A symposium for Steinklang music took place in June last year. The wish was expressed to make this music accessible to a wider audience. Following an intensive weekend in the fall of 2014, composition commissions and improvisations for Lithofone (lithosGreek: stone) for the performance.

These concerts are organized by the Förderverein für Steinklang-Musik (www.steinklanginstrumente.ch). According to its own statements, the association aims to "promote research and development in the field of stone-sound music. This has its origins in prehistoric times."

Felix Perret, Mathias Steinauer, Christian Dierstein, Matthias Brodbeck and Dominik Dolega form the board of the association.
The association works with the instrument makers Beat Weyeneth and Rudolf Fritsche together. With the latter, the Swiss Music Newspaper In December 2013, as part of the thematic focus "How does the earth sound?", a Interview led.

According to the official press release, the foundation is a "joint cultural sponsorship without entry barriers". It enables "a clear, personal commitment to culture". Anyone - regardless of origin, gender, status or wealth - can voluntarily donate one percent of their personal inheritance to culture. They can thus become part of an intergenerational project and play an active role in shaping the cultural landscape, the initiators continue. A handwritten promise of inheritance is sufficient.

The Government Council of Appenzell Ausserrhoden has pledged a contribution to the start-up phase. Forty people, including well-known personalities, are said to have already submitted a declaration of intent.

The foundation is intended to promote culture in and from all over Switzerland in its diverse forms. In a two-year start-up phase, the funding principles will be developed in a participatory manner with the involvement of those who promise to be heirs. In open forums, the foundation intends to ask fundamental questions about its profile and develop new forms of funding instruments and processes. From 2017, funding can be awarded - presumably still on a modest scale. The foundation expects to reach the double-digit million mark in the first ten years.
 

According to a report by the Kleine Zeitung University Director Oliver Vitouch has sought talks with the protesters and promised to "continue to ensure the academic debate on art".

The Department of Musicology at the Alpen-Adria-Universität was affiliated to the Institute of Cultural, Literary and Music Studies at the University of Klagenfurt. It has not been possible to enrol on the course since the 2012/13 winter semester. The program director was Daniel Ender, who also works as a freelancer for the NZZ and has published the Austrian Music Magazine together with Daniel Brandenburg and Frieder Reininghaus since 2013.
 

The 53-year-old Peter Erismann has made a name for himself nationally as an exhibition manager and curator at the Swiss National Library / Swiss Literary Archives and for the Centre Dürrenmatt Neuchâtel as a cultural manager, project manager, curator and editor. He has also been involved in the sponsorship of the Kunstmuseum cinema in Bern for ten years.

The trained bookseller completed the Master's program in Cultural Management at the University of Basel between 2003 and 2005, graduating with an MAS in Arts Management. Erismann will take over the management of the Aargau Board of Trustees on September 1, 2015.

In this role, according to the canton's press release, he will manage the office from a technical, organizational and personnel perspective and advise the members of the Board of Trustees on technical issues. This also includes the preparation and implementation of the Board of Trustees' decisions, budget responsibility and the organization and coordination of the application process.
 

Hermann Scherchen (1891-1966) expected a great deal from the development of radio for a democratic musical education of the people. He was involved right from the start: his first radio concert for Schönberg's 50th birthday in 1924, musical director of the Königsberg "Ostmarkenrundfunk" in 1928, musical advisor to the Reichsrundfunk-Gesellschaft in Berlin in 1932. From 1945 to 1950 he was head of music at Radio Beromünster and conducted the Zurich studio orchestra. In 1950, his study Music for everyone - dedicated to the unknown radio listener.

In a "Confession to Radio", he sees the new medium as "the most significant upheaval in the life of nations since the invention of printing". Like others in the early days of the medium, he also hoped that radio would mobilize listeners to become active themselves - both artistically (musically) and intellectually (politically). In 1930, at the Baden-Baden Music Festival, he conducted the world premiere of Brecht's Lindbergh flight, a "radio teaching piece". The audience should be involved.

In an essay Broadcasting in its relationship to music cultivation and music education Scherchen reflected in 1930 on the "music-interpreting, meaning-creating word"; it was available in the form of "the poeticizing presentation of a musical work", but also "as a work analysis strictly limited to the musical processes". He does not believe in extensive introductory lectures; instead, he prefers the "musical announcement" - "from the briefly headlined report to the anecdotal recording of a contemporary milieu, or a sensitive message that leads directly into the emotional sphere".

