Albert Edelmann (1886-1963) knew how to take a broad view of his educational mission during his fifty years of teaching at the Dicken mountain school near Ebnat-Kappel. In his handicraft lessons, the dedicated local history teacher worked with the schoolchildren to repair rural utensils from Toggenburg and neck zithers: stringed instruments with a flat, drop-shaped resonance box and a fingerboard-covered neck. Ida Bleiker, Edelmann's former pupil and long-time housekeeper, had learned a few fingerings on this popular cittern and showed the peasant boys and girls how to play it. And when "the teacher", as the popular schoolmaster was generally known, accompanied the playing and singing of traditional Toggenburg songs on one of the seven house organs that had been brought to him, the young people were musically encouraged long before music education was established in elementary school.

After retiring, Albert Edelmann and Ida Bleiker moved into a Toggenburg house from 1752, which had been moved from Oberhelfenschwil to Ebnat-Kappel, together with over 2000 folkloristic objects - including over forty Halszithern, a hammered dulcimer, several woodwind instruments, a fortepiano by Ulrich Ammann (1820) and the organs mentioned above - and set themselves up in a unique living museum. Shortly before his death, the landlord and former pupils founded the Toggenburg Halszither Group, which still meets once a month in the Ackerhaus to sing and play the same Toggenburg songs - now in their sixth edition.

After Edelmann's death, Ida Bleiker acted as curator for over twenty years, guiding visitors from exhibit to exhibit with astounding detailed knowledge and natural liveliness, playing a psalm on Melchior Grob's house organ from the late 18th and early 20th centuries. Military march by Franz Schubert on the piano with a 19th-century Janissary train or plucked Father's Jödeliwalzer on a neck zither. Shortly before her retirement, the enterprising woman, who had only been able to acquire a modest knowledge of French at comprehensive school, learned English so that she could also show foreign-language visitors around the local museum. When Ida Bleiker, who was awarded the Culture Prize of the Canton of St. Gallen in 1985, moved into a retirement home, a piece of Swiss museum history was to come to an end. The Ackerhaus, which was supported by a foundation, was threatened with closure in the following years.

A few years ago, historian Jost Kirchgraber began to fight for the renovation of the Ackerhaus, initially on his own, but soon with the support of members of the foundation and municipal council. Edelmann's atmospheric music room was demolished and replaced by a larger domed room. The masterfully restored house organs by Melchior Grob (1793) and Heinrich Ammann (1807) can be played in this small room, which was built by local carpenters and has excellent acoustics. The adjoining Biedermeier parlor, part of the newly designed local museum, can be used as a wedding room if required.

The hard-working members of the working group are looking forward to cheerful festive congregations and music lovers listening to the sound of the bright farm organs and other house concerts.

With the renovated Ackerhaus in Ebnat-Kappel, the KlangWelt Toggenburg (courses, Naturstimmen-Festival, Klangschmiede and Klangweg) and the recently expanded center for Appenzell and Toggenburg folk music in the Roothus Gonten, the documentation, cultivation and revival of traditional Toggenburg music is in very good shape.

The Berliner Philharmoniker invite you to take a tour of the two concert halls and the foyers of the Philharmonie and Chamber Music Hall. An elaborate 360-degree video allows users to participate in a rehearsal of Ludwig van Beethoven's Ninth Symphony conducted by Sir Simon Rattle from various positions. Four digital exhibitions provide information about the architecture of the concert hall as well as the history and selected projects of the Berliner Philharmoniker.

According to its director Amit Sood, the Google Cultural Institute, which organizes the offer, is a non-profit organization. It aims to "enable education and access to culture". It now presents 60 cultural institutions from 20 countries under the name "Performing Arts". The institute has been active since 2011, so far with image and sound recordings of works of art, monuments and contemporary historical episodes, which it has processed into curated online exhibitions.

Link: https://www.google.com/culturalinstitute/project/performing-arts?hl=de

In addition to strengthening its international presence, the Federal Council emphasizes the "creation and innovation", "social cohesion" and "cultural participation" axes of action defined in the 2016-2020 Cultural Dispatch.

