With an increase of 96.6%, the growth momentum in streaming has reached a new peak, significantly exceeding previous forecasts; a development that more than compensates for the declines in the physical market (-4.2%) and in download sales (-2.6%).

Audio streaming now generates 13.8 percent of total sales, with downloads accounting for 15.7 percent. Vinyl is the only physical sound carrier to grow again, albeit in a niche market: With growth of 32.2 percent, vinyl now accounts for 3.3 percent of sales. The bottom line is that digital (streaming and downloads) accounted for 30.9% of the overall market in 2015, while physical music sales (CD, vinyl, DVD/Bluray) accounted for 69.1%.

The national repertoire is also continuing its upward trend. Eight of the top 10 albums in the Official German Annual Charts in 2015 were in German, which has never been seen before. In addition to pop and rock, which continue to be very successful, other genres such as metal and hip-hop albums and electronic dance music singles are also achieving consistently high chart success.

The BVMI will publish the final market data with detailed evaluations of the submarkets in March.

Making music means criticizing, means asking the question: good or bad? Musicians criticize themselves, their teachers, their own students, other performers, recordings, etc. Connoisseurs criticize. Connoisseurs criticize, but enthusiasts criticize even more. How do musicologists, representatives of "the subject" (five times in the foreword on p. 5), comment on "judgment and value judgment in music"? "Judgments of taste" are frowned upon at this level; instead, "qualified listeners" should make relevant "factual judgments". Carl Dahlhaus (died 1989) still held the view that such judgments should be based on musical analysis. We are a long way from that today. One could almost say: the more competent a judgment is, the more it reflects its own time; because value judgments in the context of the arts are neither only in the subject matter itself nor in the people judging it, but are always culturally based and thus subject to changing influences and fashions.

Most of the contributions to a Hamburg conference in fall 2013 came to this conclusion, regardless of whether Gounod's Bach arrangement Hail MaryJohann Mattheson or the music of Erik Satie, whether the reception of Friedrich Witt's pseudo-Beethovenian Jena Symphony or Hans Rott's E major symphony are chosen as examples. It becomes more complicated when humor plays a role, when the music itself is based on a distinction between good and bad and the listener should notice this. The fact that the music publisher's judgment has prophetic traits, or at least financial consequences, is another form of implicit criticism. If today, in a commercialized world, art easily stands alongside non-art, any judgement becomes difficult. This is why Manfred Stahnke comes to the conclusion: "Ultimately, only that which can reach our souls has 'value' for us. And that is free of commerce" (p. 188). Is this a plea for the resurrection of the pure "judgment of taste"?

I read the volume with interest, not because it contains anything fundamentally new, but because the writers' trains of thought, their arguments, sources and illustrations allow us to discover the unknown. But why do musicologists, literary scholars and composers keep to themselves? Do they have more to say than those music critics and reviewers whose day-to-day business revolves around "judgment and value judgment in music", i.e. the question: "Good or bad?"?

Good or bad? Urteil und Werturteil in der Musik, (=Hamburger Jahrbuch für Musikwissenschaft, Vol. 30), ed. by Claudia Maurer Zenck and Ivana Rentsch, 188 p., Fr. 37.00, Peter Lang, Bern et al. 2015, ISBN 978-3-631-659997-7

The director of the Alpentöne festival in Altdorf, Johannes Rühl, and Dieter Ringli, ethnomusicologist and lecturer at the Lucerne School of Music, have been observing new folk music in Switzerland for years, collecting press articles and recordings, supplementing this material with extensive interviews with musicians at home and now compiling it into a comprehensive non-fiction book.

In Switzerland, the term "new folk music" refers to instrumental and vocal music that experiments with traditional melodies, uses traditional instruments in new ways, mixes up yodeling with other vocal genres and reaches a largely urban audience in professional interpretations, especially at festivals, on cabaret stages and via Radio DRS2.

The phenomenon has been concentrated on the Alpentöne festival in Altdorf since 1999, the Naturtonfestival in Toggenburg since 2003 and the Stubete am See in Zurich since 2008, which may have prompted the authors to limit their investigation to German-speaking Switzerland. If one does not simply associate New Folk Music with the epochal edition of the ten thousand folk dances from all over Switzerland notated by Hanny Christen between 1940 and 1960, prepared for printing by Fabian Müller and Ueli Mooser and published in 2002 by the Gesellschaft für die Volksmusik in der Schweiz (GVS) as the initial spark, but considering the beginnings as a result of the fading folk movement in the 1980s and the experiments with old folk music on current occasions, the 700th anniversary of the Swiss Confederation (1991) and the World Expo in Seville (1992), initiators from French-speaking Switzerland should also be mentioned.

