressively describes moods inspired by the fate of persecuted people with soft, airy, fragile tones. The piece begins darkly and mysteriously in the low register, but becomes increasingly brighter as it progresses through the expansion and shifting of the range into the second and third octaves of the flutes, which illuminate each other in the interplay, but still moves dynamically in the quiet range between pp and mf. The dialogue between the two flutes becomes increasingly colorful, first through a harmonics melody in both voices, which often alternate in the upper voice, and then through simultaneous multiphonics in both voices, which sound almost like spherical sounds, even if the piece always returns to the lower register. The end of the duet is freely arranged with whistle sounds and is reminiscent of a whispering of voices. Light over shadow is thought-provoking and an impressive dialog in which hopeful light is cast over shadows by the timbres of the flutes.

Michael Schneider, Licht über Schatten, for two flutes, PAN 360, € 9.00, Pan, Basel/Kassel 2015

Whether four-handed or on two pianos, the piano duo Adrienne Soós & Ivo Haag are always good for surprises at a high pianistic level. The two explore the large pool of unused piano arrangements from the 19th century, which have become obsolete because there are recordings today. Back then, people in the bourgeois salons also got to know new symphonies by playing them on the piano.

Time and again, Soós & Haag find substantial gems; you can rely on their instinct. On this CD, it is the lyrically playful Sonata in G minor for piano four hands op. 17 by Hermann Goetz (1840-1876). Goetz came from Königsberg, but later worked as an organist, music teacher and critic in Winterthur and Zurich. This is also where he met Johannes Brahms.

The main work on this CD is Brahms' Symphony No. 2, arranged for piano four-hands by the master himself. In this recording, the two pianists reveal the originality of Brahms' piano writing. Even in the quiet, static moments - such as at the beginning of the Adagio non troppo - the compact symphonic movement has a clear structure, and the sound of the virtuoso chords is never overblown or blurred by the pedal technique.
The differentiated orchestral coloring is also interesting: for example, the "singing" violins typical of Brahms with their wide-breathed, phrased legato, or the soft, dark winds. The folk-song-like theme is presented with joyful freshness, and the duo blends into the overall sound with such homogeneity that the dialogues are played with such sensitivity, rhythmic elasticity and attention to detail.

The movement in Goetz's original composition for four-hand piano is completely different. The two piano parts are more intimately interwoven, delicate and light in tone. Here it is no longer about the large orchestra, but rather a linear, sparkling interplay between the two pianists: inventive, imaginative and dramaturgically refined. Adrienne Soós and Ivo Haag present this with charm and inspiration, and they vividly formulate the content of this sonata. Clara Schumann's March in E flat major for piano four hands, a playful and virtuoso occasional composition, brings this CD, which is well worth listening to, to a cheeky close.

A romantic arpeggio study, a simple blues, a jazzy rhythm, chords of pure and augmented fourths, a lively seven-eighths piece - there's a bit of everything. Most of the "12 + 1 Etudes on the Way to the Guitar Olympus" are in E minor or G major, some with a strong chromatic touch. There are rudimentary tablatures directly under the notes. This makes it easier for those pupils who are less familiar with reading music to find their way around the fingerboard in high registers or with many accidentals.

Each piece has a clear structure that allows the author to suggest variations with minimal additional instructions, for example a new touch pattern, a different order of notes within a bar or altered slurs. This results in different levels of difficulty, which can be ticked off by the players in the boxes provided. There are also corresponding pictograms for playing by heart, for the correct fingering and for playing tempo.

The layout of the booklet is primarily aimed at children. However, the pieces can be played just as well by teenagers. All the numbers are assigned to specific figures or places from Greek mythology and are accompanied by short commentaries. There is no information about the authorship of the illustrations - are they by Morandell himself?