Pro Helvetia's strategic priorities have been aligned with the objectives of the Cultural Dispatch, according to a press release issued by the federal government. In order to promote artistic creation in Switzerland, the foundation will now also introduce work grants in the field of visual arts and will further develop the promotion of design and interactive digital media under the "Culture and Economy" priority.

An initial target period from 2012 to the end of 2015 was approved by the Federal Council in November 2011. Pro Helvetia's mission is to "promote and publicize the diversity of Swiss artistic and cultural creation, promote popular culture and foster cultural exchange in Switzerland and worldwide".

According to the canton's press release, the jury was "impressed by the high standard of Horat's recently released CD with a selection of independent and catchy compositions, but also by his recordings in the experimental music and jazz field". The artist plays with great skill and at a high technical level. He works as a pianist, keyboardist and accompanist and has since been able to gain an international foothold. According to the jury, a grant would make sense so that the musician, who lives in Hamburg, can devote himself even more intensively to his planned creative projects.

The Board of Trustees was delighted by the great interest in the New York studio, with eight people with convincing dossiers applying for the residency in the metropolis. There were 37 applications to assess, more than ever before. The Board of Trustees was also impressed by the overall high quality of the applicants.

After Rolf Sommer, the four-month residency in 2017 goes to the artist couple Luca Schenardi and Lina Müller, who both live and work in Altdorf. Schenardi's large-scale teletext illustrations, painted by hand on textile, impressed the curators "with their passionate, bulky and beautiful presence". In a trendy but independent series of pictures, Lina Müller also shows the dreamlike realm, a world that appeals and irritates at the same time.

The Uri Year of Work goes to the visual artist Nathalie Bissig. A project contribution of CHF 3,000 goes to Esther Marty-Kouyate from Altdorf, who lives in Paris and works as a director, actress, storyteller and costume designer.

Hans-Jürg Meier, born on December 22, 1964, studied recorder with Conrad Steinmann and composition with Roland Moser in Basel. He has been composing since 1991 and the majority of his work is available from Schweizer Musikedition, of which he was president. Sound installations and free improvisation are also part of his oeuvre. He has worked in various ensembles and groups, for example together with Philipp Meier and Dorothea Rust at the head of the Gruppe für Neue Musik Baden.

Further information on his work can be found on the following websites:

www.musinfo.ch

www.gnombaden.ch

In collaboration with its liaison offices in China, India and South Africa, Pro Helvetia is offering three-month studio residencies for 2017. Applications are open to Swiss artists and cultural practitioners from the fields of music, literature, visual arts, design and interactive media, theater and dance. Deadline: March 1, 2016 Applications are submitted electronically via www.myprohelvetia.ch accepted.

Applications for short research stays (max. 4 weeks) in the same regions and additionally in the Arab region are possible at any time. Further information on (www.prohelvetia.ch/Residenzen.871.0.html?&L=0) and the websites of the liaison offices.

A leaflet with further information can be here can be downloaded.

The review copy of the dissertation has only now reached the editors, but not too late in view of its importance. Because what has been known about Varró up to now was either written in Hungarian or was very incomplete, even partly incorrect. The intensive research into every detail of the dissertation has been worthwhile. And where they were unsuccessful, the author conscientiously indicates this. It is true that she found it difficult to distinguish the important from the unimportant. However, she facilitates clarity by including 41 tables on Varró's teachers, fellow students, concerts with venues, programs and performers, as well as concerts by her students, her courses, lectures and publications, etc. 89 illustrations, many of them previously unpublished, including color ones, adorn the 471-page book and make it reader-friendly, so that the essentials are easy to find.

Margit Varró, born in 1881 (or 1882?), grew up in a Jewish family with German origins and colloquial language and studied at the Liszt Academy in Budapest, where she found her four colleagues and friends, Kodály, Bartók, Dohnányi and Leó Weiner, and taught piano didactics until 1921. As Bartók's advisor, she played a major role in the conception and realization of his Mikrokosmos. Since the publication of her main work in German, translated into French and Hungarian and still required reading in piano didactics at German-speaking music academies today, she became internationally known and traveled throughout Europe to give lectures, courses and teaching rehearsals until she had to emigrate with her family to the USA in 1938, where she remained professionally active to the same extent until almost the end of her life in 1982.