The expert authors present their examination of what is probably the most exciting music scene in Switzerland today in 13 short introductory chapters such as "News from back then", "Folk music intermediate worlds", "The Appenzell theme" and "The basis of folk". At the heart of the publication are 17 five-hour interviews with 13 male and 5 female musicians, transcribed and abridged by the editors, who also talk about their music on a CD.

Dieter Ringli's conclusion, which is well worth reading, states that it is impossible to reduce new folk music to a single denominator. This is confirmed by the informative biographies of Ueli Mooser, Markus Flückiger, Dani Häusler, Fabian Müller, Domenic and Madleina Janett, Thomas Aeschbacher, Nadja Räss, Töbi Tobler, Hans Kennel, Christoph Baumann, Dide Marfurt, Albin Brun, Christine Lauterbrug, Corin Curschellas, Erika Stucky, Christian Zehnder and Balthasar Streiff. However, most of these biographies begin with musically talented and understanding parents.

It is also noticeable that more than half of the contributors to this music trend are over sixty years old, well trained, have been influenced by traditional musicians and are hard-working. The desire to experiment with ever new line-ups, with the combination of different styles, with the interplay of ever different musical partners is the secret of the relaxed approach to traditional folk music.

The audio CD accompanying the book is supplemented by an informative, trilingual booklet published by the Musiques Suisses label, which has made it its mission to document New Folk Music. An introductory text, short biographies of the performers and 19 carefully selected sound samples provide a concentrated introduction to New Folk Music.

Dieter Ringli / Johannes Rühl, The New Folk Music. Seventeen portraits and a search for traces in Switzerland, 362 p., with CD, Fr. 38.00, Chronos-Verlag, Zurich 2015, ISBN 978-3-0340-1310-9

The new folk music. Musiques Suisses CD MGB -NV 30

Pipes and drums have a long tradition in Switzerland. And it was the Swiss Guards who played the music of French composers Jean-Baptiste Lully, André Danican Philidor and Jean-Jacques Rousseau - to name but a few - at the court of Louis XIV and XV.

At the suggestion of the Swiss Drum and Pipe Players' Association (STPV), Thilo Hirsch has written this book, Music of the Gardes Suisses for Fifres & Tambours, was written. This specialist book was written in collaboration with Walter Büchler (Tambour), Danny Wehrmüller (Tambour/Basler Piccolo) and Sarah van Cornewal (Fifre/Basler Piccolo). It presents 15 compositions by French musicians from the 17th and 18th centuries.

In the introduction, Thilo Hirsch provides important information on the history and performance practice of baroque flute and drum music, and also mentions numerous entertaining anecdotes on the subject. Each piece of music is then presented with a brief explanation of the music-historical background and a facsimile of the original. The transcription of the facsimiles is in a two-part version based on historical models. However, the authors have also written a modern, three-part arrangement for pipes and drums for each of the 15 pieces. In order to gain the necessary range for the third flute part, they transposed the parts in these versions upwards. However, the auxiliary lines of the uppermost part occasionally come a little too close to each other. The tambourine part is notated in "Zündstoff-Trommelschrift". This is taken from the teaching material of the Swiss Tambourine Association Fuel for drummers, which was published in the mid-1980s and is now unfortunately out of print.

Written in German and French, the book Music of the Gardes Suisses for Fifres & Tambours offers a rich fund of material for concerts or special occasions of pipers' and drummers' associations. It impresses with its simple design and elegant musical notation. Further information on the texts can be found in the numerous references and literature recommendations.

Thilo Hirsch, Musik der Gardes Suisses für Fifres & Tambours, Verlag des Schweizerischen Tambouren- und Pfeiferverbands, Fr. 45.00, Stäfa 2015, ISBN 978-3-9524552-0-3

Fit from the sheet are the three volumes by Paul Harris, which were published by Faber Music in 2008/2009 and are now also available in German as a joint publication with Edition Peters. The booklets are clearly organized into levels and lessons and the table of contents gives a quick insight into the author's teaching and learning intentions.

