This music can hardly be reduced to a common denominator. Martin Jaggi composes impulsively, even manically to explosively, then again discreetly, meditatively introverted. The diversity corresponds to a tremendous wealth of means. Jaggi takes whatever helps and is useful - be it harmonic-tonal sounds, be it the dissonant-complex vocabulary of the 20th and 21st centuries, be it repetition, which the Basel native, born in 1978, is familiar with from minimalism or from rock and pop.

The chameleon-like transformation is not compatible with the demands for a distinctive personal style. But who can still demand that? Today, when the world is as complex as this Girgawhich Jaggi wrote for the Lucerne Symphony Orchestra in 2014. The percussion is dominant, while the rough brass mingles with the string attacks. Again and again, there are abysmal caesuras - precisely at those points where the material no longer offers much. No doubt: Jaggi has a sense of form.

There are six works on this exceptionally entertaining portrait CD from Musiques Suisses. In addition to two brilliant orchestral works, Jaggi shows his chamber music side in four ensemble pieces composed between 2006 and 2013. Plod on for violin, viola, cello and piano (2007) presents the Mondrian Ensemble, in which Jaggi himself plays the cello. As Michael Kunkel describes in the booklet, there is a "melancholy underlying tone". Indeed, extinction seems to be the theme. Again and again, the music gathers strength only to collapse resignedly. Jaggi once again shows himself to be a quick-change artist, and indeed a musical all-rounder. In addition to the dark, raucous, brutal and subtle, there is something else: virtuosity - on the part of the performers as well as the composer.

Portrait Martin Jaggi; Musiques Suisses (Grammont Portrait), CTS-M 146

Hans-Jürg Sommer taught guitar as a professional music teacher for around forty years, but is also a renowned alphorn player, composer of over 500 works for alphorn - including the famous Moss-Ruef -He is also known as a conductor, course leader and music writer. In 2002, he was awarded the Golden Treble Clef for his musical merits and in 2006 the Music Prize of the Canton of Solothurn for his cultural achievements.

In 2010, Sommer published a 154-page documentary entitled An evaluation and interpretation of historical sources on alphorn melodies (self-published by Oensingen). His aim was to edit old pieces not from the perspective of an ethnomusicologist, but as a player in search of traditional melodies. He collected old notations of rows of carols from the travel literature of the 18th and 19th centuries, as already published in Alfred Leonz Gassmann's Alphornbüechli from 1938 and in other publications, but supplemented them with old sound recordings that have been available since the 1930s and have now been transcribed.

However, the author did not reach all of the 5000 or so alphorn players in Switzerland with this important collection, because many of them can only learn melodies by ear. This realization gave Hans-Jürg Sommer and one of his alphorn partners, Thomas Juchli, the idea of recording the Kühreihen melodies from this collection and setting them in carefully selected Swiss mountain landscapes. The music educator's aim was not simply to visualize the well-known connection between landscape, music and dairy farming in the film, but to present individual parts of six recurring cow rows from the 18th and early 19th centuries in their original function. Initially, the invocation motifs can be heard in ascending melodies. After these introductions, lure and row parts show that cows grazing on the Alps still follow them today in the traditional manner. The discussion about the meaning of the term "rows of cows" is concluded by this natural phenomenon: when the alphorn or other music is played, the cows line up one after the other in a long row. In further sequences, which Sommer calls caesuras, everyone recognizes quiet passages of music during which the alpine herdsman used to wait for the cows in front of the barn. After further lure and row sections, the rows of cows end with a repetition of the introduction and a whoop.

What seems easy to understand in an astonishingly simple commentary in either German, French or English, and is also beautifully presented, is the result of years of painstaking work to reach a general audience and, above all, schoolchildren.