A brief overview of her textbook will suffice here. Piano lessons are an education of the musical sense and understanding, and also include ear training, the teaching of elementary knowledge of music, harmony and form, always in connection with the thorough recognition and feeling of the subject matter to be worked out technically on the piano, as well as - crucially - improvisation. She propagated both individual and group lessons. Beginners' lessons are best started without sheet music by singing, playing and accompanying suitable folk songs; she was of course thinking of the Hungarian-Romanian treasure trove that was being explored at the time. During and after the gradual introduction of reading music, memorizing all the teaching literature (!) is essential. The technical part includes a section on the hidden music-medical and psychological causes of playing disorders, their diagnosis and treatment, as well as a section on practicing, always with lesson examples. The psychological section, one third of the textbook, contains a wealth of suggestions that cannot be expanded on here.

Back to the author of the dissertation: She studied piano as a major subject with music education, as well as German and English language and literature (state examination), with postgraduate studies in philosophy and history. Lifelong further education was important to her. Most recently, she completed a degree in musicology. In addition to giving private lessons, she founded and ran a music school in Hagnau on the northern shore of Lake Constance based on her own music education concept (children and adults), where she also gave additional lessons on the clavichord, which were beneficial for children. Every year, she was able to successfully prepare several particularly talented students for entrance examinations to music academies. She was regularly invited to participate in the Saarbrücken working group for piano pedagogy led by Werner Müller-Bech. She then became a lecturer in music education, didactics and classroom music-making at the conservatories in Detmold, Frankfurt/M and Zurich. In addition, she held countless courses and guest lectures and gave and organized concerts at home and abroad. The list of her publications comprises 158 numbers. She was torn from her varied, restless activities by a short, incurable illness.

Ruth-Iris Frey-Samlowski, The Life and Work of Margit Varrós. Living music education in an international network, 474 p., € 59.95, Schott, Mainz 2012, ISBN 978-3-7957-0768-2

Bohuslav Martinů's father was a tower keeper and the family lived in a room high above the East Bohemian town of Polička. Until he was seven years old, the sickly Bohuslav rarely left the church tower. And from up there, the people in the streets must have looked like mice. I wonder if it's because he was able to entertain us with his mouse ballet Who is the most powerful on earth? demonstrates some human-all-too-human behavior?

Even mice are not immune to megalomania. Father Mouse only wants to give his daughter to the most powerful man as his wife, but she already has her eye on the prince mouse. He makes a good impression at first, but unfortunately the much more powerful sun rises over the scene. While Mr. Sun is still mulling over the marriage to the mouse girl, the Cloud Prince pushes him away: Father Mouse has found another new marriage candidate. And so it goes on until finally a wall is chosen as the ideal groom. However, the prince of mice and his entourage have already undermined it so much that it collapses during the proposal.

In 1922, Martinů wrote a comedic ballet libretto from this story based on an English fairy tale and composed cheerful, often grotesque music to accompany it, which brings the plot vividly to life. The bride and groom are seen dancing a shimmy (an early reference to jazz) and are carried away by waltzes and polkas. Christoph Enzel arranged the orchestral score for the saxophone quartet clair-obscur. And anyone expecting a certain tonal monotony can rest assured: saxophones have rarely sounded so loud, so mouse-tripping, so thunderous and wall-crushing.

The pictures are produced very sparingly using the collage technique and are often tongue-in-cheek: the saxophone quartet joins the procession of mice and the mice have put on glasses to negotiate with Mr. Sun. In short, this book is a great joy for children and adults alike.

Bohuslav Martinů, Who is the most powerful on earth? A musical fairy tale, played by clair-obscur and illustrated by Meriel Price, narrated by Wolfram Berger, picture book with CD, Fr. 22.90, NordSüd-Verlag, Zurich 2014, ISBN 978-3-314-10283-7

Today, Jean Sibelius (1865-1957) is known almost exclusively as the great symphonist who cast a long and powerful shadow over the musical history of his native Finland. Yet his oeuvre is far more diverse. It includes songs, choirs and piano music in equal measure. The latter is generally believed to include the well-known Valse Triste op. 44 (1904) - but it is an arrangement of a number that was written a year earlier as incidental music for the play Kuolema.