Pulse and rhythm are at the center of this as a basic musical element and are trained and illustrated in various ways. From the very beginning, care is taken to ensure that a fixed pulse gives the reading a direction in order to avoid stagnant playing as far as possible. There are "prepared pieces" in each lesson. Questions at the beginning of each piece consistently require the pupil to gain an overview before playing, to pay attention to recurring patterns (rhythmic or melodic), scale sections, steps or leaps, the position of the hand in relation to the fingering. Special importance is also attached to listening in the head beforehand, which could be quite successful with the necessary practice given the very simple selection of literature.

I like how important topics such as slurs, dotted notes, articulation, major and minor, different rhythm patterns and time signatures, different hand positions, chord playing and polyphonic playing are gradually introduced in carefully sequenced steps. Performance titles such as "With a smile" or "Dignified" require the student to empathize with the emotional content of the pieces. While the first volume is dedicated to the elementary basics of skillful Primavista playing, the second volume already combines several aspects. The pieces are very cleverly composed and are geared towards understanding contexts. In the third volume, advanced sight-readers will find many instructive examples that require precise note-taking, as they prevent intuitive guessing with their enriched harmony and surprising time changes.

Paul Harris, Fit vom Blatt. Sight-reading exercises for piano; Volume 1 - beginners, EPF 2002-1; Volume 2 - intermediate, EPF 2002-2; Volume 3 - advanced, EPF 2002-3, Fr. 19.45 each; Faber Music/Edition Peters, London/Leipzig et al. 2014

Born in 1936, the American composer Steve Reich is a pioneer of minimal music, which works with repetitive patterns, long but usually low-tension arcs and often with phase shifts. Violin phase from 1967 is one of the early works that helped shape the development of this style.

As is so often the case with Reich, the piece is technically easy to play at first glance, but nevertheless places high musical demands on the performers. Short patterns are repeated almost endlessly - exactly how often is determined by the players themselves - so that the overlapping of the various melodic snippets creates a cluster-like bustle.

The difficulty, but also the fascination of the piece lies in the minimal phase shifts: An imperceptible accelerando of a voice very slowly "catches up" first just one, then perhaps another eighth note. The resulting tone patterns become temporarily confusing until the guitar and tape or the four guitars find themselves in the same meter again.

The detailed playing instructions from the original 1967 edition were adapted for the guitar, but it is not entirely clear by whom. Although they are signed with Steve Reich's name, they are not dated. Was Reich involved in the publication of the guitar sheet music or not? Were the instructions even taken from Electric Guitar Phase from the year 2000, which was also an adaptation of Violin Phase? It is a pity that the publisher does not ensure transparency here, as the editing history of Reich's works is quite interesting!

Steve Reich, Violin Phase for Guitars, for guitar and tape or 4 guitars, UE 21646, € 24.95, Universal Edition, Vienna 2015

David Popper (1843-1913) studied at the Prague Conservatory with Julius Goltermann and is probably one of the most important cello virtuosos of the second half of the 19th century. Contemporary critics compared his playing to that of the violin virtuoso Pablo de Sarasate. From 1868 to 1873, he was solo cellist at the Vienna Court Opera; from 1886, he taught in Budapest at the Royal Hungarian Academy of Music founded by Franz Liszt in 1875 (today: Franz Liszt University of Music). He is considered the founder of the Hungarian cellist school.

He is still present as a composer today: his collections of etudes are an integral part of cello lessons and several of his effective character pieces are part of the standard repertoire. Paladino-Music-Verlag has now set itself the goal of publishing all of Popper's compositions in a new edition. The scores are provided with Popper's own performance notes and the parts are edited by internationally renowned performers.

A first result of this series is the present Waltz Suite op. 60 is one of Popper's more extensive works: an introduction is followed by five waltzes and an expansive, virtuoso finale. It is not a pure virtuoso piece, but rather sophisticated salon music that makes the most of the cello's lyrical strengths. As always with Popper, the piano part is colorful and imaginative. A fine start to the new edition of these witty works.

David Popper, Waltz Suite op. 60 for violoncello and piano, edited by Martin Rummel, pm 0036, € 17.95, Paladino Music, Vienna 2014

"The purpose of this new edition is to bring this masterpiece of piano literature closer to a wider circle of musicians ..." This is the wish of editor Paul Badura-Skoda in his foreword to the 8 Préludes pour le piano by Frank Martin. In fact, this cycle, composed in 1947/48 and dedicated to Dinu Lipatti, has been somewhat neglected recently, just as Martin's oeuvre in general has fallen somewhat into the background. What the Preludes Each one is a precious pearl with its own character and sound.

