"On the second of January 1620, a wild snowstorm raged in the high valley of the city of St. Gallen." So begins the report on the founding of the choir in an anniversary publication celebrating its 300th anniversary. The romantic and dramatic observation of nature by the chronicler of the time, J. Heim, leads us into the heated parlor of Zacharias Büngier, who receives his seven friends. They tune their instruments and begin with a chorale, "which brings great joy to the maids and householders listening in the hallway, makes their hearts beat faster and chases away the gloomy thoughts of winter ...". The eight young men decide to meet daily to make music and give themselves "leges", which roughly corresponds to today's statutes. Since then, the choir has been in existence for more than 15 generations of male and later female singers.

The anniversary year will be celebrated with various events:

On January 20, the 204-page book exceptional - alive - anchored. 400 years of the St. Gallen Oratorio Choir which places the history of the choir in the context of the development of music and changes in the city. The book launch took place in St. Laurenzenkirche, where the traditional Palm Sunday concerts have been held for more than 160 years.

The concerts on April 4 and 5 will feature the German Requiem The St. Gallen composer Alfons Karl Zwicker was commissioned by the oratorio choir to set two poems by Nelly Sachs, the 50th anniversary of whose death was celebrated in 2020, to music. The work is entitled: Ear of mankind, would you listen?

From September 7 to October 2, an exhibition in the Vadiana building will showcase a rich collection of archival documents and objects accumulated over four centuries. As part of the exhibition, musicologist Emanuel Signer will speak on September 18 about the significance of the St. Gallen Oratorio Choir in the history of music.

Here are the fruits of ten years of work. Since 2008, composer and oboist Catherine Milliken has been organizing the annual "Klangspuren lautstark", a special workshop as part of the Klangspuren festival in Tyrol, which is aimed at children and young people aged 8 to 18. They compose, improvise and perform in groups. The "best of" arrangements are now available in the form of practical instructions and concepts and invite you to play. The starting point for the composition process is often a picture ("Strange Worlds") or a text ("What I like to do with friends"). Noise, represented by graphic notations, is mixed with melodies, rhythm sequences and chords. There are also composed songs. The range of themes and forms of presentation extends from opera to colors to radio plays. The basic idea is always to work together on a piece suitable for performance. And it is always about finding new sounds and expanding the musical imagination.

The book is aimed at music teachers who are looking for materials and concepts for improvising and composing with children and young people.

Catherine Milliken: Klangspuren lautstark - Aktives Musizieren und Komponieren mit Kindern und Jugendlichen, 120 p., € 19.90, ConBrio, Regensburg 2018, ISBN 978-3-940768-75-9

The Anna Kull International Cello Competition is positioned as a youth competition and is to be held every two years for three age groups (in 2020 the years 2000 to 2006), alternating between the instruments violincello and violin. Its first edition will take place from February 10 to 22, 2020 at the University of Music and Performing Arts Graz.

In three rounds, which are open to the public, 95 young talents from 30 nations will face an international jury over the course of these 12 days, which is prominently staffed with Julian Arp, David Geringas, Monika Leskovar, Milos Mlejnik, Gergely Mohl, Ditta Rohmann, Wen-Sinn Yang and Anke Schittenhelm (chair).

Anna Kull was born on October 21, 1841 in Klausenburg (then Transylvania, now Cluj-Napoca in Romania) and grew up in an aristocratic and musical family in Switzerland. It is assumed that she received her first lessons, alongside her father, from the Swiss cellist Adam Schleich in Zurich and from 1855 from the solo cellist of the Munich court orchestra, Hippolyt Müller. Due to her musical talent, she played numerous concerts throughout Europe at a young age, both as a soloist and as a chamber musician. She died in Trento (Italy) in 1923 at the age of 82. She bequeathed her instrument to the city of Graz.
 

Tobias Willi studied piano and organ at the Hochschule für Musik Basel, as well as organ at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique et de Danse de Paris. Since 2010 he has been an organ teacher at the ZHdK in the Department of Music and in continuing education.

Tobias Willi has been working as a church musician for a long time and has been the principal organist at St. John's Church in Zurich since 2015. Thanks to his concert activities, numerous courses and projects in the field of church music and organ, he is very well connected both locally and internationally, according to the ZHdK press release.

The nickname "Hammerklavier" seems somewhat superfluous for this sonata today. For what other instrument could it have been written in 1817/18? In fact, it goes back to the title page of the first Viennese edition of 1819, for which Beethoven himself no longer wanted to tolerate the traditional Italian scoring: ".... that instead of piano-forte, Hammerklawier will be used on all our works for which the title is German." Posterity did not realize or want to realize that the Sonata in A major op. 101 had already appeared in print two years earlier with this indication. It is also possible that the use of the epithet reflects respect for a work that was considered unplayable for a long time due to its technical demands and expansive formal dimension - or in the words of Daniel Barenboim: "The Hammerklavier Sonata doesn't get any easier if you don't play it."