This strangely distorted reception pervades almost the entire oeuvre. We are therefore all the more grateful for the edition of all his works, supervised by a competent team of scholars in Helsinki, which has been published step by step by Breitkopf & Härtel (incidentally, a publisher favored by Sibelius himself). This major project became necessary for several reasons: Not all the works are available in print, many editions have long been out of print, and countless printing errors have been stubbornly handed down to this day. At the same time, unknown works are also coming back into focus.

This is particularly true of the piano music - a surprising aspect of Sibelius' oeuvre, as it is characterized entirely by short and entertaining character pieces. As you might have guessed, they were written primarily for financial reasons, but soon turned sour for the composer. Thus, with regard to the Ten piano pieces op. 58 (1909), an initial creative euphoria first gave way to strong doubts ("because I am not familiar with this piano technique") and then to the constraints of my wallet: "Finances are forcing me to compose piano pieces." What is astonishing is the high compositional quality of all these Bread works published in various operas. The burden associated with them cannot be felt at any point - this applies in particular to the current selection of 18 pieces from the years 1887 to 1920, compiled in a handy booklet. The rediscovery of these gems is definitely worthwhile.

The facsimile of Luonnotar op. 70 (1913), a tone poem for soprano and orchestra whose musical significance has been underestimated. This edition, printed to the highest standards, comprises the autograph score and the piano reduction made by Sibelius himself, supplemented by an instructive foreword by Timo Virtanen. Published as a special volume of the complete edition, it is not only a welcome gift for the jubilee year, which in some places has hardly been noticed.

Fortunately, the complete edition itself was not tempted by this occasion to produce a shirt-sleeved output - only the male choirs a cappella and the two Scènes historiques. It is therefore fitting that the publisher has published a study score of the tone poem, first printed in 2006, for little money. Skogsrået (The Wood Nymph); an early creation from 1893/95 and perhaps for this very reason of a certain charm.

Jean Sibelius, Piano Pieces. 18 selected pieces, EB 8855, € 15.90, Breitkopf & Härtel, Wiesbaden 2015

id., Complete Works (JSW), published by the National Library of Finland and the Sibelius Society of Finland, special volume facsimile edition of Luonnotar op. 70. SON 626, € 79.00

id., Skogsrået. Tone poem for orchestra, edited by Tuija Wicklund, study score, PB 5564-07, € 13.90

If you want to celebrate Advent and Christmas with songs from different European countries, you will find Europe for beginners a varied selection of particularly beautiful songs from fifteen nations. However, none of them are from the German-speaking world. The movement is for two melody instruments or a vocal part and an accompanying obbligato instrument plus piano. The guitar part is limited to the chord indications.

The texts are printed with all the verses, in the original alphabet with a German translation. However, you have to take care of the correct pronunciation yourself. The CD supplied only contains the instrumental parts and one track with the piano part for the play-along. It was produced acoustically, but sounds very wooden. On the other hand, all the parts are really very easy to play!

The volumes of the chamber music series Ad libitum of Editio Musica Budapest are intended for formations with variable instrumentation, whether for playing music with family or friends or in music schools. The instrumentation for these Christmas tunes includes piano, two melody parts (optionally also in B flat), one optional guitar and percussion part each as well as a vocal part with multilingual lyrics. The selection contains well-known (Adeste Fideles, Silent Night, O Christmas tree, A rose has sprung, In dulci Jubilo etc.) and lesser-known carols and some Christmas instrumental movements such as Handel's Pastorale (Pifa) from Messiah.

The pieces, all of which are short, are easy and can be played at sight or practiced quickly. Only one verse of the text is printed in the vocal part, but in four to five languages: Latin (if in the original), German, French, English and Hungarian. All in all, a successful addition to the Christmas repertoire for small ensembles!

These arrangements from the Uetz publishing house are written for an entire salon orchestra. The vocal part is not doubled by any instrument, so nothing works without a singer or an additional solo instrument. However, all the instrumental parts are permanently played in parallel on the piano, so it doesn't matter if they're not all there! The harmonization is sometimes a little daring. If you like it conventional, it is better to use the church hymnal.