As an intimate connoisseur of Martin's music, Paul Badura-Skoda knows how to report many inspiring and interesting details. In particular, he incorporates his listening experiences from Martin's own interpretations, which once again raises the old question of whether a composer is also the ideal interpreter of his own works. In this case he certainly was, because Frank Martin was also a very competent pianist.
Also revealing is a short letter from Martin to the pianist Klaus Wolters, in which he answers a few questions of interpretation very precisely. This letter is included in the new edition as a facsimile together with translations.

The critical apparatus is detailed, but at the same time clear and reader-friendly. Not a matter of course in this day and age ... All in all, a new edition that should fulfill the publisher's wish quoted at the beginning.

Frank Martin, 8 Préludes pour le piano, UE 35 753, € 24.95, Universal Edition, Vienna 2014

The demand for clarinet lessons at music schools is constantly falling, although hardly any other wind instrument offers a wider range of stylistic applications. From classical and folk music to klezmer and jazz - the clarinet is used everywhere. It is one of the most flexible and versatile wind instruments of all. The Swiss Wind Music Association has come up with all sorts of ideas to increase the focus on this instrument, which was highly valued not least by Mozart: concerts up and down the country, flash mobs, the largest clarinet ensemble, the longest clarinet note and a clarinet bus that was sent on an educational tour across Switzerland.

On the trail of the inventor
In January 2015, the Burgdorf Music School came up with an original and obvious idea to enrich the Year of the Clarinet. In the 1980s, the clarinettist and music teacher Andreas Ramseier came across the piano reduction of an opera at a flea market in Freiburg. It was the work of the largely unknown Nuremberg composer Friedrich Weigmann (1869-1939) entitled The clarinet maker on. The libretto was written by the musicologist, conductor and author of the Reclam opera guide Georg Richard Kruse (1856-1944).
The invention of the clarinet is attributed to Johann Christoph Denner (1655-1707), a famous Baroque musical instrument maker. Denner added an additional key to the chalumeau, which has the range of a major ninth, so that the instrument's range could be extended into the middle and high registers by overblowing. The sound of the upper notes was reminiscent of the clarino sound of the baroque trumpet, which is why the new instrument was given the name clarinet. Johann Christian Denner is also the main character in the opera. The extent to which the plot actually corresponds to the historical facts is beyond our knowledge today, but is of no further importance.

World premiere of the Burgdorf version
Der Klarinettenmacher was premiered at the Bamberg Theater in 1913 and was subsequently on the repertoire of several German theaters, including the Schillertheater in Hamburg. Today, the work cannot be found in any opera guide and apart from the one piano reduction, all the material is missing. It apparently disappeared during the First World War. For the production at the Casino Theater Burgdorf, Roger Müller has written a one-and-a-half-hour, colorful, multi-layered score for clarinet, violin, viola, cello, double bass, flute/saxophone, accordion, organ and guitar based on the piano accompaniment. Weigmann's music is difficult to categorize, but has late romantic traits. In terms of content, it is a play opera, but the through-composed form contradicts this genre designation. A lot of text has been crammed into the solo parts, which is not exactly conducive to the melodic line and musical tension. Perhaps the work would have benefited from spoken dialog in the sense of a play opera. Duets are in short supply and vocal ensembles are completely absent. The few choral passages in the piece are economically taken over by the orchestra in the Burgdorf version.

The Swiss Jazz School is a specialized music school for particularly talented students, writes the canton. It is therefore a link between the basic jazz training provided by regional music schools and the jazz department of the University of the Arts BUA as well as comparable courses at other music universities.

The state contributions are approved for four years at a time so that the school can draw up medium-term financial planning. The service contract is concluded for the same duration. 

For 2016, the cantonal government has approved cantonal contributions of CHF 17.31 million to the 29 general music schools recognized by the canton of Bern. As part of cost-cutting measures, the cantonal government had reduced and capped the contributions to music schools set out in the financial plan by CHF 500,000 from 2013. The cantonal government is lifting this cap again for 2016. According to the press release, the canton's financial situation no longer justifies this measure. The planning security of the music schools should be given higher priority.
 

This year's Arosa Music Festival is all about innovation and yet remains true to its core. The most striking change is certainly the division of the festival into one week each in January, February and March. The stylistic division of the concerts into the different weeks is also new. What has remained the same is the idea of promotion, which runs like a red thread through the festival. Young, mostly highly talented musicians are involved in almost all of the concerts.

Photo: Tomasz Trzebiatowski

Sebastian Bohren

academy concerts 27.1. - 3.2.

