Participants include the directors of major festivals and concert halls from Germany, Austria and Switzerland - including Martin Engström (Verbier Festival), Michael Häfliger (Lucerne Festival) and Ilona Schmiel (Tonhalle Zurich) - as well as other experts. Each panel will be introduced by a keynote speech from music journalists from national German daily newspapers, including NZZ critic Peter Hagmann.

The market research company GIM is also conducting an explorative trend study on the topic of "Innovation in the cultural sector", the initial evaluations of which will be presented during the conference.

Blogger Ulrike Schmid will be following the entire conference live on Twitter (#hdmc), and all panels will also be documented on video and published online a few days later at www.heidelberger-fruehling.de to be seen.

The canton and city of Lucerne are continuing to develop the special-purpose association of major cultural institutions, according to the official press release issued today. In addition to the Lucerne Theater, the Art Museum and the Lucerne Symphony Orchestra (LSO), the Swiss Museum of Transport, the Lucerne Festival and the Museum Rosengart will now be financed via the special-purpose association.

Due to the funding ratio of 70% canton and 30% city that applies within the special-purpose association, the city has around one million francs per year at its disposal for the implementation of other measures as part of the Culture Agenda 2020.
In addition, the canton and city of Lucerne contribute to the maintenance of the KKL Luzern for the
next 15 years. The canton pays CHF 0.5 million a year for maintenance, while the city continues to pay CHF 4.1 million, which will be adjusted for inflation from 2019.

The canton and city will each make a one-off payment of CHF 2.5 million for the long-term maintenance of the building's value. In addition, the KKL will receive financial support for the roof renovation in the form of guarantees from the city (CHF 4.5 million) and the canton (CHF 9 million).

The canton of Lucerne wants to create better production conditions for cultural professionals and event organizers and ensure an internationally competitive offering in certain areas. It promotes the independent scene more strongly and guarantees the further development of large cultural institutions.

The city, in turn, ensures a broad, diverse cultural production that attracts amateurs and
professionals are given equal consideration. The FUKA fund, which is financed by the ticket tax, is primarily responsible for individual support.

Martin Maria Krüger, President of the German Music Council, explains that national and international protests are fading away in the corridors of the Ministry of State. The manner of communication is "simply bad style" and "ignores the broad front of commitment of artists and cultural institutions as well as the diversity of arguments without any substantive debate on the part of the Minister President".

The "Music Gordi" was awarded by the magazine Music forum together with the new music newspaper was launched. The award ceremony will take place on Thursday, March 13, 2014 at 2.30 pm in Hall 3.1, Stand D41 at Musikmesse Frankfurt. The prize itself takes the form of a knotted recorder and was awarded for the first time last year to Harald Augter, Chairman of the SWR Broadcasting Council.
 

In the annual analysis, the industry statistics fell by 18 million euros compared to the previous year to 897 million euros in sales at retail prices. Gains in areas such as recording hardware, sound reinforcement and computer software were unable to compensate for the decline in turnover.

The drums & percussion, wind instruments, string instruments, keyboard instruments, microphones and headphones as well as DJ equipment have lost a lot of strength.

The weak economic development within the German and pan-European market is presumably responsible for the slump. In addition, more and more non-specialist online retailers are entering the market, selling musical instruments and their
accessories as a profitable market for themselves, writes SOMM.

According to the competition, the jurors have selected eleven ensembles from numerous applications to sing for the Leipzig A cappella Award, the amarcord special prize and an audience prize on May 15 and 16 and to take part in the a cappella workshop with Matthias Becker. The winning group will also be invited to perform a concert at the Festival for Vocal Music a cappella in 2015.

The members of Famm met in the Swiss Youth Choir, first came together as a quartet in autumn 2006 and have existed in their current formation since summer 2010. What was originally intended as a one-off project met with such a positive response that the ensemble decided to continue on its chosen path, the ensemble writes in its self-characterization.