Around 1930, Scherchen considered radio plays with music as a "form peculiar to radio" and Stravinsky's L'histoire du soldat, Hermann Reutters Saul and Milhaud's Le bœuf sur le toit realized in this way. In the 1940s, he envisioned "novel but immediately comprehensible combinations of music and words", like Dostoyevsky's Grand Inquisitor with music by Tchaikovsky. He also turns to classical-romantic stage music in arrangements as an "audio theater": Egmont, A Midsummer Night's Dream, L'Arlesienne, Peer Gynt. In addition, a poetic interpretation of the Prometheus-Beethoven's ballet and Schumann's "dramatic poem" Manfred after Byron, compressed. By limiting each episode to three quarters of an hour, he has a cyclical broadcasting slot in mind.

Recordings of the "Hörtheater" already on Radio Beromünster; but the series was recorded in its entirety at Leipzig Radio from November 25 to December 1, 1960. Scherchen, who had been closely associated with Leipzig since the 1920s and was also twice appointed Gewandhaus conductor after the end of the war, was twice guest conductor of the Radio Symphony Orchestra in the Gustav Mahler year 1960. This brought his radio arrangements to the fore and the recording date was arranged at short notice. An unparalleled tour de force: orchestral rehearsals in the morning, rehearsals with the soloists and choir in the afternoon and recordings in the evening from eight o'clock to eleven or even until midnight. According to Myriam Scherchen, he was so enthusiastic about the result that he considered a record edition - but this never materialized. His daughter has fulfilled his legacy: an exemplary edition, including all of Scherchen's texts, in a three-part CD cassette Musique et litterature on the "Tahra" label installed by her (TAH 103-105).

Scherchen's intention with his "Hörtheater" was to draw attention to music for stage plays which, as a result of changes in theatrical practice, is hardly ever heard any more, at least not in connection with poetry. He also pursued music education interests: Musical understanding should be created through the interplay of words and sound. As he explains to the Leipzig music editor Klaus Richter: ways and means must be found "to turn listeners who are not yet interested into interested listeners in the most diverse ways". Forms of broadcasting should be sought "that put listeners in a state of psychological tension, that allow them to approach the music with openness and excitement, that place them in an educational frame of reference in which they can place the music they are listening to."

Due to the limitation to three quarters of an hour in each case, interventions in the scores - cuts - are necessary. But Scherchen takes liberties in general, even reassigning musical numbers. He either lets the commentary speak in the pauses - even self-deprecatingly placed in the music! -or he overlays the notes with words in the manner of melodrama. Some of it is reminiscent, in a good or bad sense, of the methods of film music. Scherchen may have meant this when he refers to the "aesthetic contestability" - but accepts it for the sake of the pedagogical intention.

Myriam Scherchen calls her father's arrangements a "truly new creation". The selection is to be understood as quasi autobiographical. The focus is on the "almost Faustian struggle of man with his desires" and redemption through love. Her father led the life of a man "who wanted to know everything, an autodidact who believed in man and his omnipotence, but who needed love to give his own overarching activity a spiritual meaning".

Six times "Hörtheater"

The ceremony was held at the Pushkin Museum. According to the Verbier Festival's press release, the prize is considered one of the most important cultural awards in Russia. Engstroem receives the award for "his commitment to music and Russian performers." He is the first non-musician to be awarded the prize.

The Yuri Bashmet Fund was set up by Alexander Mitroshenkov, President of the Russian communications group Transcontinental Media, and Sergei Vasiliev, CEO of the Video International Group.

Previous recipients of the Shostakovich Prize include Tan Dun, Denis Matsuev, Yefim Bronfman, Alexei Ratmansky, Maxim Vengerov, Evgeny Kissin, Natalia Gutman, Olga Borodina, Anne-Sophie Mutter, Viktor Tretiakov, Valery Gergiev, Thomas Quasthoff and Gidon Kremer.
 

Tony Plog is probably one of the best-known contemporary brass composers. His compositional wit (e.g. in the Animal Ditties for trumpet, narrator and piano) is legendary, and many of his works are part of the standard repertoire for brass (Four Sketches for brass quintet, 3 Miniatures for tuba and piano or Postcards for solo trumpet).

With the three- to four-minute solo pieces with piano accompaniment he composed in 2014, which he presented in a kind of suite entitled Adventures in Brass Tony Plog is continuing on the path he has already taken: the very idea of creating a Angular blues with staccato notes for French horn and piano brings a little smile to my face, and when the tuba in its short piece Walking In the beginning, the composer's sense of humor is clearly perceptible and audible as he plays a walking bass in unison with the piano - without any melody.

The six pieces are ideal for advanced music students, make a welcome change, e.g. as competition pieces or are certainly also good encores for recitals. Whether the suite will ever be performed in its entirety is questionable, as it would require six soloists at the same time. The fact that the six pieces were published individually and not as a suite by Editions Bim shows that this was not the composer's intention. Nevertheless, the pieces are linked by an inner concept and, of course, Tony Plog's typical compositional style of creating a whole piece from a small thematic motif.

