The "Competence Centre for Music Education and Laboratory for Music Education" at the HKB is mainly supported by Barbara Balba Weber, who has built up an infrastructure for music education for children and young people organized as an association with "Tönstör" in Bern.

The competence center is intended to be a contact point for organizers, ensembles and other interested parties who want to carry out or evaluate mediation projects.

As part of the Bern Music Festival, projects that Tönstor has carried out with various school classes in Bern were presented under the title "Totally Flipside". A documentary on the "Craft of teaching new music to children and young people" was also presented at the event and can be obtained from Barbara Balba Weber.

More info: www.toenstoer.ch

The Culture Commission believes that all four institutions meet the requirements for the continuation of operating subsidies. As a result of the Government Council's decision, the following cultural institutions will receive annual operating contributions over the next three years: argovia philharmonic CHF 400,000, KiFF Aarau CHF 200,000, Künstlerhaus Boswil CHF 350,000 and Murikultur CHF 150,000. The operating contributions are linked to performance agreements with a term of three years.

The institutions supported with operating contributions can continue to apply for project support from the Swisslos Fund. Other institutions with cantonal operating contributions are the Swiss Children's Museum in Baden, the Langmatt Museum in Baden, the Stapferhaus in Lenzburg, the Fantoche International Festival for Animated Film in Baden and Tanz und Kunst Königsfelden in Windisch.
 

The BAK can promote music education projects that support children and young people in acquiring and developing their musical skills in extracurricular activities (Art. 12 KFG).

Furthermore, financial aid can be awarded to lay organizations for projects that are oriented towards the objectives of the UNESCO Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage, particularly in the area of teaching and passing on living traditions to young people (Art. 14 KFG).

Cultural events and projects that aim to interest a broad public in certain aspects of cultural creation can also be supported, namely festivals in the field of amateur and folk culture or national days of action (Art. 16 KFG).

Applications for corresponding projects or events for 2014 can be submitted to the Federal Office of Culture until October 31, 2013. The application forms and instructions are now available on www.bak.admin.ch under the heading "Current > Current tenders".

Tobiasson

Raluca Matei

Raluca Matei was born in 1975 in Temesvar, Romania, and studied viola at the Hanns Eisler School of Music in Berlin with Kim Kashkashian and cultural management at the University of Basel.

Between 2002 and 2013, she was alternating principal violist of the chamber orchestra Musica Vitae (SWE). From 2005 to 2010, she was also a member of the chamber orchestra's managing directorship. Most recently, she was responsible for the management of the Swiss ensemble Laboratorium. She also took over the management of the Association du Concours Nicati in 2012.

The cellist and composer Thomas Demenga has been the artistic director of Camerata Zürich since the 2011/12 season.

His father died in Leipzig shortly before his 15th birthday. Johann Christian was placed in the care of his eldest brother Carl Philipp Emanuel in Potsdam. Just four years later, he moved to Italy to continue his studies. He was granted the opportunity to realize what his father and brothers could only dream of. The seven years in Italy (1754-1762) were to be of great significance for the young composer. He found a music-loving patron in the person of the wealthy Milanese Count Agostino Litta and one of the best teachers in Europe in Father Giovanni Battista Martini of Bologna. To the chagrin of his relatives, Johann Christian converted to the Catholic faith as early as 1757 - admittedly not entirely selflessly. A Milan cathedral organist had to be Catholic. His first compositions for his patron included the Office for the Dead and the Mass for the Dead (1757). A career as a Catholic church musician seemed predestined. Unfortunately, things turned out differently. Johann Christian was infected by the opera virus, which was rampant throughout Italy at the time, including in Milan. He increasingly put church music to one side, began composing operas and received tempting offers - even from London. In the fall of 1762, he took a year's leave of absence and moved to London - and never returned. He spent the rest of his life in London and Paris, writing mainly operas, concertos and symphonies and avoiding church music. The years in Milan were to remain only a brief episode in his life. But it is in this episode that the connection to Einsiedeln Abbey is rooted.