Original compositions for feature films with a duration of at least 60 minutes that were released or will be released in 2013 or 2014 are eligible to apply. The application forms and the regulations for the Film Music Prize as well as all further information can be found at www.fondation-suisa.ch/filmmusikpreis. The candidates submitted will be judged by a panel of experts. The closing date for entries is May 31, 2014.

The prize has been awarded since 2000; the last winners were Thomas Fischer (2013) for Trapped, Michael Sauter (2012) for Mary & JohnnyNicki Reiser (2011) for The blue sky, Diego, Nora & Lionel Vincent Baldenweg (2010) for 180°, Marcel Vaid (2009) for Tandoori Love and Jérôme Baur (2008) for Les petites vacances.

The oldest active music publishing house in France, founded in 1841 by Alphonse Leduc, has an impressive catalog, which was expanded by two acquisitions: Editions Heugel (founded in 1839) in 1980 and Hamelle (1877) in 1990. The following composers became part of the publishing base: Gounod, Fauré, Delibes, Widor, Massenet, Offenbach, Gustave Charpentier, Poulenc, Milhaud, Jolivet, Tournemire, Franck, Messiaen, Honegger, Tomasi. Then there were the contemporaries Henry Dutilleux, Pierre Boulez, Charles Chaynes, Betsy Jolas, Thierry Escaich, to name but a few.

Leduc has now been taken over by Europe's largest music publisher, the British Music Sales Group. The traditional publishing headquarters on Rue Saint-Honoré in Paris was sold a few months ago.

Thirty years ago, there were publishing houses in France ranging from the very small to the very large with a wide variety of orientations. Of the big ones, the flagships of French cultural heritage, Heugel, the publishing house of Jacques Offenbach and Reynaldo Hahn, had already been transferred to Editions Alphonse Leduc. Leduc, based on Rue Saint-Honoré, had long held the rights to Fauré's works and was an indispensable source of valuable performance material for orchestras and opera houses. The publishing house's finest achievement was undoubtedly the printing of Messiaen's Saint François d'Assise in 1983, the score of which ran to 2400 pages!

The Durand publishing house (1869) was enthroned on the Place de la Madeleine, in the salon of the grand piano on which Debussy and others had played while waiting for their publisher. He mainly had the big names of the "Moment 1900" in his program and was very envied for the rights to Ravel's Boléro. In 1986, Durand bought the publishing house Max Eschig (1907), which brought with it a more international range. The Bohemian-born founder was the king of Viennese operetta, publishing great Spanish and South American composers as well as Martinů and Szymanowski.

The business success of Editions Choudens was ensured by Bizet's Carmen and Gounod's Fist. Salabert, on the other hand, focused on operettas, chansons, but also the works of the Groupe des Six and today on a rich selection of contemporary works; Henry Lemoine on classics of piano literature up to Bruno Mantovani. They were all able to keep up with the greats. Other publishers, such as Jobert, which was taken over by Lemoine in 2007, devoted themselves to the contemporary repertoire.

While Durand-Salabert-Eschig have been part of Universal Music for some time now (as has Ricordi, by the way, editor's note), the latest takeover concerns Alphonse Leduc, who comes under the umbrella of the Music Sales Group.

The publishing landscape has therefore changed considerably: Of the historic houses in France, Henry-Lemoine (1772) and Editions Gérard Billaudot (1896), which publish modern composers or high-quality educational literature, remain. Thanks to a myriad of creative small publishers, the signs seem to point to specialization.

In Germany and Austria, the major publishers Schott, Peters, Breitkopf, Bärenreiter, Henle and Universal hold their own. The last four do considerable research and Urtext editing work, which makes them indispensable. The British houses, on the other hand, hold the sceptre of popular music in their hands. And their catalogs will now also include Massenet, Franck, Poulenc, Milhaud, Dutilleux ... without their hearts particularly beating for them. What a pity!

French text

During Susanna Tanner's time in office, numerous changes were made to the canton's cultural funding. For example, small and medium-sized cultural centers now receive significantly more operating subsidies than in the past, writes the Zurich cantonal government in its official statement.