Local interpreters do not seem to be very interested in the Romanticism in Switzerland, which was mainly imported from Germany, or in the works of the late Romantics born here. Theodor Kirchner's piano works from the Swiss period were recorded by Irene Barbuceanu; the Bamberg Symphony Orchestra championed the symphonist Joachim Raff, who was born in Lachen (SZ). The main orchestral works by Hans Huber were recorded by the Stuttgart Philharmonic, those by Fritz Brun are available in recordings with the Moscow Symphony Orchestra. The first complete recording of Hermann Suter's three string quartets was made by the Beethoven Quartet, which was founded in Bonn. So it is hardly surprising that it was a German pianist, Christof Keymer, who came to prominence with the first complete recording of the solo piano works by Hermann Goetz (1840-1876), most of which were composed in Winterthur and Zurich.

His interpretations are all the better off on the German label cpo, as they fit in well with the often unusual repertoire of this producer who loves discovery. These are indeed discoveries, as they include not only the Loose leaves op. 7 and the two Sonatinas op. 8, which are occasionally heard in recital exercises, there are several rarities on the two CDs. Christof Keymer had already published the first editions of four pieces from the estate with Amadeus-Verlag in Winterthur in 2013: the early Alwinen Polka from his student days in Königsberg, a stormy Fantasy in D minor, a work peppered with staccati Scherzo in F major and the one in sonata form Forest fairy tale in B minor (BP 1497).

Of particular interest is the three-part Scherzo. Composed while still studying with Hans von Bülow in Berlin in 1862, the piece gives rise to the assumption that Goetz took the etude, notated only one tone lower, from the Vingt exercices et préludes of the Polish Chopin precursor Maria Szymanowska-Wołowska (1789-1831).

Keymer creates all of these works, a sonata movement in G major and smaller pieces with great attention to tonal detail in order to create a lyrical atmosphere in the lyrical parts of the Loose leaves with warm espressivo and wonderful composure.

Tributes often end in stiff respect. Not so the album A Tribute To Adolphe Sax of the group klapparat, as their name suggests. The saxophone quintet, founded in 2011 and expanded to include a drummer in 2012, pays tribute to the inventor of the saxophone, who was born 200 years ago, with humor, stylistic diversity and captivating interplay. The six musicians, who also play in well-known bands such as Picason, Traktorkestar and Hildegard lernt fliegen, demonstrate the many expressive possibilities of this instrument with different variations up to the sub-contrabass saxophone Tubax. In the interest of musical accessibility, however, they are not stubborn and occasionally use flute, clarinet and xylophone in addition to the drums.

The stylistic diversity of the album reflects the musicians' backgrounds from jazz and classical music to folklore, rock and Cuban styles such as rumba. In this way, klapparat also does justice to the modern history of the instrument, which was invented in 1840. The band dares to play a short version of Maurice Ravel's Boléro from 1928, which already contains variations with saxophone in the original, but actually derives much of its tension from the changing instrumentation; all the more impressive is the entertaining and tonally exciting arrangement by Daniel Zumofen. With an interpretation of Sidney Bechet's Petite Fleur also underlines the fact that with the emergence of jazz, the saxophone became an indispensable instrument in this genre and still characterizes it today.

With two compositions by the Cuban composer and pianist Ernesto Burgos, klapparat not only draws attention to the importance of the saxophone in Afro-Caribbean styles, but also points back to the beginnings of the band, when it mainly played pieces by Burgos and Marcos A. Fernandez. The two pieces Arrabiata and Bubble are compositions by members of the band and, with their unusual approaches, indicate some potential for further independent development.

The focus of the first DVD - after an overview of elementary music and dance pedagogy EMTP - is dedicated to reflection in the form of a theme-centered summary of interviews with experts and discussion rounds with home residents, a caregiver and students of the Carl-Orff-Institute. The book concludes with insights into the lives of two residents who took part in the weekly musical program for many years.

