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.

The classical guitar is like the opera house: it has a repertoire problem. It's not that few notes have been written for the guitar. What is missing is substance. Anyone who has ever encountered sonatas by Mauro Giuliani or Fernando Sor will know the qualitative difference to Schubert's or Beethoven's piano works. Many guitarists make a virtue out of necessity: they transcribe. Questionable transcriptions have already been made, for example an arrangement of Modest Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition that misses the point of the guitar. Far more fruitful is the transcription of Bach's works. Be it selected preludes from the Well-Tempered Clavier, the cello suites or the violin sonatas - the richness of color on the one hand and the polyphonic possibilities on the other can reveal undiscovered layers of the originals.
Matthias Kläger took matters into his own hands. He did not follow the "German purity requirement" of many other transcriptions, but added a voice or a bass note to the violin sonatas BWV 1001, 1003 and 1005 at one point or another. In the booklet text, he outlines his ideal transcription as follows: "When listening to the guitar version, one should get the impression that the pieces were written precisely for this instrument and could not be performed just as well (or better) on any other." Not only his arrangement, but also his playing fulfill this pious wish. Kläger, who teaches at the Zurich University of the Arts, wonderfully expands the natural linear flow of the violin sonatas. Variable tempi, no slavishly followed terrace dynamics make the playing a fine feast for the ears. At no point does Kläger allow himself to be overly seduced by the many tonal possibilities of the guitar, but knows how to use them discreetly. This superbly produced CD is a demonstration of excellent technique and a musicality that is unparalleled among guitarists. For almost an hour, the repertoire problem is forgotten.

Matthias Kläger: Complete Sonatas for Violin Solo (BWV 1001, 1003, 1005). Transcription for guitar. Acustica Records 1020

According to the German Music Industry Association, 69 percent of Germans who are planning to give music as a gift this year are planning to put a music CD under the Christmas tree. Concert tickets are in second place with 58 percent, while music DVDs are in third place (34 percent), closely followed by lavish special editions on CD and DVD (26 percent).

Despite their growing importance in the market, digital music gifts still play a subordinate role for Germans. A download voucher is considered by 11 percent of those who give music as a Christmas present, while vouchers for streaming subscriptions are still an option for very few (2 percent).

For the study, the media and social research company TNS Emnid surveyed more than 1000 Germans on their planned Christmas shopping in November 2012 on behalf of the BVMI.

Picture: Kurt Michel - pixelio.de

Funding for the coordination office, which is dedicated to promoting young female pop and rock artists, is not yet secured for 2013. The organizers at least want to save, strengthen and expand the core of the project. This essentially involves the database www.helvetiarockt.cha reference book with Swiss female musicians.

"Helvetia rocks" is organized as an association based in Lucerne. Its president is Judith Estermann, who was the Gender Equality Officer at the Lucerne School of Music from 2003 to 2008. The project is supported by the Avina Foundation and the Swiss Federal Office for Gender Equality, among others.

Helvetia rocks on wemakeit: https://wemakeit.ch/users/helvetiarockt

Larcher, who has also worked with composers such as Heinz Holliger, Isabel Mundry, Olga Neuwirth and Johannes Maria Staud, founded the Tyrolean festival Klangspuren in 1994, a platform for performances of contemporary music works in Austria. From 2001 to 2004, he taught a piano class at the Basel University of Music.

Composition commissions from Till Fellner, the Mozartwoche Salzburg and the Lucerne Festival have increasingly focused his interest on composing. Today, Larcher is one of the internationally most important composers of contemporary music.

Overall, the British Composer Awards was awarded in thirteen categories this year. The other winners include Thomas Adès (chamber music), Colin Matthews (vocal composition) and Sir Harrison Birtwistle (orchestral music).

"Swiss Made in Russia" includes visual arts, literature, design, architecture, art in public spaces as well as music, theater and dance. Two local employees, who are stationed in an office of the Swiss Embassy in Moscow, coordinate the cultural exchange program on site.

Swiss Made in Russia" has a budget of CHF 1.85 million for the entire duration of two and a half years and around 50 projects. If the project is successful, the foundation plans to add a location in Moscow to its network of outposts.

The St. Petersburg International Contemporary Music Festival will be organized by the St. Petersburg Center for Contemporary Music reMusik.org between 23 and 31 May 2013. It presents current works from Europe, North America, Asia and Russia.

The Groove Pack is a rollable case with materials for rhythm, movement and singing games. The "Basic" version contains Groovybags (small, soft, malleable cushions), shakers, sticks and rhythm balls, assorted in the colors red, blue, green and yellow. They can be used to perform all kinds of movements, accompany and accompany songs. This teaching aid for the Groove Pack contains 21 songs with movement sequences and rhythm patterns, which are demonstrated on the accompanying DVD. Here it becomes clear that the materials in the Groove Pack also have something to offer in terms of sound.

Body awareness and motor coordination are trained through the movement sequences and, incidentally, it is much easier to sing along. However, the simple instructions should not hide the fact that a lot of practice is required if you want the rhythms to groove.

The Groove Pack belongs in every music school, and also in elementary schools and kindergartens.

Elisabeth Danuser, Claudia Pachlatko, Jürg Lanfranconi, Groove Pack Basics, Impulse für Musik und Bewegung, 56 p., ill., DVD with instructions and playbacks, Fr. 30.00, Academia Verlag, Sankt Augustin 2011, ISBN 3-89665-541-7

Strings are an inexhaustible topic. They are available in vast quantities under a variety of trade names in different tensions and gauges, materials and price categories, and the choice of string depends on the instrument, personal circumstances and preferences. Important factors are certainly the intensity of practicing, the nature of the nails and the construction of the instrument. In any case, it is interesting to explore different string types and gauges on your instrument.

Scale length and material
The different string gauges are labeled low, medium and high tension or something similar. Unfortunately, most manufacturers do not specify the tensile force and tension with which a guitar is loaded by the different string gauges. Each string is manufactured in such a way that it reaches its pitch at a certain tension and a tension length of 65 cm. The load on each individual string is around 6 to 7 kg, i.e. a total of approx. 40 kg string tension for a guitar with a 65 cm scale length.

Manuel Rodríguez Senior, the author of the book Life and Experiences in Guitar Making, used a spring balance to determine the load on strings that were stretched and tuned over 65 cm and over 63 cm. With the 63 cm scale length, each individual string was on average about 0.5 kg less loaded. The whole guitar would therefore be about 3 kg, almost 10 percent less tensioned than a guitar with a 65 cm scale length. Conversely, of course, the tension also increases if we stretch the same set of strings over a longer distance. In practice, this means that we might choose a set of strings with a lower tension for a longer scale length than for a short scale length instrument, so that we don't over-tension one and under-tension the other. Rodríguez is of the opinion that in the long run, extremely high tension strings do more harm than good to a guitar. What is certain is that the strings should be chosen to suit the construction of the instrument. Highly tensioned sets of strings on a lightly built instrument will almost certainly lead to deformation of the top, while lightly tensioned strings will hardly make a robustly built guitar sound good.

The bass and treble strings are made of different materials. The three bass strings
are made of nylon silk and wound with copper or silver wire, occasionally also the third string, the G-string. The treble strings are made of solid nylon. For some time now, polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) has also been used for them, a material with a significantly higher density than nylon. The strings are therefore thinner with the same pitch and therefore "livelier" and more responsive. Among guitarists, these PVDF strings are also known as "carbon strings".