Kultur Wallis promotes cultural activities in Valais, both within and outside the canton, and is committed to the recognition of artistic activity. The association has been entrusted with cultural tasks of the canton by the Association of Valais Towns and the Department of Culture, including the promotion, information and support of artistic productions.

The 39-year-old Pralong comes from Sion and, in addition to a Phil. I degree and a doctorate in geosciences and environmental sciences, he also has a diploma in project management. He has gained his professional experience in both the private and public sectors.

Richard Köster comes from Burghausen in Upper Bavaria and is a jazz student at the HKB. The band is made up of Richard Köster (tp, flh), Benjamin Daxbacher (as), Alois Eberl (tb), Christian Zöchbauer (tb), Beate Wiesinger (b) and Jakob Kammerer (dm). The two band leaders Köster and Kammerer gave the band its name. The six young musicians got to know each other while studying music in Vienna.

The Interessengemeinschaft Jazz Burghausen e.V. awards the European Burghausen Jazz Prize for Young Jazz Artists in cooperation with the town of Burghausen. The prize serves to actively promote young talent in jazz. All styles of jazz are eligible. Participation is limited to a maximum age of 30 years.

In 2016, the prize of 25,000 Swiss francs will be awarded in the feature film category. Original compositions for feature films with a total duration of 60 minutes or more, released either in 2015 or 2016, can be submitted until Friday, May 13, 2016.

The Suisa Music Promotion Foundation has been awarding the prize for more than 15 years, underlining the importance of musical works in the seventh art. The list of previous winners includes the names of renowned Swiss film music composers such as Alex Kirschner (winner in 2000), Balz Bachmann (2003 and 2006), Niki Reiser (2001 and 2011), the Baldenweg siblings (2010) and Marcel Vaid (2009). Last year's award, presented for the first time in the documentary film category, went to Peter Scherer, who received the prize for the second time after 2007.

More information on the competition and the regulations of the Fondation Suisa Film Music Prize can be found at: www.fondation-suisa.ch/filmmusikpreis
 

According to the official statement from Irène Philipp Ziebold and Stefano Kunz, Vice President and Managing Director of the Swiss Music Council (SMR), the death of Markus Flury means that the SMR has lost "a personality who for many years, first as a board member and since 2011 as President, has shown great commitment to the concerns of music in Switzerland. Accordingly, he will be missed by the Music Council and musical Switzerland."

A tribute to his work will be paid at a later date.

The official funeral service will take place on Tuesday, March 15, 2016, at 2 p.m. in the Roman Catholic Church in Hägendorf. The Swiss Music Council invites musical Switzerland to pay its respects to Markus Flury once again on this occasion. The urn burial will take place in the closest family circle.

The sketches remained in the possession of Schumann's eldest daughter Marie until the beginning of the 20th century. In 1911, they were offered for sale by C. G. Boerner in Leipzig and ended up in the Schumann collection of the Zwickau Oberbergrat and Schumann enthusiast Alfred Wiede. From there they were exhibited once again, at least on the occasion of the Schumann Festival in 1922, at which the work was also played. After that, however, they disappeared into a private safe.

Schumann's sketches are now returning to their place of origin and will be made accessible to all interested parties. At the SLUB Dresden, they complement a small but typical collection of autographs and manuscripts from Schumann's Dresden period.
 

According to the associations, the reporting obligations to other collecting societies and the public provided for in the law will lead to "an extremely increased administrative burden with no additional information value", which will be at the expense of the authors as it will be deducted from their income. The associations anticipate additional expenditure of around one million euros for the changeover, with significantly increasing running costs.

The associations, including the Musicians' Guild, the Composers' Association and the Austrian Music Council, are disconcerted by the "repeated practice of not involving those affected in the considerations that preceded the draft law".

The amendment intends to implement the European Directive 2014/26/EU on collective management of copyright and related rights and multi-territorial licensing of rights in musical works for online use in the internal market, which must be implemented nationally by April 10, 2016.

More info:: kulturrat.at/agenda/brennpunkte/20160302
 

Born in Berlin, the Austrian conductor spent his childhood and youth in Graz. After training at the Vienna Academy of Music, he became a cellist with the Vienna Symphony Orchestra in 1952. A year later, together with his wife Alice, he founded the Concentus Musicus Wien in order to provide a forum for his increasingly intensive work with original instruments and the musical performance practice of Renaissance and Baroque music.