Robert Morandell, Herkulesaufgaben, 12 + 1 etudes on the way to the guitar Olympus, D 35 958, € 14.50, Doblinger, Vienna 2015

Well-known horn works published by Henle and Bärenreiter in recent years, Mozart's Horn Concertos (HN 701-4, BA 5311-13) and the Horn Quintet (HN 826) as well as Beethoven's Sextet op. 81b (HN 955) and Brahms' Horn Trio (BA 9435), have already been reviewed here (SMZ 6/2004, S. 40; SMZ 4/2011, S. 38; SMZ 9/2013, S. 20). The editorial line is now being continued by Henle with the publication of two short compositions. Both are also suitable for teaching advanced pupils:

In Glasunow's Rêverie reflects the composer's love of the French horn, which he learned to play alongside the piano, violin and cello and even played in the student orchestra. The work, written in 1890 and only published by Mélodie in Rêverie is preceded by two further compositions for horn and strings: Idyll op.14,1 and the 2. Serenade op. 11, composed in 1884.

Alexander Glasunow, Rêverie op. 24 for horn and piano, edited by Dominik Rahmer, HN 1285, € 7.50, G. Henle, Munich 2015

The Wind Quintet op. 43 by Carl Nielsen shows the composer to be a master in the treatment of wind instruments: each player is given his own brilliant cadenza. Nielsen later wrote concertos for the flute and clarinet, but unfortunately he did not write a solo concerto for us horn players. The newly published Canto serioso was commissioned as an audition piece for a 4th horn position to be filled at the Royal Theater in Copenhagen at the time. Nielsen's later rewriting for cello proves that it was not just an occasional work.

Carl Nielsen, Canto serioso for horn and piano, Urtext edited by Dominik Rahmer, HN 586, € 9.00, G. Henle, Munich 2014

In the series published by Doblinger Diletto Musicaleare the Six small pieces for three horn players by Franz Alexander Pössinger (1767-1827). The short, entertaining compositions are suitable for young horn players to play together. They were probably intended for a horn virtuoso of Beethoven's time, Friedrich Hradezky. He is said to be on the cast list of the Vienna Fidelio-In 1824, he probably played the infamous horn solo in the third movement of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony.

Franz Alexander Pössinger, Sechs kleine Stücke op. 30 for three horns, edited by Rudolf H. Führer, DM 1475, € 19.95, Doblinger, Vienna 2014

Lovingly edited by Simon Scheiwiller, Kunzelmann has published a Concerto for two horns by Wenzel Wratny, who worked as a bandmaster and music director in Leibach and Graz in the 18th century. This is an enjoyable piece which can also be performed by advanced amateurs or natural horn players.

Wenzel Wratny , Concerto per 2 Corni da Caccia in E flat major, piano reduction and parts, edited by Simon Scheiwiller, first edition, OCT 10335a, Fr. 35.00, Edition Kunzelmann, Adliswil 2014

Who the Microcosm Béla Bartók in the familiar Boosey & Hawkes format will be surprised to hold the new (and first) Urtext edition from Wiener Urtext Edition in their hands. The six slim volumes I to VI have become three extensive volumes. This division, with two volumes per volume, apparently corresponds to Bartók's original intention, but he was unable to push it through against the publishers Boosey & Hawkes.

However, there are other reasons why the three volumes are so large: Each volume is preceded by a foreword by the editors Michael Kube and Jochen Reutter, which deals in great detail with the history of the origins, the sources and other backgrounds of the Microcosm deals with. This is followed by the composer's foreword.

The musical text itself is spacious and very clearly laid out, and is also livened up with insights into Bartók's own handwriting. His notes on the individual pieces follow, as do comprehensive and very readable notes on interpretation from the pen of Peter Roggenkamp. Extensive critical notes are of course included, as well as some previously unpublished pieces and the special versions for Bartók's son Péter.

So if you want to gain a deeper insight into the Microcosm will be well served here, and at a moderate price to boot. To what extent this new edition will promote the dissemination of the work for practical teaching is another question. There are other pieces by Bartók (such as the collection For children) have always fallen on more willing ears. The Microcosm is not primarily a piano school, but above all a compendium of Bartók's compositional art.