The change of artistic director at the Zurich Opera House was a success, and the Theater Kanton Zürich was artistically successful. With Tanner's involvement, it was also possible to found and establish the Zurich Film Foundation and secure an intercantonal cultural agreement with revenues of eight million francs for the canton of Zurich.

Tanner has restructured the department itself several times over the 17 years, as the budget and number of staff have grown.

A four-part flower illustrates how the four elements of bow, string, finger and position changes alone can be combined two, three and four times. This results in the 15 parts of the systematic overview of violin technique, spread over six volumes (ED 21161 to 21166, also available as package 21161-1). Helmut Zehetmair, violin professor emeritus in Salzburg, and his former assistant Benjamin Bergmann, now violin professor in Mainz, conceived them as a "violinist's medicine chest" for practicing all the components of technique - a modern Ševčík, so to speak.

The first two volumes discussed here deal with the large "petals", not yet including the combinations. The instructions in the introduction declare that practicing technique is an artistic activity in that it should be creatively combined with rhythm, articulation, dynamics, phrasing, agogic, sound and vibrato: "True virtuosity turns technical necessity into musical virtue (lvirtus)."

The various types and articulations of bow strokes are fully described. However, bowing also has to do with physics: it is not shown that the bow is actually driven like a ferry by the string vibrations in the direction of the obtuse angle in the case of the non-perpendicular "X-stroke", which is very useful for changing contact points. When the bow is forced onto the bowing point, an admixture of high-frequency longitudinal vibrations is created. The Sautillé is not caused by a special position of the fingers, but by the fact that the bowing direction is steeper than the bowing direction thanks to the rolling of the upper arm or the swinging of the wrist. The clearly describable relationships between volume, frequency and bow position, which are a prerequisite for conscious mastery of the sautillé, are also missing.

The awareness of the seven string planes and the resulting half and whole string changes is valuable. The encouragement to legato string changes with string skipping is very commendable.

In the chapter on finger changes, many horizontal supporting fingers are recommended for stabilizing the fourth space, unfortunately not the more efficient way of setting the finger spacing ahead in the air. Why is the fingering within the diminished fourth missing from the list of fingerings? With the harmonics, it should be pointed out that you have to finger a little higher because the string is looser and therefore sounds lower than with a firm fingering in the same place. The various exercises on finger string changes and stretched fifth and sixth fingerings are valuable.

The chapter on intonation is both informative and philosophical. The combination tone is recommended for checking intonation, but why is there no mention of the resonance of the empty strings? The different types of vibrato are well described but the upper arm roll as the origin of vibrato production is not mentioned.

The second volume is a treasure trove of exercises for direct changes of position: exclusively with one finger or with the same fingers for double stops. The often-forgotten pivoting, i.e. partially moving into other positions thanks to anchoring the thumb, as Paganini apparently did, is explained and recommended.

If the subsequent volumes are as stimulating as the first two, they could inspire many violinists to think and practise in new ways.

Helmut Zehetmair and Benjamin Bergmann, Systematic Violin Technique. The building blocks of violin playing; Volume 1, Bow, string and finger changes, ED 21161; Volume 2, Direct position changes, ED 21162; € 18.99 each, Schott, Mainz 2013

The title lives up to its promise: Abracadabra contains unexpected musical twists and turns, amazes with changing rhythms and conjures up ghosts, animals and pirates. The songs are aimed at 5 to 10-year-olds and refer to their fantastic imaginary worlds. The ride on the musical witches' broomstick leads from I am afraid about 'It's hot up to I wish I was a soccer star, a real genius on the ball!

Susanne Würmli-Kollhopp wrote all thirty compositions herself, most of them in dialect. This is music for everyday use, written for the children's choirs that Würmli-Kollhopp directs. While many conventional children's songs convey an outdated world view or moralize, these are pleasantly simple. All the more catchy for that. But not always easy to sing: Changes of key and time signature are surprising here and there, giving the songs a new color.

Speaking of color: Chasper Würmli, the son of the composer and lyricist, has illustrated the songbook with beautiful collages of fabulous animal characters. The result is a carefully and lovingly designed book that is a pleasure to hold in your hands.