In 1971, he realized a cycle of Monteverdi's music theatre works at the Zurich Opera House with director Jean-Pierre Ponnelle, which became a milestone in historically informed music-making. This was followed by an equally exemplary and pioneering cycle of Mozart operas at the same opera house with Ponnelle as his partner.

However, his work was not limited to baroque and classical music. In 2009, Harnoncourt also realized a Porgy and Bess production, for example, and in 2011 he conducted Smetana's "Bartered Bride" in Graz. In 2013, he also took up the cudgels for Jacques Offenbach. In December 2015, he informed his audience in a handwritten open letter that he would be retiring from the stage with immediate effect.

Photo: © Werner Kmetitsch, www.styriarte.com 

If the cantonal council follows the commission's proposal, it will be shirking its responsibility to establish clear framework conditions for music education throughout the canton, writes the Winterthur city councillor. It would also disregard the constitutional mandate to promote youth music in accordance with Art. 67a of the Federal Constitution.

Although it considered the requested contribution amount for the operation of music schools to be too low, the City Council supports the Music Schools Act as the legal basis. The current music school ordinance of the cantonal government does not meet these requirements.

With a Non-acceptance of the proposal According to the Winterthur City Council, the Cantonal Council is shirking its responsibility as a legislative body. Like the cantonal council, the city council is also convinced that a cantonal legal regulation for music school lessons is needed; on the one hand as a basis for future political decisions, on the other hand as a financial basis for music school offers for children from outside the city and to give music schools a certain degree of planning security.

Furthermore, the law contains the constitutional mandate to make music education accessible to all and to make uniform regulations to promote talented musicians. The City Council would therefore very much welcome it if the majority of the Cantonal Council were to support the bill, discuss the details and pass a resolution as part of the Council debate.

After more than ten years of discussion and despite unanimous agreement in the consultation process that a legal basis is needed for music education in general and for the promotion of gifted students in particular, the preliminary committee of the Zurich Cantonal Council has decided not to support the government's draft bill.
 

From left: Josef Lisibach, Nicolas Galladé, Yvonne Beutler, Stefan Fritschi, Michael Künzle, Barbara Günthard-Maier, Matthias Gfeller, Ansgar Simon

According to the Council's press release, the majority of the committee believes that the music school law is unnecessary. The existing music schools offer a comprehensive and high-quality range of services throughout the canton. The federal constitutional mandate that all children and young people should have access to musical education is fulfilled in the canton of Zurich.

The federal requirement for socially acceptable parental contributions also applies without a cantonal legal basis, the Council writes further. The Commission takes the view that cooperation between the municipalities works and that the canton's contributions to the operating costs of music schools should remain at the current level. Overall, there is therefore no need for legislative action.

The committee minority supports the new Music Schools Act because it brings added value in their view. This will give regionally and nationally run music schools a legal basis. With reference to the constitutional mandate, the committee minority believes that the organization, recognition criteria and financing of music schools should be regulated by law. Due to the legal requirements regarding organization and quality, it considers a higher financial contribution by the canton to the operating costs of music schools to be justified. The new music school law could thus make a significant contribution to the promotion of music education.

The FDP demands a fundamental rethink and calls for a voucher system in the sense of subject financing instead of the current object financing. Parents would be able to choose the music lessons they want for their child from the public and private offerings and thus create competition based on actual demand. For this reason, the FDP will request a rejection should the Cantonal Council go against the Commission's proposal.

As the canton writes, the decision to build the Toggenburg Sound House was approved in the final vote with 56 votes in favor, 43 against and 6 abstentions. However, the required qualified majority of 61 votes was not achieved due to the high absentee rate of council members. The project will therefore not even be put to the people.

According to an initial statement on its website, IG Klanghaus is "shocked and surprised by the failure of the Klanghaus at this stage". It seems particularly bitter that after a clear approval in the first and second readings, 15 cantonal council members were absent from the final vote.