From 1675-1852, the Einsiedeln monks ran a branch monastery with a school in Bellinzona. This gave Einsiedeln direct access to the south, especially to northern Italy with the musical centers of Milan, Como and Bergamo. In the person of the later Abbot Marian Müller, a Einsiedeln priest like Johann Christian Bach was even a music student in Milan. Although there is no evidence of personal contact, it is more than likely. There is no other way to explain why, according to current research, the music library of Einsiedeln Abbey has the largest collection of early copies of Johann Christian Bach's sacred works in the world. Contemporary copies, not autographs. But since the Second World War, the autographs stored in Hamburg must be considered destroyed. This makes the Einsiedeln copies the oldest sources. There are 32 original church music works by Johann Christian Bach in the Einsiedeln Music Library, including the Mass for the Dead mentioned above and the psalm Miserere, which will also be performed anew by the Bach Ensemble Lucerne in September. In addition, there are 29 contrafacts, 8 of them from sacred works and 21 from operas - a telling sign that the opera virus had also penetrated the monastery. The lost opera Temistocle can only be at least partially reconstructed musically through 14 contrafacts preserved in Einsiedeln. All in all, this is reason enough to speak of the Einsiedeln Bach.
 

Photos: zvg

Excerpt from the Miserere in B flat major by Johann Christian Bach. Early copy from the Einsiedeln Music Library.

Nine bands took part in the second Swiss Youth Music Competition Jazz Rock&Pop, which presented itself in a new format this year, qualified for the final, the Come Togehter at Moods. The bands were judged by a jury of nine. The jazz jury consisted of Hans Peter Künzle, Florian Heeb, Thomas Dobler, Urs Röllin and Gregor Frei. The rock & pop bands were judged by Martin Lehner, Daniel Schwarz, Claudio Cappellari and Christophe Rosset. Urs Schnell from the Suisa Foundation moderated the event. One band was chosen as the best in each category. There were special prizes and parents, teachers and listeners had the opportunity to talk to the jury and the bands.

Awards and special prizes
The Bernese band M'Adam(e) was voted "Best of Band Jazz". In addition to this award, the band also received a special prize in the form of a performance at the Schaffhausen Jazz Festival 2014.
In the Rock&Pop category, the group Funk Alliance from the Bernese Jura won the title "Best of Band Rock&Pop". Thanks to a special prize, the band was also able to perform at the Stanser Musiktage 2014.
The Jakob Kulke Jazz Quintet received a voucher for a free jazz course as part of the Arosa Music Course Weeks 2014 and BOBaDROP was awarded the EMCY prize (European Union of Music Competition for Youth). This special prize earns the band a prizewinner profile on emcy.org and may lead to concerts or masterclasses for jazz in Europe.

With a quality offensive, the 1987 Arosa Culture Association Arosa Music Course Weeks have been strengthened over the last three years. At the same time, opportunities have been created to further expand the culturally and touristically significant offering. The investments totaling over half a million francs are already paying off. The number of participants this summer rose by almost six percent to 1298 compared to the previous year (1218 participants), which also slightly exceeded the previous record from 2011, when 1286 participants made the pilgrimage to Arosa. In addition, there were over 200 teachers and at least 300 family members, meaning that at least 1800 people stayed in Arosa this summer due to the Arosa Music Course Weeks and a total of well over 12,000 overnight stays were generated.

Arosa Culture is particularly pleased with the development of the Arosa Music Academy, which was first held in 2011. In the first two years, around 50 students took part in these international masterclasses offered over two weeks in August and September, but this year there are already 80. This means that the medium-term target of around 100 participants set at the launch has almost been reached. Under the main direction of Markus Fleck (casalQuartett), musicians such as Konstantin Lifschitz (piano), Helge Slaatto and Ingolf Turban (violin), Conradin Brotbek (cello) and Christiane Oelze (voice) work intensively with young talents from ten different countries over the course of a week. The international focus is also a great enrichment for the 40 or so participants from Switzerland.
 

Photo Homberger

The Munich violinist Ingolf Turban teaches Andrina Däppen (violin) and Lisha Kim.

Arosa Kultur is supported in the implementation of the Arosa Music Academy primarily by the Graubünden Cultural Promotion Agency and the Federal Office of Culture. Both institutions also support the Arosa Music Course Weeks, whose program (around 100 music courses), in contrast to the Academy, is primarily aimed at amateurs (children, young people and adults). According to Christian Buxhofer, President of Arosa Culture, the Federal Office of Culture also supports the program because Arosa promotes both the breadth (Music Course Weeks) and the top (Academy) of young musicians.