The misunderstood metronome marking of the first movement (half note = 138), which would double the prescribed tempo in the usual reading, undoubtedly contributed to this respect (a recording by Artur Schnabel from 1935 demonstrates the musical absurdity of such a realization, but an essay by Johann Sonnleitner in the new edition of the Wiener Urtext Edition, which is well worth reading, provides more clarity on the matter). In any case, Franz Liszt still assumed that the performance of the entire sonata "take almost an hour" - Glenn Gould's rather thoughtful interpretation took almost 50 minutes. The hitherto unheard-of monumentality associated with this playing time was, of course, something Beethoven had in mind from the very beginning: "Now I am writing a sonata which is to be my greatest" (as reported by his pupil Carl Czerny). Incidentally, the sound of the work, which goes far beyond the possibilities of the instrument, prompted Felix Weingartner to write a version for large orchestra in 1925/26.

SMZ - This new edition of the sonata has been published by Wiener Urtext Edition under the number UT 50432. Karl-Andreas Kolly reviewed it for the Schweizer Musikzeitung: to the review

Link to the project homepage "52 x Beethoven"

According to the official press release, the cantonal government is paying tribute to Regula Mühlemann because "she has made Lucerne better known in the world than almost any other personality".

Regula Mühlemann was born in Adligenswil in 1986, grew up there and studied at the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts under Barbara Locher. Her engagements then took her to the Teatro La Fenice in Venice, the Zurich Opera House and the Festspielhaus Baden-Baden. In summer 2012, she made her debut as the young Papagena in the opera "Das Labyrinth" by Peter von Winter at the Salzburg Festival.

Since then, Regula Mühlemann has been heard at many important opera houses and concert halls. She was literally the voice of Lucerne in the world before returning to the Lucerne Theater in November 2018 as Juliette in Gounod's Roméo et Juliette, bringing a major romantic role to the stage for the first time. In 2018, she was awarded the Opus Klassik as "Young Artist of the Year".

Blanchard served as Directeur général and editor-in-chief of the Revue Musical before becoming artistic advisor to the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris from 1987 to 1992 and managing director of the Opéra de Paris-Bastille from 1992 to 1994. From 1996 to 2001, he held the same position at the Opéra de Nancy et de Lorraine and the Orchestre Symphonique et Lyrique de Nancy. From 2001 to 2009, Blanchard was General Director of the Grand Théâtre de Genève and later Director of the Geneva Wagner Festival.

Founded in 1901, the Orchestre régional de Cannes-Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur consists of 37 musicians. Its artistic director is Benjamin Levy. It is financed by the Ministry of Culture, the city of Cannes, the Département des Alpes-Maritimes and the Région Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur.

Gomes studied clarinet in Portugal before going on to study choral and orchestral conducting in Geneva. He is a founding member of the Vintage Quartet, which performs regularly in Portugal, Italy, Belgium and Switzerland. From 2008 to 2011 he was Principal Conductor of the Orchestre de Chambre de Carouge. In Portugal, he is also involved with youth orchestras, including the Orquestra Geração.

The second European Union Conducting Competition was held in cooperation with the National Academy of Music in Sofia and the Pazardjik Symphony Orchestra in Sofia and Pazardjik. Cash prizes and concerts in Italy, Hungary, Russia, Turkey and Poland were awarded.

Valentine Michaud from France initially studied in the tradition of the French school. At the age of 16, she moved to Switzerland and studied with Pierre-Stéphane Meugé at the Haute Ecole de Musique de Lausanne, where she became interested in the contemporary repertoire and early music (Baroque, Renaissance).

In 2013, she completed a bachelor's degree in saxophone and also graduated with a bachelor's degree in musicology from the Université de la Sorbonne in Paris. After a first Master's degree in instrumental pedagogy, she continued her education from 2015 to 2018 with a second Master's degree - this time specializing as a soloist - in Lars Mlekusch's class at the Zurich University of the Arts. From 2017 to 2018, she also worked as Lars Mlekusch's assistant.

The Credit Suisse Young Artist Award promotes outstanding soloists whose potential promises a great international career. In addition to the prize money of 75,000 Swiss francs, the winners receive the opportunity to perform with the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra at the Lucerne Summer Festival. The prize is awarded jointly by the Lucerne Festival, the Vienna Philharmonic, the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde Wien and the Credit Suisse Foundation.
 

"... humbly dedicated." The dedication of the Piano Concerto in G major op. 58 marks the beginning of a close musical and human friendship with the young Archduke Rudolph of Austria (1788-1831). Beethoven taught the talented Archduke piano playing and composition until 1824, who in turn, together with Princes Lobkowitz and Kinsky, contractually agreed to pay him a lifelong annuity on March 1, 1809. It is therefore no coincidence that the Archduke is the first person to dedicate Beethoven's compositions to him, both in terms of number and weight: In addition to the Fourth Piano Concerto, composed in 1805/06, the Fifth Piano Concerto in E flat major op. 73 is also dedicated to him, as is the Les-Adieux-Sonata op. 81a, the piano reduction of the opera Fideliothe Violin Sonata in G major op. 96, the Piano Trio in B flat major op. 97 ("Archduke Trio"), the Piano Sonatas op. 106 and op. 111, the Missa Solemnis op. 123 and finally the Large joint op. 133 for string quartet.