Who knows Paul Schatz? He was an artist, scientist and inventor. Schatz was born in Constance on Lake Constance in 1898. In 1927, he moved to Dornach in Switzerland, where he developed, among other things, a so-called oloid - an organic body that is beautiful to look at and even serves a purpose: The oloid can be used to propel ships as well as a device that circulates liquids. Not violently like a fast-turning screw, but very gently, organically.

That sounds more like stone anthroposophy and mechanics than music. The Ensemble Neue Horizonte Bern builds a bridge to Schatz and his oloid with the concert motto: "Dynamics in the river", and the program note explains further: "All compositions deal with the thematic complexes of river-water-port, but also current-lock-trade transshipment point-swans-Rhine, Danube, Vltava and other near or remote places." With an unmistakable nod to the Czech composer Bedřich Smetana, the ensemble's pianist Erika Radermacher named her piece for quintet and tape, written in 1984 The Moldau. Urs Peter Schneider composed Element of Water for bassoon and accompaniment in 2003. Beautiful blue Danube in the form of a tape piece by the Polish composer Joanna Bruzdowicz and Le Rhin Allemandwhich Roland Moser wrote for piano as a member of the ensemble.
 

The Ensemble Neue Horizonte Bern has been known for its composed programs since the late 1960s. At the Duisburg Inland Waterways Museum, they also create something "in the river". There are pieces by members of the ensemble and compositions by conceptually oriented English composers. The pieces mostly flow seamlessly, attacca, into one another. They are very different, including some bizarre pieces as well as stronger and weaker ones. The charm of an explanation of a lock remains hidden, which Erika Radermacher explains to the 30 or so visitors in the style of a primary school teacher. Many a realization of text scores, i.e. verbose musical instructions, also tastes stale... and radiates little vitality. More convincing are the strict and very densely composed works by ensemble director Urs Peter Schneider. Only playful on the surface Element waterwhose tone is perfectly captured by bassoonist Marc Kilchenmann. Schneider's piano piece White darkness is convincing - despite being played on an electric piano, which simply sounds alien to art.
It would be wrong to judge a concert by the Ensemble Neue Horizonte Bern solely on the quality of individual pieces. It would be better to let yourself be carried away by the events, to discover a little story here or there, to get involved in the questions and riddles that some radical works or the concert flow as a whole reveal. But immersion is not possible in Duisburg. This is not due to the music or the musicians, but to the accompanying circumstances. An electric piano - especially a cheap one - is an imposition for pianists and listeners alike. In addition, there is a room that may be suitable for acoustic experiments and as an exhibition space, but not for concerts. The reverberation in the vault is enormous. Especially for the ensemble's objective approach, it is more than just counterproductive when a staccato becomes a legato, when some frequencies overlap in such a way that it makes the listener's head spin.
 

The piece Swell Piecewritten by Englishman James Tenney for Melodicas in 1967, develops a special momentum of its own under these conditions. The overtones overlap piercingly, resounding shrilly in the head. The "tumbling movement of the oloid" was to be adapted to the variable concert program that the ensemble gave on its tour, each time in a different order of pieces. What remained in Duisburg was an audience reeling in the sound - and the simple realization that music does not tolerate every space. Hopefully under better conditions, "Dynamik im Fluss" can be heard again: on Sunday, March 6, in Untersiggenthal (Garnhaus am Wasserschloss) and in Biel on Monday, May 2, at Atelier Pia Maria.  

Compared to non-pianists, pianists have larger centers that are responsible for learning and memory (hippocampus), that serve to automate movements (putamen and thalamus), that process emotions and motivation (amygdala), and that perform hearing and speech processing (left superior temporal lobe). However, they have smaller centers for sensorimotor control (the postcentral region), for processing sounds and music (right superior temporal lobe) and for reading music (so-called supramarginal gyrus).

Another new finding is that the size of the centers responsible for the automation of movements (right putamen) depends on the beginning of piano playing: The earlier the pianists had started to play the piano, the smaller this region is (although it was generally larger than in non-pianists), and the more precise their scale playing is.

What does that mean? Pianists have different brains to non-musicians. The centers responsible for memory, emotion and automation are larger, but the centers directly related to hearing and moving the fingers are smaller. The earlier pianists start practicing, the smaller these regions are. Eckart Altenmüller, Director of the Institute of Music Physiology and Musicians' Medicine: "Our brain optimizes itself before the age of seven and creates particularly efficient control programs that don't take up much space, are very stable and also enable faster learning later in life. So there's a bit of truth in the old saying: What goes around comes around."

