The Prix Credit Suisse Jeunes Solistes 2013, awarded for the seventh time, goes to the Spanish clarinettist Pablo Barragán, a student at the Basel Academy of Music, and the German recorder player Laura Schmid, a student at the Bern University of the Arts.

The two young artists decided the final in their favor in Lucerne. It is a first for the Prix Credit Suisse Jeunes Solistes to be awarded to two musicians. As part of their prize, they will have the opportunity to perform on August 22, 2013 as part of the Debut series at the Lucerne Festival this summer.

In addition to the winners, the Portuguese violinist Afonso Fesch (MAB Musikhochschulen FHNW), the Russian pianist Igor Andreev (HKB) and the Latvian cellist Maxim Beitan (CSI-SUM) were finalists.

The Prix Credit Suisse Jeunes Solistes, which has been awarded since 2001, is a joint initiative of the Lucerne Festival, the Konferenz Musikhochschulen Schweiz (KMHS) and the Credit Suisse Foundation.

Children and young adults are given the opportunity to present their musical skills to each other and to a competent jury. The competition takes place in three rounds and is aimed exclusively at bands.

Young people of all nationalities with permanent residence in Switzerland or the Principality of Liechtenstein and young people with Swiss or Liechtenstein nationality who live abroad are eligible.

The SJMW has been a national music competition for young people for over 35 years.

More info: www.mx3.ch/stage/sjmw_jrp

The Department of Music is currently spread across four locations in the city of Lucerne. Space is at a premium. The new school building will cost around 78 million francs. The new building is being financed on the basis of a private investor model. The school is scheduled to move in in summer 2017.

The approval of the building project coincides with the introduction of the new legal basis of the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts. According to this, the Department of Music, like all other departments of the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts, will be supported by the six Central Swiss cantons of Lucerne, Uri, Schwyz, Obwalden, Nidwalden and Zug from January 1, 2013.

The Lucerne University of Music Foundation, the previous sponsor of the Department of Music and in this function responsible for the infrastructure, will be transferred to a funding foundation. Under the new legal basis, the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts and the Canton of Lucerne, as the canton in which it is located, will have joint responsibility for infrastructure planning.

The aim of the festival is to promote Swiss pop and club music with a focus on promising young talent. m4music is conceived by Migros Culture Percentage and is realized in collaboration with the clubs Moods and Exil, media partners and sponsors. In 2012, more than 6600 music lovers, including 700 industry professionals, attended the festival.

With Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs (UK), Delphic (UK), Beardyman (UK), FM Belfast (IS), Stay+ (UK), Schlachthofbronx (DE) and Steff La Cheffe (CH), various top acts have been confirmed. Further acts, the music program for the opening in Lausanne and the conference program will be communicated at the beginning of February 2013.

More info: www.m4music.ch

Falk was deputy cultural representative of the canton of Basel-Landschaft for six years in the region of his future work. He has also worked as a dramaturge at Burghof Lörrach and the Stimmen-Festival, as well as artistic director of operations at the Ludwigsburger Schlossfestspiele (Baden-Württemberg).

Falk succeeds Hans-Georg Hofmann at the Basel Chamber Orchestra, who has been appointed responsible for dramaturgy, artistic planning and communication by the Basel Symphony Orchestra.

According to a report in the "Klein Report", the new association wants to ensure that music composed for the media in Switzerland is better protected. It also wants to ensure that the working conditions of authors of media music are standardized and improved.

The smeca office is located in Lausanne at Avenue de la Gare 20 and is managed by a thirteen-member board. The first point of contact will be the collecting societies and producers' associations.

According to a press release from the German Orchestra Association (DOV), the state was responding to pressure from representatives of teaching staff at conservatoires in NRW, the Federal Conference of Teaching Staff at Conservatoires (bklm) and the German Orchestra Association (DOV), both of which are campaigning for an overdue increase in teaching staff salaries, which in some places have not been adjusted for 20 years. 

The DOV is calling on the other federal states to follow this positive example and "finally give up their refusal to adequately remunerate freelance teachers at conservatoires". According to Andreas Bausdorf, Deputy Managing Director of the DOV, demands remain for the 2.7 percent for 2013 that has so far only been verbally promised, as well as for the annual adjustment of fees in line with the development of public sector pay scales.

The call for applications is open to Swiss citizens and persons resident in Switzerland or applicants with proven links to Swiss cultural or scientific institutions. The age limit is forty years at the end of the application period.

The duration of the residency is usually between three and ten months (between September and July). Each member is awarded a grant of CHF 10,000 for their participation in Atelier Studio Roma. They also receive board and lodging and a workplace. Active participation in the Atelier Studio Roma is an integral part of the residency conditions. Applications can be submitted by February 28, 2013 at the latest.

The members themselves must apply for funding to cover their living expenses: artists apply to cantons, municipalities or foundations, researchers to the Swiss National Science Foundation or to foundations. 

More info: www.istitutosvizzero.it

Lisa Della Casa was born on February 2, 1919 in Burgdorf (Switzerland). She received her training with Margarethe Haeser in Zurich. In 1941, she made her debut as Cio-Cio-San (Madama Butterfly) at the Städtebundtheater Biel-Solothurn. After appearances mainly as an actress and concert soprano, she sang Mimì (La Bohème) at the Stadttheater Zürich in 1943 and began her international career in 1947 as Zdenka (Arabella) at the Salzburg Festival.

In 1947 she became a member of the Vienna State Opera ensemble. Her most frequently sung roles at the Vienna State Opera include Contessa d'Almaviva (Le nozze di Figaro), Feldmarschallin (Der Rosenkavalier), Pamina (Die Zauberflöte), Donna Elvira (Don Giovanni) and the title roles in Ariadne auf Naxos and Arabella.