In order to be able to justify the cantonal and national support in the future, Arosa Kultur will continue to focus on high teaching quality and professional organization. These goals are to be achieved through small classes, top-class teachers, the best possible infrastructure and competent administrative support. According to Markus Fleck, the concept of the Arosa Music Academy, which includes intensive chamber music as well as individual lessons in the presence of all participants, has proved its worth. However, selective expansion is planned for the coming years. And in order to avoid having to turn away any more interested parties, there will now be a "listener" category in addition to the active participants. Students who can attend lessons but do not receive lessons themselves.

Another important part of the Arosa Music Academy are the faculty concerts and the students' final concerts. According to Markus Fleck, the students gain valuable experience both as listeners and as active musicians. To ensure that all graduates have the opportunity to take advantage of this, four final concerts were held.
 

Markus Aellig has been organist at Thun Town Church since 1992. He regularly organizes evening music and organ matinées. In April this year, he was able to celebrate a unique anniversary in this series: the 700th organ matinée since 1997.

zvg

Markus Aellig

As the Thun media office announced in mid-August, he received his training from former Bern cathedral organist Heinrich Gurtner. Aellig completed his studies at the Bern Conservatory with a teaching diploma and advanced diploma. Since then, he has developed into a master of his craft who knows no musical boundaries. In his concerts at the Stadtkirche Thun, he cultivates the entire organ repertoire from baroque and romantic to modern, but does not shy away from jazz, folk, pop and rock music. Both with his own compositions and when interpreting other composers, he captivates the audience with his unconventional variations and arrangements.

Other prizes went to the Thun Art Society, filmmaker Jeshua Dreyfus and writer Saskia Winkelmann. The cultural prizes will be awarded on 14 November at the Thun Culture and Convention Center.
 

"I strove to activate the student through self-music-making, i.e. through improvising and creating their own music. So I didn't want training on highly developed artistic instruments, but on rhythmically oriented and relatively easy to learn, primitive instruments close to the body." - Carl Orff (1895-1982) was a pioneer. His school work revolutionized music education and brought new approaches to teaching, far beyond the usual singing: "Elementary music is never music alone, it is connected with movement, dance and language, it is music that you have to do yourself, in which you are not involved as a listener but as a player." His companion Gunid Kneetman adds: "This unity (...) is (...) only present in children. Preserving and developing it for them is one of the main tasks that the Schulwerk work has set itself."

Orff instruments can be found in every school today. However, Carl Orff did not invent them, neither the xylophone nor the jingle bell. But he did compile the percussion instruments for his lessons, first for his female students in their training for gymnastics, music and dance, and then for use with children. And strictly speaking, the name "Orff instruments" should only be used for the mallet instruments that Orff developed in collaboration with the Munich instrument maker Karl Maendler, says author Micaela Grüner. She presents 48 different percussion instruments in her book, divided into mallet instruments (glockenspiel, xylophone), skin instruments (drums), small percussion instruments (claves, triangle, rattles) and extended Orff instruments (Latin percussion, boomwhackers). This classification is neither scientific (instruments arranged according to the sounding part) nor particularly practical for teaching (what you find in the classroom). But it does show the development of the instrumentarium, from the core to the extensions.

Chapter 2 clearly describes and illustrates handling and playing techniques. This is good, because percussion instruments have a problem: you hit them instead of playing them. They are just as sensitive to sound as a piano or violin. Where on the skin must the hand strike to make the drum sound fullest? Which beat elicits the loudest sound, which the driest? And how do you hold a kabassa correctly, how do you hold a guiro? And how do you make music with it? Chapter 4, "Playing with Orff instruments", contains rhythm lines and whole movements that demonstrate the variety of sounds percussion instruments can make. And many practical teaching ideas for playing are presented. Orientation listening in space, forming sound chains, weather games and graphic notation, drum conversations, setting texts and stories to music. All these suggestions are well described - in words, pictures and sound - and easy to implement. Particularly interesting: the sound examples on the CD with compositions by Orff himself!

Micaela Grüner: Orff instruments - and how to play them, A handbook for young, old, small and big hands, ED 21039, 128 p., with CD, € 24.95, Schott, Mainz 2011

Franz Xaver Wolfgang Mozart (1791-1844) was a remarkable pianist and composer. Trained by Johann Nepomuk Hummel and Antonio Salieri, among others, he left his native city of Vienna in 1808 for Galicia, where he settled in Lemberg (now Lviv in the Ukraine). Always celebrated as "W. A. Mozart's son", he also explored his father's legacy in composition. His Don Giovanni Variations of interest, in which the 14-year-old composer adds a lot of empty keyboard ringing to the minuet from the opera, but rather the cadenzas and ornaments that he wrote for some of his father's piano concertos. Some of the harmonies and pianistic writing here are already very much influenced by early Romanticism.