The starting point of the study on brain structure was the MRI examination of 36 particularly high-performing piano students at HMTMH and 17 students of the same age who do not play an instrument, using a method that allows the density and size of the nerve cells in the various regions of the brain to be measured. This method, known as "voxel-based morphology", was carried out in the neuroradiology department of the International Neuroscience Institute in Hanover and the data was analyzed in Barcelona.

In order to determine whether the age at which music lessons begin in childhood is important for brain development, 21 piano students in Hanover who started playing the piano before the age of 6.5 were compared with 15 who started later. In addition to the brain images, the accuracy of the touch when playing scales quickly was also recorded.

Original article: Vaquero, L., Hartmann, K., Ripollés, P. et al: "Structural neuroplasticity in expert pianists depends on the age of musical training onset", NeuroImage, Volume 126, 1 February 2016, Pages 106-119.

Photo: zVg

Alain Kohler and the Pleyel No. 11265

As Kohler himself writes, he has examined all the documents of the Pleyel firm relating to the period between 1839 and 1847 for grand pianos that may have been made available to Chopin in his Paris apartments during this time, and has come across the serial numbers of several grand pianos to which this certainly applies.

He was able to locate grand piano no. 11265 because it had been advertised for sale by the Edwin Beunk repair workshop. The discovery was confirmed by Jean-Jacques Eigeldinger, professor emeritus at the University of Geneva and a proven expert on Chopin. The instrument was in Chopin's apartment on the Square d'Orléans in Paris between December 1844 and June 1845. Chopin gave piano lessons there. The Sonata for Cello and Piano op. 65 was certainly composed on this instrument.

Five Pleyel grand pianos are known to have been used by Chopin. They are in museums in Mallorca, Paris, Stockholm, Krakow and Warsaw. Nine years ago, Eigeldinger discovered another grand piano in the Alec Cobbe collection in England. The grand piano discovered by Alain Kohler has the advantage that the original mechanics are well preserved. It will be made available for artistic projects in the future.

Inquiries are possible under www.fortepiano.nl to be addressed to Edwin Beunk.
 

1816 was a year without a summer, which resulted in a serious hunger crisis, particularly in the Zurich Oberland. The gloom was caused by a huge volcanic eruption in Indonesia. A regionally broad-based association, founded under the patronage of the Culture Commission, is now organizing an exhibition and an open-air play in the Ritterhaus Bubikon on the events of 200 years ago, for which there is already a great deal of interest, including from schools. The association is receiving a contribution of CHF 250,000 from the lottery fund towards the costs of the two sub-projects.

The Karls kühne Gassenschau theater group has to replace its 40-year-old grandstand for safety reasons, at a cost of CHF 730,000. It will now receive a Lottery Fund contribution of CHF 300,000 towards this. The Foundation of the Evangelical Society of the Canton of Zurich will receive CHF 400,000 each for the renovation of its hostel for the homeless in Zurich and the initiators of a regional project show Limmattal, which aims to promote identity-creating projects in this region beyond the cantonal border. The cantonal government is also providing CHF 300,000 to support a project at the University of Zurich that aims to promote the independence of elderly people living alone through the therapeutic use of dogs.

The organizers of Züri Fäscht 2016 are also to receive CHF 800,000 from the lottery fund. This is what the cantonal government is proposing to the cantonal council. The increased contribution compared to previous festivals will enable additional security costs and partial compensation from the Zurich Transport Association (ZVV) for the night network.

Inside views from the world of chamber music, especially from the supreme discipline of the string quartet, which still has an aura of the mystical, still seem to attract a great deal of interest. Following the third edition of Sonia Simmenauer's book Does it have to be? - Life in a quartet from 2008 (cf. SMZ 9/2008, P. 35), the Berenberg publishing house is launching a publication that uncovers even deeper layers of this traditional quartet. Perhaps it was already being considered at the time to shed more light on the subject later by means of a selected quartet, as the cover already featured the picture of the Vogler Quartet - a very serious one, in keeping with Beethoven's title.