The work itself is full of special features. Not only does the piano enter with the main theme in the opening movement before the orchestra. Robert Schumann even compared the Andante, which is often recitative-like and consists of seemingly rigid contrasts, to Orpheus, who, in order to reach Eurydice, appeased the Furies with his lyre. At the first public performance on December 22, 1808, Beethoven himself took on the solo part and "sang truly on his instrument with a deep melancholy feeling that also flowed through me" - according to Johann Friedrich Reichardt's recollection. Although the entrances and cadenzas worked out for Archduke Rudolph around 1808/09 have been known since 1865, the special role of the piano in this work nevertheless challenged numerous concertizing composers to write their own cadenzas, among them (alphabetically) Eugen d'Albert, Johannes Brahms, Hans von Bülow, Ferruccio Busoni, Nikolai Medtner, Ignaz Moscheles, Anton Rubinstein, Clara Schumann and Camille Saint-Saëns.

Almost all (98%) of those who know Beethoven correctly classify him as a composer. 41% of Beethoven experts knew that the 250th anniversary of his birth was the occasion of the anniversary year. 23% mistakenly cited the 250th anniversary of his death as the occasion. Many were aware of the illness Ludwig van Beethoven suffered from as a young man - 64 percent of Beethoven experts correctly classified him as deaf.

6 percent of respondents mistakenly assumed that Beethoven suffered from blindness. The majority of Beethoven connoisseurs who were also able to correctly categorize him as a composer were familiar with works by the famous musician - three quarters (74 percent) of respondents stated this.

YouGov is an international data and analytics group. With 35 locations in 22 countries and panel members in 42 countries, YouGov has one of the ten largest market research networks in the world.

Original article:
https://yougov.de/news/2020/01/09/ludwig-van-beethoven-und-die-bedeutung-von-klassis/

The "People's Festival of the Arts" celebrated artistic successes when it was held in 2018. However, according to the official press release, continuing the festival with a strong, independent profile and with the current quality would only be possible beyond 2020 with substantial additional financial resources. Despite great efforts, it has not been possible to secure such long-term sustainable financing in recent years.

With the aim of concentrating financial resources, the festival initially switched to a two-year cycle with a first performance in 2018, in response to "fundamental social changes such as the diversification of society, the increased need for participatory offerings and the need to play a more active and creative role in shaping one's own future".

This reorientation has been very well received by the general public, says Managing Director Alexander Keil. At the same time, however, the willingness of sponsors to invest in cultural institutions has fallen sharply.

As a special analysis by GfK Entertainment in cooperation with the German Music Industry Association (BVMI) shows, the number of music streams exceeded the 100 billion mark for the first time last year with 107 billion downloads. By comparison, Germans generated 79.5 billion streams in the previous year and around 56.4 billion in 2017.

Mariah Carey's All I Want For Christmas Is You is now in the lead in the most-streamed song of the day category. The catchy tune reached 3.2 million views on December 24. Last Christmas by Wham! also almost cracked the 3 million mark on Christmas Eve last year and is now in fourth place in the ranking of the most streamed songs within 24 hours. Between the two Christmas classics are two rap tracks: Ronin by Bushido & Animus and Tilidin by Capital Bra & Samra.

The analysis is based on ad-based and paid music streams with a length of 31 seconds or more.

According to the Schola Cantorum Basel (SCB), Schröder belonged to the young generation at the end of the 1960s who ventured into a new and momentous departure into early music in the Netherlands and Belgium. Contacts with Frans Brüggen, Gustav Leonhardt and other protagonists of his generation deepened his own artistic approaches.

From 1975 to 1990, he taught "violin in the old scale" at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis. Among the students in his class were Dana Maiben, Trix Landolf and Emilio Moreno. The latter graduated with the first ever diploma for violin in old scale at the SCB. Jaap Schröder laid the foundation for the more recent training of the "violin in old mensur" at the SCB and always remained on friendly terms with the institute.

Schröder also taught at the Amsterdam Conservatory and as a guest at American universities, where he was a faculty member of the School of Music at Yale University (New Haven, CT).

In addition to the theoretical reflection of the project, one focus of the project is on the reconstruction of the instrumental, vocal, linguistic and stage practice of the Wagner period.

According to Kent Nagano, although the Ring is one of the most researched compositions, there has not yet been a systematic approach to the tetralogy from a historically informed perspective. This makes it all the more important to tackle such a task and to question listening habits in the Romantic repertoire that previously seemed irrevocable. The first results are to be presented in the concert hall next February.

More info:
https://wagner-lesarten.de