Anthony Plog, Adventures in Brass:

Musings (trumpet and piano), TP330
Eckig Blues (horn and piano), CO94
Divergent Roads (trombone and piano), TB88
Initiatives (bass trombone and piano), TB89
Walking (tuba and piano), TU 181
Prelude and Tarantella (euphonium and piano), TU182

Fr. 14.00 each, Editions Bim, Vuarmarens 2014

The MIZ bundles available information on around 350 calls for entries for both national and state-wide as well as important international music competitions, prizes and scholarships. These are recorded annually and continuously updated. The service provides information on the profiles and tasks of the measures, target groups and conditions of participation, as well as details on endowments and follow-up funding.

In addition to the calendar, the MIZ also provides information on numerous other music promotion opportunities. For example, the MIZ's information system for further and advanced musical training currently offers more than 180 master classes by renowned artists as well as numerous other qualification opportunities for amateurs and semi-professional musicians. With its comprehensive directory of foundations based in Germany, the MIZ also presents central institutions that are particularly active in the field of music.

More info: www.miz.org

Swiss jazz will be in the spotlight in the northern German Hanseatic city of Bremen from April 21 to 24, 2016, the trade fair management announced yesterday. Switzerland thus follows Spain, Turkey, Israel, Denmark and France.

As the Arts Council Pro Helvetia writes, it will be responsible for the Swiss focus in Bremen together with the Fondation Suisa and the Swiss Music Syndicate (SMS). With over 3000 professional participants and a showcase festival with international acts, jazzahead! has developed into an important meeting place for event organizers, musicians, labels and other industry representatives in recent years.

In addition to the guest country appearance at the trade fair, a three-week cultural festival in Bremen next April will ensure a further strong focus on the Swiss cultural scene. The program of the cultural festival covers all artistic disciplines and is being developed in close cooperation with Bremen's cultural institutions.

Initiated by Pro Helvetia, the event takes place under the name Viavaia series of cultural exchange projects between Switzerland and Lombardy. (We have reported.) One of these is XiViX Op. 1515. The director of the artist platform Klangbox, Pascal Viglino, developed it in collaboration with the Brera Academy of Fine Arts in Milan. The theme chosen was the Battle of Marignano - at a time when the media's interpretative bickering was not yet raging so loudly. Eleven designers and musicians each created a musical-couturistic piece in cross-border groups of two. Director Stefan Hort put these together to create an evening of music theater.

So much for the somewhat exhausting initial situation, where you can't quite shake off the thought that the widest possible range of potential sponsors has been considered. And because the performance bears the subtitle "pour mannequins & ensemble", there is a slight fear of a monstrous war fashion show in which one outlandish musical-textile outfit will try to outdo the previous one.

XiViX Op. 1515 is fortunately a rather quiet evening. Quiet doesn't quite cover it, because sounds constantly accompany the action on stage, are, so to speak, the river on which image after image flows past: often mere noises, rhythms on percussion instruments, short musical fragments, a few phrases from the Marignano song, drums and whistles. Flute sounds. They intensify and then thin out again. At one point, marching music emerges from the loudspeakers, which, played ever more slowly, soon becomes nothing but a clatter. There are only four people, two women and two men, experienced performers, who carry the performance musically and dramatically: Elisabeth de Mérode (flute, voice), Damien Darioli (percussion, flugelhorn), Anja Füsti (percussion) and Pascal Viglino (percussion, conductor).

On the percussive, flute-like and vocal "soundtrack", they create and dissolve images, evoking the turmoil of battle, grandeur and suffering. The individual contributions of the designer-musician pairings could certainly be separated, but one willingly follows the ever-changing associations. Sometimes they seek proximity to historical events, for example when the two men of the ensemble in colorful uniform set pieces engage in a rhythmic duel on the large timpani or when two performers bring the map stretched out between them onto the stage: Territory that has become a matter, an object of dispute. Other scenes hint at a symbolic dimension of the theme: when dozens of crosses are hastily stuck to the wall with adhesive tape, when a tilting figure changes from white to red with a flick of the wrist (a somewhat flat symbolism, however), when the blindness and vanity of war appears as a rigid figure covered in shards of mirror.

At the beginning, it slowly becomes light over a gentle hilly landscape. Distant shots can be heard. Or is it just air being expelled? As the light increases, the landscape reveals itself to be a huge cloth, the hills the bodies of the performers. Later, they stretch out of holes, now visibly operating their flutes, which make these ambiguous noises. We see how an effect is achieved. This principle can be seen again and again over the course of the 70 minutes of the play. It leads to a certain distance - and thus enables reflection. In XiViX Op. 1515 there are no Marignano opinion leaders at work, here you can reflect on the pull of the drums, the bitterness of dying and the hollowness of victory.