In the new book, on the front of which the protagonists can smile with satisfaction at what they have achieved in three decades, many themes return, but are presented from a different angle. The author Frank Schneider, former artistic director of the Konzerthaus Berlin, did not see himself as the leading figure in the creation process, but on the contrary developed the concept together with the quartet members, and only after they had asked him to participate. One could therefore say that the book grew interactively in a process similar to that of chamber music.

Although - as the subtitle states - conversations form the basis for the final text, this is not a loose collection of discussed topics with a dynamic that develops of its own accord. The author's meticulously prepared, well thought-out and sensitively pointed questions give the book a stable backbone, a structure that also takes less informed readers by the hand and maintains the reading pleasure through its formal coherence.

The Vogler Quartet is particularly suitable for such an elaborate undertaking in several respects. At home on the world's stages for 30 years with the same line-up, it stands for a German-German success story due to its genesis and the musicians' origins against the backdrop of the exciting last years of the GDR and its collapse in 1989 as well as the reunification of Germany in 1990. At that time, the dual leadership of the string quartets in the GDR was called the Vogler & Petersen Quartet. Regrettably, the latter was disbanded a few years ago after numerous line-up changes. Influenced by Eberhard Feltz, the doyen of old-school quartet teachers alongside Robert Levine, the Vogler Quartet entered the international concert stage with aplomb after winning first prize at the Evian Competition in 1986. As can still be seen on youtube today, the four musicians were a classical band at the time, which outwardly corresponded entirely to the bourgeois GDR look, but as a quartet developed such a seriousness and precision that - devoid of any Western sausage or arrogance - completely surprised their colleagues.

It may be that the members of the Vogler Quartet, who all come from the increasingly endangered genre of musically active and home music-practicing families, have never completely shed their - as they themselves say - stoic deliberateness and sometimes develop a certain emotional distance. Their musical impetus and, above all, the intellectual, analytical, informed foundation of their interpretations is like an iceberg, gigantic beneath the visible, always palpable and downright awe-inspiring. Her discipline, her diligence and her tireless interest in new challenges, be it children's concerts, new music, cross-genre projects (including with Ute Lemper, Jewish music, tango) or entire festival programs (including the Homburger Kammermusiktage, Drumcliffe Festival Ireland), they always stand out from other ensembles that do not arouse any new interest in the fantastically diverse chamber music with the same programmatic content, but rather saw off the branch they actually want to sit on for a while longer by embalming the sometimes outdated rituals and concert formats.

The four male members of the quartet (now a minority constellation among ensembles) all have their say in equal parts. The book succeeds impressively in achieving a balance within the foursome, which must be achieved by the differently weighted perception of the individual voices alone and by submitting to the natural hierarchy of the quartet. Of course, the texts were edited after the conversations. The answers seem too polished and perfect for them to have arisen spontaneously at the high level of language and content. Nevertheless, it is noticeable that all four musicians have the highest degree of perception, reflection and penetration of the essential characteristics of their own work. This is certainly not something that can be said of all quartets. Nevertheless, four different characters have come together here, with all their idiosyncrasies, weaknesses and strengths. But the 30 years of cohesion create such a substantial layer of common sense and experienced history that it is rare to speak of a "marriage of four". As an uninitiated reader, you may smile at the plight of chairs that are too low or the sometimes socially exhausting after-concert parties. However, the fact that serious quartet playing at the highest level is not a profession, but a priority in life, to which everything else is aligned, is beautifully expressed. The most expensive losses caused by artistic activity, such as broken marriages or relationships, are also openly lamented.

Despite the wealth of the book and the many details it discusses, there is still much more to say and ask. For example, what actually lies at the heart of the almost three-hundred-year-old fascination with the string quartet, why so many composers dedicated their most valuable works to this genre? Or how about a book by the partners of string quartet musicians and their view of the omnipresent temporal and emotional competition? Who knows, maybe in a few years' time there will be another book that continues and adds to the stories and explains the string quartet cosmos to us anew.

Frank Schneider, A world on sixteen strings. Conversations with the Vogler Quartet, 384 p., € 25.00, Berenberg-Verlag, Berlin 2015, ISBN 978-3-937834-80-1