Béla Bartók, Mikrokosmos in three volumes, Urtext edited by Michael Kube and Jochen Reutter, fingerings by the composer; Vol. 1 (Vol 1 & 2), UT 50411, € 24.50; Vol. 2 (Vol 3 & 4), UT 50412, € 27.50; Vol. 3 (Vol 5 & 6), UT 50413, € 27.50; Wiener Urtext Edition, Schott/Universal Edition 2016

For the third time, the Albert Moeschinger Foundation and Edition Müller & Schade have released a recording of works by the Swiss composer. The recording of a concert at the Bern Conservatory contains compositions from three creative periods: the Nine bagatelles for piano from 1931 - Moeschinger was still working as a pianist at the time, songs from 1950/51, from the period when he began to explore the twelve-tone technique, and the Miracles de l'enfance from 1961, a sophisticated chamber music work by the sixty-four-year-old.

Moeschinger, born in Basel in 1897, studied piano and composition in Bern, Leipzig and Munich after completing a bank apprenticeship. After years of traveling as a salon musician, he was appointed piano and theory teacher at the Bern Conservatory. From 1948 onwards, he devoted himself entirely to his compositions in Saas-Fee, lived in Ascona from 1956 and spent the rest of his life in Thun.

A friend of the composer, Hans Oesch, professor of musicology at the University of Basel, recognized in Moeschinger's main works a "tendency towards the brooding and contemplative" and, in contrast, "humorous and bucolic and cheerful" elements.

Simon Bucher brings this interplay into the Nine bagatelles for piano MWV 395. In the Chansonnier pour Mariette MWV 153 recalls the composer's encounter with the singer Mariette Schüpfer at the Basel Carnival in Valais. The intense relationship is reflected in settings of poems by Dante, Goethe, Alfred Tennyson, Trakl, Gabriele D'Annunzio and Eugen Roth, which are a delightful experience in the lively interpretation of contralto Barbara Magdalena Erni.

The chamber cantata Miracles de l'enfance MWV 97 for voice, five woodwinds, harp, percussion and double bass after poems by French and Belgian war children, texts which Moeschinger published in a work entitled The magic of childhood The onomatopoeic passages are full of profound sadness. It is exemplified by Barbara Magdalena Erni and above all by the director of the entire project, Helene Ringgenberg.

With as much spontaneous pleasure as Klezmer Fiddle Tunes I have hardly played through a booklet yet: heartfelt melodies and lively dances - 11 as solos, 22 as violin duets - with clearly marked slurs and other ornaments, logical bowings, fingerings (up to 4th position) and harmonic indications. An essay in English knowledgeably explains the history, culture, different styles and performance practice of Yiddish music. It is accompanied by a masterfully played CD with different accompaniments depending on the character: piano, accordion, pizzicato cello. Double bass and piano accompaniment can be printed out from the CD and a weblink points to mp3 playalong tracks and German and French translations of the introduction!

The Argentinian tango specialist Diego Collatti has arranged five melodies by the famous Carlos Gardell for violin and cello of medium difficulty: real duetting with all the exciting rhythm variations of the tango! In addition to the score, a viola part is also available with many interesting deviations from the cello part. Collatti has also arranged this music for other instrumentations for the Universal Edition.

Klezmer Fiddle Tunes, 33 pieces for violin (optional piano, violin and double bass accompanying parts), edited by Ros Stephen and Julian Rowlands, ED 13492, with CD, € 16.99, Schott, London 2014

Carlos Gardel, Tango duet for violin and violoncello (viola) arr. by Diego Collatti, UE 36 656, € 14.95, Universal Edition, Vienna 2015

In 1961, President John F. Kennedy gave the go-ahead for the invasion of Cuba. However, the military intervention by Cuban exiles organized by the USA failed. As a result, the United States imposed a trade embargo on the island nation a year later, which was only gradually relaxed during Barack Obama's term of office. The political and economic thaw also had an impact on culture. The editors of the German music and culture magazine Melody & Rhythm traveled there to get his own impression. The result is an edition with the title Viva Cuba!.