In 1905, Zoltán Kodály dedicated an opera to the violinist Imre Waldbauer. Adagio. In 1910 he made versions for viola and violoncello, Norbert Dunka later made one for double bass. It was republished in all four versions by Editio Musica Budapest in 2014. An elegiac melody with waves of fifths and sixths escalates twice into a choleric outburst, the second in the form of a solo cadenza that leads into a composed ritardando. The piano accompaniment is colorful and varied with repetitions of the melody, sometimes with cymbal-like arpeggios, and also takes part in the melodic events.

What lies well on the violin between 4th and 8th position is a tonal challenge on the viola between 8th and 12th position, but the viola can effectively play the melody an octave lower on the C-string at the beginning.

Zoltán Kodály, Adagio for violin (Z. 14911), viola (Z. 14894), violoncello (Z. 14895) or double bass (Z. 14896) and piano, € 9.90 each, Editio Musica Budapest 2014

The 58-year-old Englishman James Rae is known for his numerous and popular booklets for teaching, especially for clarinet, saxophone and flute. He mainly focuses on the styles of pop, rock and jazz. With the Sonata in G minor for clarinet and piano, Rae shows another facet of his compositional output by referring to a classical form and creating a work that is aimed at advanced clarinettists and should also hold its own in a recital alongside other pieces from the clarinet repertoire.

The three-movement sonata with the movement designations Allegro vivo, Andante espressivo (Freely) and Allegro con fuoco has a playing time of around twelve minutes. In all three movements, James Rae works with fourths and major seconds as the dominant harmonic-melodic material, with the first and third movements in G minor and the middle movement in B flat major. By simultaneously dispensing with strong dominant-tonic cadences, the work takes on a modal, floating and playful character.

The first movement is in 12/8 time and has a flowing, light-footed expression reminiscent of film music. The lyrical second movement conveys a dreamy mood and seems like an improvisation with a playful middle section. The pulsating rhythm of the third movement with a concise main motif in the clarinet, consisting of semiquavers with staggered accents and at the same time a strong emphasis on the main beats in the piano, creates a rock-pop character with great liveliness.

James Rae's sonata offers performers the opportunity to shine with both technical brilliance (without excessive difficulty) and expressive musical interpretation.

James Rae, Sonata in G minor for clarinet and piano, UE 21 623, € 18.95, Universal Edition, Vienna 2014

18 well-known Swiss-German folk songs and one each in Romansh and Italian are recorded here in one voice with all available verses. In the second part of the booklet, the composer takes the liberty of imitating the great composer Béla Bartók and succeeds in transforming the simple melodies into imaginatively arranged, emotionally charged, canonic or pictorial violin duets. Both voices have a part in the melody. Most of the music is easy to play in the first position. However, Birrer does not shy away from chromatic, canonic, double-stopping, bitonal or syncopated escapades, so that even advanced players are challenged in some of the duets and experience many humorous surprises.

Myriam Birrer, Schweizer Volkslieder, 20 violin duets between tradition and modernity, M&S 2261, Fr. 28.00, Müller & Schade, Bern 2014

The virtuoso clarinettist Hidan Mamudov, born in 1982 in Stip, Macedonia, has arranged folk music from his homeland and other regions of the Balkans for saxophone and piano (including chord symbols) for a World Music edition from Universal Edition, which can be practiced with an exciting, original play-along version. All pieces can be performed with flexible ensembles as the mood takes you (score and parts are included on the CD). And for improvisation enthusiasts, nothing stands in the way of a playful further development of the material using phrasing and ornamentation.

The whole package with a medium level of difficulty (odd time signatures!) can also be downloaded as an audio sample directly from the Universal Edition website.

World Music Balkan, Play-along Saxophone, 7 pieces for alto or tenor saxophone and CD or piano accompaniment, arr. by Hidan Mamudov, UE 35574, with CD, € 17.50, Universal Edition, Vienna 2014

Mansurian adapted the songs for mezzo-soprano and piano, composed in 1967 and based on verses by the 16th century Armenian folk singer Nahapet Khutschak, for the famous violist Kim Kashkashian's instrument. The texts of these old love songs - in German and English - help to convey the mystical quality of the simple melodies. The emotional content of each note should be carefully entered. The piano accompanies with large-scale sounds.

Born in Lebanon on January 27 (Mozart's birthday!) in 1939, Mansurian returned to his native Armenia with his parents in 1947; he studied in Erivan, where he became a lecturer in music analysis and new music. Initially attracted by Boulez's complicated musical style, over time he developed a simple, almost liturgical style, influenced by the traditions of Armenia.

Tigran Mansurian, Four Hayras, for viola and piano, Bel 422, € 11.99, M. P. Belaieff (Schott), Mainz 2014