The soprano made regular guest appearances at the Salzburg Festival, London's Royal Opera House Covent Garden, the Bavarian State Opera, La Scala in Milan and the New York Met. Lisa Della Casa was awarded the title of Austrian Kammersängerin on October 7, 1952, and the Austrian Cross of Honor for Science and Art I Class on November 26, 1969. In 1987, she was made an honorary member of the Vienna State Opera.

Johann Wilhelm Hertel, born in Eisenach in 1727, died in 1789, was court and chapel composer in Schwerin from 1754, where Duke Christian Ludwig I maintained a chapel based on the Berlin model. Hertel left behind an extensive oeuvre of more than 40 symphonies, chamber music, oratorios, passions, mass and psalm settings as well as cantatas. He also composed secular odes, singspiels and festive cantatas. He was particularly interested in solo concertos: there are works for harpsichord, organ, harp, flute, oboe, bassoon, trumpet, violin and violoncello.

Edition Walhall has now published the three-movement Concerto for Violoncello and Strings in A major, completed in 1755, in a meticulous edition in the series Il violoncello concertato - Cello concertos of the 18th century published for the first time. The detailed preface by the editor Markus Möllenbeck offers an insight into the life and work of the composer. The concerto is a rich testimony to the sensitive style of early or pre-classical German music, but is somewhat less extensive than the concertos by Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach or Anton Fils. The rewarding cello part is not overly virtuosic. It reaches up to the 6th position (highest note b') and can also be mastered by advanced students and amateurs. While the outer movements are rather conventional, the middle movement in F major surprises with its expressiveness and imaginative development of the solo part.

Johann Wilhelm Hertel, Concerto in A major for violoncello solo, 2 violins, viola and b.c., edited by Markus Möllenbeck, first edition; score, EW 851, € 16.50; parts, EW 852, 38.50; piano reduction by Ulrich Lüdering, EW 853, 14.50; Edition Walhall, Magdeburg 2012

This symposium on January 28 and 29 will focus on Shostakovich's early works in the context of their aesthetic, cultural and political conditions, which have only begun to be researched to date.

In order to gain a deeper understanding of Shostakovich's oeuvre and the period around 1930, the symposium is designed to be interdisciplinary. It will allow renowned scholars to explore the various aspects of the main theme from different disciplinary perspectives. The contributions will subsequently be published in a symposium report.

On the evening of the first day of the symposium, the silent movie The New Babylon (directed by Grigori Kozintsev and Leonid Trauberg) from 1929, for which Shostakovich composed the music.

More info: www.hslu.ch/schostakowitsch2013

Image: Shostakovich in the 1940s - wikimedia.org

According to a press release from Theater Orchester Biel Solothurn (TOBS), a good 60,000 people attended the theater's performances. The capacity utilization rate thus rose to 73.1 percent. The Biel Symphony Orchestra welcomed 17,411 people to its 41 concerts. The two institutions closed their first joint season with a positive result.

In the drama division, the occupancy rate for in-house productions in the two theatres in Biel and Solothurn rose to 71.9% (previous year: 68%), while in musical theater it remained constant at 75.6% (previous year: 76%). The most successful play of the last season was "Die Dreigroschenoper" by Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill in a production by director Katharina Rupp with 5216 admissions and an occupancy rate of around 92%, while the most successful opera was Mozart's "Don Giovanni" (directed by Gerd Heinz) with 4753 admissions and an occupancy rate of 88.8%.

The number of subscribers to the theater has increased. A total of 2006 subscriptions were sold during the season (previous year: 1881). The Symphony Orchestra, on the other hand, recorded a slight fall in subscriber numbers: A total of 691 subscriptions were sold (713 in the 2010/2011 season).

While the number of visitors to the ten symphony concerts in Biel fell by a total of 435, or 6.1 percent, the number of listeners at the senior citizens' and school concerts increased.

The 2011/12 financial year closed with a profit of CHF 136,000 (previous year: CHF 20,000). The proportion of self-generated funds in the joint account is 24.1 percent. This means that the Theater Orchester Biel Solothurn TOBS Foundation exceeds the own funds requirement of 20 percent stipulated in the performance contract.
 

According to a report in the specialist magazine "Gramophone", the up-and-coming artist has recorded his debut album for the Naïve label at the BBC Maida Vale Studios under the direction of Jiři Bělohlávek. It should be available in April 2013. Piemontesi plays the concertos by Dvořák and Schumann.

Piemontesi, who won the prestigious Concours Reine Elisabeth in Brussels in 2007, has a contract to record at least three CDs for Naïve. In 2014, it will be the turn of Mozart sonatas, followed by works by Debussy. 

Born in Locarno in 1983, Piemontesi began playing the piano at the age of four. After studying with Nora Doallo, he moved on to Arie Vardi at the Hanover University of Music and Drama. Today, he is also the artistic director of the Settimane Musicali in Ascona.

Photo: Nicolas Kröger
 

The album is nominated in the categories Best Large Jazz Ensemble, Best Instrumental Arrangement and Best Arrangement Featuring A Vocalist (for the track "Look to the Rainbow" with Luciana Souza).

"Centennial" (gilevansproject.com) was realized by former Evans employee Ryan Truesdell and jointly financed via the Artistshare platform. In Switzerland, the platform wemakeit.ch crowdfunding.

The Folk Music Festival Association will be holding the Altdorf Folk Music Festival for the third time in 2013. The next Alpentöne will take place from August 16 to 18, 2013.

The Heinrich Danioth Art and Culture Foundation in Uri has also awarded the Uri Work Prize. The musical actor and performance artist Rolf Sommer ("Ewigi Liebi"), who grew up in Bürglen, will be able to spend four months in New York in 2014.