Over fifty pages, the reader not only learns that Cuban music is based on five stylistic pillars (son, rumba, canción cubana, danzón and punton), but also how the country's approximately 11,000 professional musicians maintain their artistic diversity and why the frontman of the metal band Tendencia, José Ernesto Medero "Kiko" Valdéz, decided not to leave his homeland - despite the temptations of the US market. The interview with Darsi Fernández Maceira, a specialist lawyer in the Cuban cultural sector, and the meeting with publicist Enrique Ubieta are particularly revealing. While Maceira talks about Cuban copyright law, which aims to ensure the widest possible access to culture and information, and also explains why concerts by a great pianist like Roberto Fonseca are poorly attended in Havana ("We haven't learned how to get the audience's attention"), Ubieta reflects on the various cultural models. The 57-year-old is convinced that the USA will continue to strive to reverse Cuba's revolution: "And culture will be the main area of conflict."

Viva Cuba! allows the reader to immerse themselves in the world of Cuban music and also presents multifaceted retrospectives and outlooks. The only minor criticism is that while long-serving luminaries such as 85-year-old Omara Portuondo are dealt with in great detail, the stars of tomorrow have to make do with a few subordinate clauses. To make the country and its music tangible, the issue comes with a CD containing 17 tracks. It features guitarist Vicente Feliú, multi-instrumentalist Yusa and the formation Mezcla - which, according to Carlos Santana, sounds like "fresh water". Although there are hardly any newcomers to be heard on the sampler either, it is fair to say that there are some newcomers: The musical overview is not only extremely varied, but also cleverly put together.

Melodie & Rhythmus, Viva Cuba, July/August 2016 issue, Verlag 8. Mai, Berlin www.melodieundrhythmus.com

If this book had made you aware of the slow movement of Schubert's second-last piano sonata (page 121) - that alone would have made it worth your while to read it! You can be 75 years old and encounter this movement for the first time as a non-piano-playing music lover: a stunning experience!

But this little book offers even more surprising insights, references to lesser-known events in the history of music or to works which, in turn, have been recorded as remarkable from the author's sometimes chance encounters. For example, the very personal comments on music as a shared experience with the little opera Brundibar by Hans Krása - performed dozens of times in the transit camp Theresienstadt (now Terezín), always with a changing cast, when "many of the young performers were deported to the extermination camps". The extremely brief characterization distinguishing Debussy from Ravel is also astonishing.

However, the book can also be read as an overview of music history from Gesualdo to Ligeti and Henze, which was not written for a specialist audience, but for a group of readers interested in music who are happy to accept subjective judgments. Technical terms of New Music, such as "aleatoric" or "serial music", are explained in a professional yet comprehensible manner.

The fact that, as the grandson of Thomas Mann, he is based on his great musical novel Doctor Faustus and dedicates an entire chapter to him for several reasons: His father Michael, the youngest child of the Mann family, had also contributed to the preparatory work (page 36); furthermore, the grandfather thematizes in his novel an existential idea for the grandson, namely that the reduction of the religious in music has encouraged modern hopelessness: "The harmonious cosmic reference to God in the Baroque period has been replaced by a focus on the world of individual human feeling" (page 249). In the few references to his father, a more concise but fairer picture of Michael's musical career emerges than in the latest publication on the Mann family by Thilmann Lahme.

Frido Mann's advice in the last part of the book on how contemporary music could be brought closer to the interested public again can be met with a certain skepticism, but such considerations are certainly not unnecessary.

Frido Mann, To the music. An autobiographical essay. Fischer TB 03376, 332 pages, € 10.99, Fischer, Munich 2015, ISBN 978-3-596-03376-8