As the name suggests, participants of the arosa music academy are invited to Arosa for a concert at the newly conceived academy concerts at the end of January and beginning of February. This year, the violinist Sebastian Bohren, the American saxophonist Jeffrey Siegfried and the two German singers Johanna Knaut and Kathleen Louisa Brandhofer were selected. Jeffrey Siegfried and the casalQuartett will open the festival as a saxophone quintet with works by Daniel Schnyder, Joseph Haydn and Adolf Busch. The impressive violin concerto Concerto funebre by Karl Amadeus Hartmann is at the heart of the second concert with Sebastian Bohren and the Georgian Chamber Orchestra Ingolstadt. It is one of the most expressive works in the entire violin repertoire. Kathleen Louisa Brandhofer and Johanna Knaut present romantic songs and duets on the theme of "The messengers of love".

Photo: Marco Borggreve

Oliver Schnyder

classic concerts 23.2. - 26.2.

 The classic concerts at the end of February also focus on promoting young musicians. Thanks to the collaboration with the Orpheum Foundation for the Promotion of Young Soloists, the Orpheum Young Soloists on Stage concert has been organized. The well-known Swiss pianist Oliver Schnyder, once an Orpheum soloist himself, will accompany the two young Orpheum soloists Christoph Croisé, cello, and Meta Fajdiga, piano, on this evening. They will perform works by Franz Schubert and Sergei Rachmaninoff. The winners of the Swiss Youth Music Competition are still at the very beginning of their musical careers. Arosa Kultur has invited two chamber music formations and a guitarist to Arosa for a joint concert. Grisons flutist Riccarda Caflisch and singer Irina Ungureanu present rarely heard gems of contemporary music for flute and soprano in the atmospherically intimate Bergkirchli. Unfortunately, the Modern music concert with the Bergensemble Arosa and Sofiia Suldina cannot take place, as the work for the planned premiere by the composer Blaise Ubaldini was not completed due to the composer's health. The project has therefore been postponed by a year. Instead, the still young Fathom String Trio will give a concert in Arosa. The trio consists of the unusual combination of viola, cello and double bass and moves between composed music, open concepts and improvisation. They will perform works by J. S. Bach, Mauricio Kagel, David Sontòn Caflisch, Rolf Riehm, Wolfgang Rihm and Leopold Mozart.

jazz&rock concerts 14.3. - 18.3.

 The jazz&rock concerts take place at the end of the season in March. The Graubünden jazz scene is prominently represented and presents a wide range of different jazz styles with three very different concerts. The first concert is dedicated to Art Blakey & The Jazz Messengers, played by a jazz quintet led by Grisons drummer Rolf Caflisch. In the Bergkirchli, Andi Schnoz and Rees Coray will present Miles Davis' legendary studio album Kind of Blue in their own way. There will be an evening with Martina Hug and Andi Schnoz at the Waldhotel National, combined with a 4-course menu. The up-and-coming Bernese dialect rock band Halunke will perform in the Kursaal in Arosa as the grand finale, at least in terms of volume.

The Fonoteca nazionale svizzera (FN) collects, preserves and indexes sound recordings relating to Switzerland and makes them available to the public. It thus fulfills the same legal tasks for audio documents as the National Library (NL) does for printed and electronic documents. The FN has already been subsidized by the Confederation via the NL. The merger of the two institutions ensures that the sound recordings relevant to Switzerland's cultural history can be preserved for the long term.

Five million sound recordings
The FN collection consists of around 5 million recordings. These are digitized and are then accessible via 54 public audiovisual workstations throughout Switzerland. Around three out of ten recordings originate from Suisa, the Swiss collecting society for copyrights to sound recordings and musical works, of which the FN is the depository institution. The collection also focuses on the products of the record industry, scientific research documents and radio broadcasts from 1932 to 1953. The sound recordings from the NL's collection have also been held at the FN since 2008.

Dominic Limburg initially studied piano and singing before taking up his conducting studies with Johannes Schlaefli at the Zurich University of the Arts in 2013. In 2014, he conducted a school concert of the Bern Symphony Orchestra, conducted a performance of Smetana's "The Bartered Bride" in Teplice and took over the musical direction of Pergolesi's "La Serva Padrona" as part of the Rüttihubeliade Festival in Bern.

He has also assisted with productions at the Zurich University of the Arts and the Theater Biel-Solothurn. In 2015, he was a guest conductor with the Orquestra Experimental de Repertório in São Paulo, among others. Dominic Limburg has been sponsored by the Dirigentenforum since 2015.