On the author's website, all the songs can be heard with simple piano accompaniments as a rehearsal aid. And you also get some initial ideas for practicing in the school classroom or children's choir that go beyond "singing along".

Susanne Würmli-Kollopp: Abrakadabra, 30 children's songs with illustrations by Chasper Würmli, Fr. 37.00 (+ packaging/postage), Fr. 39.90 in stores, Verlag Singlust (self-published); piano accompaniments available separately from: www.singlust.ch

"We have no hesitation in presenting this work as the most important piano creation by Russian masters to the present day. Certainly, there is much to criticize about this collection of ten character pieces (...). But an ingenious, original creative power, before which all criticism must fall silent, imprints these pieces with the stamp of the completely unique." Klaus Wolters described this more aptly decades ago in his still unsurpassed Handbook of piano literature (Atlantis, Zurich, 5th edition 2001), the fascination that Mussorgsky's Pictures of an exhibition hardly formulate.

In keeping with the importance of the work, Bärenreiter-Verlag has now edited an exceptionally richly annotated Urtext. The preface by editor Christoph Flamm with information on the genesis of the work, detailed thoughts on the individual images and practical performance suggestions is fascinating to read and goes far beyond what previous editions have published.
It is obvious that with so much material, contradictions also arise, such as the claim that the work is not suitable for orchestration, supported by Svyatoslav Richter's biting remark: "I reject the orchestral version of this work and hate it ..." The correction of some "errors" in the musical text also occasionally throws the baby out with the bathwater. The new readings in bar 17 of the first Promenade, for example, would simply be too absurd even for the idiosyncratic Mussorgsky (an a would probably be more appropriate. However, the composer's handwriting is ambiguous!)

The musical text itself, completely without fingerings, is convincing in its clarity and overview. The appendix contains a few black and white illustrations of Viktor Hartmann's originals, which the work was intended to commemorate. If you would like to find even more practical tips on interpretation, we recommend the Wiener Urtext Edition by Manfred Schandert and Vladimir Ashkenazy. Ashkenazy's experience with the Pictures of an exhibition Both as a pianist and as a conductor and editor of his own orchestral version predestine him to get to the bottom of things. This edition is also illustrated - even in color.

Modest Mussorgsky, Pictures at an Exhibition. Remembrance of Viktor Hartmann, for piano, Urtext edited by Christoph Flamm, BA 9621, € 14.50, Bärenreiter, Kassel 2013

The new magazine Technical Basics by Heinz Hox for piano accordion (standard bass) comes very clearly laid out and in rather large notation - all in all, very "appealing". The author mentions in his preliminary remarks that he has compiled it for beginners, those returning to the instrument, but also for advanced accordion players. The exercises are intended as supplements to accordion schools. Some of the tips on holding the accordion seem rather bold to me, because what do I mean by "ergonomically correctly connected to the instrument" or what is the "right size"? Fortunately, the teacher will certainly clarify this.

In the notes on the individual exercises, the recipient will find lots of interesting and valuable ideas for practicing with lots of variation. These range from different articulations and tempo changes to rhythmic variations. The challenges begin with the five-note range in the right hand, followed by similar exercises for the left hand, then move on to stretches, major and minor scales, through to fingering, intervals, chords, jazz harmonies and cadences. Ideal progression and broad support are therefore guaranteed.

Also worth mentioning are the matching, supplementary video sequences on the Internet (www.heinzhox.de). However, I noticed the often unfavorable bellows guidance when closing (too much lifting of the bellows, which leads to a large interruption) and also the sometimes imprecise coordination between key and bellows change. I am very happy with the steady position of the right hand. However, I cannot understand why the fingers of the left hand often hit the buttons with so much distance, resulting in a very loud key noise (and the sound is correspondingly secco). In any case, the work offers plenty of material to lay a solid technical foundation.

Heinz Hox, Technical Basics. Technical exercises for piano accordion (standard bass), for beginners and advanced players, VHR 1850, € 13.80, Holzschuh-Verlag, Manching 2013