The discussion of the questions "Why music? What is the intrinsic value of music?", always in relation to scientific findings and the importance of emotionality. The connection between music and long-term memory ("well-known songs are even stored with several verses until old age") is addressed as well as the psychosomatic effect of music, i.e. the questions: "What significance did music have in earlier life, what effect does music have today?". It is shown how EMPT adapts to people's life stories and draws conclusions for practice. Statements from senior citizens explain the practical relevance: "Music is accessible to everyone. Music lifts the mood. You can feel that you are alive. Everyone is who they are." In this sense, music is part of biography work, part of rewriting one's own history. But it's also about learning new things and being challenged.

The strong reference to the importance of music in life lays the foundations for training and further education at the Carl Orff Institute in the field of music geragogy and clearly defines the difference to elementary music education: It is not education that is required, but education that takes biography into account without staging an infantilization of music.

DVD 2 is dedicated to practice and, after an introduction, shows many examples, divided into three core areas with a further division into 15 subject areas. The practical examples are aesthetically profound, the selection of songs and pieces of music is varied and the materials are balanced. The lecturer Christine Schönherr and the participating students impress with their performative and professional musicality. This basic artistic quality, characterized by aesthetic design, respect and theoretical understanding, provides a unique basis for all participants to join in.

"Ich bin wieder jung geworden" - Musik, Sprache, Bewegung, künstlerisch-pädagogische Angebote für Menschen in hohem Alter, concept & realization Christine Schönherr / Coloman Kallós, double DVD, € 30.00, Mozarteum University and Carl Orff Institute for Elementary Music and Dance Pedagogy, Salzburg 2013, ISBN 978-3-9502713-4

More recent works on Orff pedagogy:

Manuela Widmer, Die Pädagogik des Orff-Instituts, Entwicklung und Bedeutung einer einzigartigen kunstpädagogischen Ausbildung, 540 p., € 59.95, Schott, Mainz 2011, ISBN 3-7957-0748-4

Studientexte zu Theorie und Praxis des Orff-Schulwerks, Band 1: Basistexte aus den Jahren 1932-2010, Schriftenreihe des Orff-Schulwerk Forums Salzburg, ed. by Barbara Haselbach, collaboration: Esther Bacher, 350 p., German/English, € 11.99, Schott, Mainz 2011, ISBN 3-7957-0756-9

If you take a closer look, you will recognize at first glance the differences between the quick (and often legal) download of scores from the Internet and the new editions purchased from music dealers: On the one hand, there are the old public domain editions, some of which date back to the 19th century, with all their graphical inadequacies and uncorrected errors; on the other hand, there are the editions that have been newly edited on the basis of the sources and proofread in the best possible way, which then also clear up the errors that have been blithely perpetuated over the decades. And if the editions printed on good paper (with an all-round informative preface) are also available at a fair price compared to our own fluttering and ephemeral "printouts" - like the study scores presented here - then the decision based on quality should be an easy one.

With its Urtext study scores, the Breitkopf publishing house is not only building on a proven tradition, but is evidently also looking to the future with confidence. In addition to Beethoven, Brahms, Schumann and others, Tchaikovsky is now also represented in the catalog - with two of his most important and most frequently performed works, the Capriccio italiana and the Violin concerto. And it is precisely the familiar, light-footed Capriccio shows in detail what such an edition is capable of. In contrast to the densely packed first edition of November 1880 (which can still be found reproduced in the yellow Eulenburg edition), the new engraving, identical in pagination, is graphically much more spacious and relaxed, and missing signs have been added and wrong notes corrected (e.g. bar 590, fl. III). The Violin concerto becomes much more legible in the engraving pattern so characteristic of Breitkopf and gains in stringency from a purely visual point of view. I hope that this series, which is intended both for those on a tight budget and for curious self-study, will be continued soon!

Peter Tchaikovsky, Capriccio italien op. 45, edited by Polina Vajdman, study score, PB 5515, € 10.50, Breitkopf & Härtel, Wiesbaden 2006

id., Concerto for Violin and Orchestra op. 35, edited by Ernst Herrtrich, study score, PB 15116, € 11.50, 2011