Musically, F. X. Mozart is at his most convincing (no wonder?) when he does not borrow from his father's music and is inspired by the folklore of his Galician surroundings, for example. This is what happened in the Polonaises mélancholiques op. 17 and 22, with a touch of Chopin's elegance and melancholy...

All these works and many more (including two "Diabelli Variations") have now been published by G. Henle-Verlag in two beautifully designed and very handy volumes.

Franz Xaver Mozart: Complete piano works, Urtext edited by Karsten Nottelman, fingering by Rolf Koenen; Volume 1, HN 958; Volume 2, HN 959; € 22.00 each, G. Henle, Munich 2011/12

"Sa complexité formelle, sa densité d'écriture, sa richesse harmonique, sa variété émotionnelle et ses difficultés techniques considérables placent cette composition parmi les plus difficiles du répertoire pianistique du 19e siècle." This judgment by Philipp Fauré about the Ballad op.19 by his father may sound somewhat exaggerated today. The fact is that it is one of Gabriel Fauré's most representative and ambitious piano works.

As far as the pianistic difficulties are concerned, none other than Franz Liszt complained to the composer with his characteristic charm that he did not have more fingers. It was probably also Liszt who advised a reworking. Fauré obviously took this advice to heart, and today the work is more commonly known in the version for piano and orchestra.
The Bärenreiter publishing house has done well to publish the original version in large format. Fauré's comlpex piano writing is much more pleasant to read this way. As editor, Christophe Grabowski has not only included a preface that is well worth reading, but also inspiring notes on interpretation from the pen of Philipp Fauré and the pianist Marguerite Long.

Gabriel Fauré: Ballade op. 19, Urtext ed. by Christophe Grabowski, BA 10841, € 12.95, Bärenreiter, Kassel 2012

Camille Saint-Saëns, half a generation older, was right to praise Fauré's first violin sonata, published in 1877, effusively: "... and over everything hovers a magic ... which makes the mass of ordinary listeners accept the wildest audacities as quite normal ...". It is at the forefront of the repertoire of concert performers. Fauré had been appointed secretary of the Société nationale de musique in 1774, which had dedicated itself to the "renouveau" of French musical life in competition with German instrumental music. This is stated, among other things, in the interesting preface to this new edition. Henle's Urtext compares the first edition by Breitkopf & Härtel with the autograph sketches and points out differences in slurring and dynamics that should be considered when working on the work; it is a glimpse into Fauré's workshop. In addition to the Urtext violin part, there is also an arrangement by Igor Ozim. Ozim seeks out the right colors of the strings and adapts the bow strokes to the dynamics. Sometimes he uses careful string changes for exciting intervals that would be more expressive on one string.

Gabriel Fauré: Sonata No. 1 in A major op. 13, Urtext edited by Fabian Kolb, with additional marked violin part by Igor Ozim, score and parts, HN 980, € 21.00, G. Henle Verlag, Munich 2012

Born in the south of France with Jewish-Spanish roots, the Geneva-based singer Esther Ackermann literally soaked up the Jewish songs her mother sang to put her to sleep as a child. This is how she tells it. Fascinated by the musicality of the language, she is said to have written her first poem at the age of seven. Now, almost 40 years later, she has recorded these songs with guitarist Paco Chambi under the title A la una yo naci recorded. It is a short album with twelve tracks - a total playing time of just 31 minutes - on which she sings about childhood and Jewish culture with great tenderness. And she does it with intensity and concentration and with such childlike delight, as if she were simply singing to herself under a shady tree while picking vegetables in front of the house. This creates a haunting intimacy that is all the more moving as it allows the listener to immerse themselves in a world that awakens longings without lapsing into folksy sweetness. Perhaps it is the cheerful melancholy of her songs that has made this a very personal album. It has what makes beautiful and good music: it is able to touch us.

The simple songs are accompanied by a classical guitar, unobtrusively and with great flair in a folk-jazz style. That's all this music needs. And so you quickly get the feeling that two artists are making music here who are never concerned with technical intrusiveness and sophistication, but only with expression. A glass of wine at a bistro table and the dream of escaping to the south somewhere. - Fortunately for A la una yo naci the Repeat button.