Unfortunately, with the exception of the piano, the rather thankless instrumental parts have no cue notes for the vocals or the respective upper voice in the intros. This means for the individuals: Counting out pauses and pedal notes and generally grasping the context while flying blind like a professional musician. And rehearse enough in the ensemble!

Popular Christmas songs such as Silent Night, A rose has sprung, Come all ye faithful (Adeste Fideles) and others, but also lesser known ones such as Mary went through a thorny forest and Born in Bethlehem. Two to three verses are written out in full in the text and musical notation, although the latter always remains the same. The piano part is of medium difficulty; the instrumental parts are easy to play, but have a distinctly full-part character and therefore require good note-reading and chamber music experience.

Europe for beginners, 15 special Christmas songs, for 1-2 melody instruments or voices and piano or guitar arranged by Dagmar Wilgo and Nico Oberbanscheidt, EW 917, € 19.80. Edition Walhall

Christmas music, Ad libitum - chamber music series with variable instrumentation, ed. and arr. by András Soós, Z 14946, ca. Fr. 23.00, Editio Musica Budapest

Weihnachtslieder für Salonensemble, Seven German Christmas carols for voice, piano, flute, clarinet, two violins, viola, violoncello, bass, arranged by Christian Brüggemann, BU 9092, € 38.00, Musikverlag Bruno Uetz, Halberstadt

The origins of the composition Lauda per la Natività del Signore are known from Respighi's biography. During a harpsichord recital with Wanda Landowska in January 1928 in the palazzo of Conte Guido Chigi in Siena, the ambience and atmosphere inspired the composer so much that he wanted to compose a "Piccola cantata" for this room. He chose a hymn to the birth of Christ attributed to Jacopone da Todi as the text: Laus pro nativitate Domini. Respighi compiled the corresponding verses and stanzas for the setting like a kind of script.

The premiere of the score for soloists, choir, flutes, oboe, cor anglais, two bassoons, triangle and piano, which was completed in the summer of 1930, took place on November 22, 1930 in the hall of the "Micat in vertice" association together with a work by Respighi with the same instrumentation, the Suite della tabacchiera.

This Critical Edition of the work is deliberately based on the autograph. As there are some differences between this and the first edition of 1931, Riccordi kindly provided us with the galley proofs of the first edition of both the score and the piano reduction. The review revealed that the handwritten changes had been made by Respighi himself. Overall, they give the impression of a subsequent smoothing of the work. Attempts to obtain further information about this process from letters between the publisher and composer or notes were unsuccessful. Detailed information on the differences between the autograph and the first edition can be found in Part 1 of the Critical Report.

Ottorino Respighi, Lauda per la Natività del Signore, edited by Christine Haustein, score, CV 10.084/00, € 45.00, Carus, Stuttgart 2015

Scriabin's fourth piano sonata from 1903 still has one foot firmly in the 19th century. In the opening Andante, one occasionally thinks of Tristan or the colorful chromaticism of César Franck's violin sonata. And the subsequent Prestissimo volando - as fleeting as it sounds at times - turns out to be a very classical sonata form on closer inspection. In addition, however, there are already clear tendencies towards dissolution in the harmony and complex rhythmic structures that point far into the 20th century. Certain passages almost "swing"!

The one-movement character of all Scriabin's later sonatas is already foreshadowed here, as the main theme of the first movement reappears at the end of the work, but this time in a hymn-like fortissimo. Perhaps a kind of parenthesis that just manages to tame this highly explosive music?

Valentina Rubcova has republished this shortest of Scriabin's sonatas (the masterpiece lasts less than eight minutes!) with Henle-Verlag and provided it with a very readable foreword. Michael Schneidt's fingerings are clever and well measured. Anyone who has problems with the rapid pianissimo chords in the right hand, which are difficult to master (Prestissimo volando, bar 1 and similar passages), should not be ashamed to give two or three notes to the left hand.

The appendix also contains a programmatic prose text, which was apparently added to the sonata with Scriabin's approval. However, the authorship is not clear. Let everyone decide for themselves whether this poem leads them towards or away from the music ...

Aleksandr Scriabin, Piano Sonata No. 4 in F sharp major op. 30, edited by Valentina Rubcova, HN 1110, € 10.00, G. Henle, Munich 2015