"Memory is something we performers don't like to talk about - mainly because we're afraid of losing it." This is what the Canadian pianist Angela Hewitt once said. The fact that professionals can play by heart for hours on end, usually without making mistakes, is basically a miracle. In fact, our brain memory is as fascinating as it is almost impossible to penetrate. Beyond the extremely complex and as yet barely researched interplay of hundreds of trillions of synapses, this also applies to the topic of "music and memory". Although it is immediately obvious, it is still difficult to grasp.

Music and memory by Melanie Unseld is a study book. The professor, who teaches in Vienna, aims to provide an overview of musicological perspectives on a subject that has been significantly promoted by cultural studies, for example by Jan Assmann's book The cultural memory. Identities therefore play a role, for example, where the subconsciously anchored Marseillaise or other hymns create national awareness. Other areas of research include aspects of canon formation and reception research. Why are some things remembered and why not? Why have these or those composers and far fewer female composers prevailed? Unseld naturally also touches on monument preservation and politics with such questions. She mentions, for example, the temporary ban on the Marseillaisewhich, due to its revolutionary potential, was to disappear from memory for a time, just like some works by Russian composers that were banned under Joseph Stalin.

It is not always easy to follow Unseld. She changes perspectives in minute detail. From the absolutely important role of music in the lifelong formative teenage years, she jumps to music didactics, dementia research or a falsifying memory that is commonplace in biographies. As if that were not enough, memories also play a role in the aesthetics of composition. Composers recall predecessors by quoting them. And: sonata form, variation movements, verses and choruses make it clear that music almost always plays on the keyboard of memory. Unseld sums up this particular narrow approach by writing about the experience of time: "Music can deal with time in three ways. It can construct time (through rhythms or the course of form, through composition), imagine time (for example with historical performance practice or music historiography) and make time perceptible (for example through the correlation to the heartbeat or when time passes while practicing or attending a concert)."

For the time being, it is impossible to foresee where this complex field of research will lead. It is nice that Unseld's excellently edited book moves away from cool formalism towards a more human approach to music. In the end, however, it cannot be overlooked that memory is (so far) difficult to grasp and is often very different from person to person. In this respect, music in turn has to do with memory, because both areas seem like a pudding that cannot be nailed to the wall.

Melanie Unseld: Music and Memory - A Study Book, 298 p., € 29.90, Rombach Wissenschaft, Baden-Baden 2025, ISBN 978-3-96821-886-1  

Estonian composer Arvo Pärt celebrated his 90th birthday this September. He himself says of his style, which emerged in the late 1980s: "Tintinnabulation is an area I sometimes delve into when I'm looking for answers - in my life, my music, my work. (...) The complex and multi-layered only confuses me, and I have to search for unity ..."

Two of his most recent choral works are the German Our Father and the motet O Holy Father Nicholas. He wrote the latter for the rededication of St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church at the National Shrine at Ground Zero in New York, which was destroyed on September 11, 2001. A sonorous, enriching ten minutes in typical Pärt a cappella style. The Our Father on the other hand, is rather atypical for him, but no less impressive. In addition to the previous versions for voice and piano and for choir, piano and string orchestra, Universal Edition Wien has now published this new version for choir and piano, which can also be performed by amateur choirs.

Arvo Pärt: Our Father, for mixed choir and piano, UE 38005, € 8.95, Universal Edition, Vienna

Id.: O Holy Father Nicholas, for mixed choir a cappella, UE 38114, € 13.95

For a century and a half, the magazine Music & Liturgy as the most important organ of Catholic church music in German-speaking Switzerland, reports on church music and its developments. It sheds light on everyday musical practice in liturgy and sacred concerts from various perspectives.

What began in 1876 as a paper called Choir guard began years later under the title Catholic church music and later Singing and making music in church services finally to Music & Liturgya magazine that covers a broad spectrum of church music life and creativity beyond the choral world. Since the beginning of this year, it is no longer in print, but as an online platform.

On March 14, 2026, a festive ceremony will take place at 1.30 pm in the Einsiedeln monastery church with three choirs and instrumental music. At the same time, three important figures in church music in Switzerland, Father Theo Flury, Abbot Urban Federer and Martin Hobi, will be honored for their outstanding commitment to church music with an Orlando di Lasso and Ambrosius Medal respectively. The general public is also cordially invited to this ceremony.

musicandliturgy.ch

From Stefan Muhmenthaler to Jakob Steiner: for each year, Ueli Steingruber has portrayed a personality who was awarded first prize in the Swiss Youth Music Competition (SJMW) between 1976 and 2025. The color or black and white photographs show them in an everyday situation today. The aim is to take a look at the big picture, at the consistency of the competition for 50 years: "Like a reliably nourishing river, it runs through the biographies of the Swiss music world and feeds it with motivated young talent." This is how Michael Eidenbenz praises the SJMW in the introductory text.

The volume, beautifully designed under the direction of Valérie Probst, invites you to look, read and reflect on the nature of music again and again.

50 - Swiss Youth Music Competition 1975 to 2025, published by the Swiss Youth Music Competition Foundation, 120 p., Fr. 35.00, ISBN 978-3-033-11409-8, info@sjmw.ch

The well-known guitarist David Russell described José Tomás (1934-2001) from the Spanish coastal town of Alicante as the most influential guitar teacher of the late 20th century. Tomás was not only a gifted guitarist and teacher, but also a diligent arranger of Renaissance, Baroque and other music. Pedro Jesús Gómez, like Russell a former student of Tomás, has now published a carefully compiled collection of transcriptions by the Iberian maestro with Editions Chanterelle.

The first focus is on 16th and 17th century lute music, with John Dowland featuring particularly prominently. With Couperin and Purcell it is then the harpsichord, with Bach's E minor suite BWV 996 the legendary lute piano, which is played on the guitar strings. From Haydn to the 20th century, there is arranged piano music by "classics" of the guitar repertoire such as Albéniz and Granados, but also by other greats of the (late) Romantic period such as Tchaikovsky and Ravel.

Tomás played mainly on an eight-string Ramirez guitar made especially for him, with which he could also play the low notes of a polychoral Renaissance or Baroque lute. His arrangements were also tailored to this instrument. Editor Gómez meticulously documents deviations from Tomás' manuscripts. In most of the pieces, one string is retuned (F sharp instead of G, D instead of E, even G instead of A). There are practically no gaps in the fingerings. The commentary is in English and Spanish. Anyone who enjoys interpreting lute and piano music on the guitar will be well served by this anthology.

The José Tomás Guitar Anthology, Arrangements for Guitar solo by José Tomás, ed. by Pedro Jesús Gómez, ECH 2725, € 22.50, Editions Chanterelle (Schott), Mainz

Ingo Bredenbach, the organist at Tübingen's Stiftskirche, makes it possible to Johann Sebastian Bach's piano lessons deep insights into his compositional development. The focus is on the works for keyboard instruments that accompanied the entire development of Bach's creativity, from his self-study to his main activity as the most important organ teacher of his era. Bredenbach's starting point are the copies of two organ works by Jan Adam Reincken and Dieterich Buxtehude, which he studied to acquire knowledge of harmony and some contrapuntal licenses. During the first half of his life, Bach enriched this basic knowledge of North German music by studying Italian music, especially the Italian concerto, in order to later pass on his experiences to his numerous apprentices. Bredenbach's study traces Bach's musical career in detail as a lifelong lesson, from learning to teaching.

The strengths of this practice-based study lie in the analytical details that an organist who wants to improvise in Bach's style must "grasp". More problematic is the sometimes selective consideration of existing literature. Sometimes insights are proclaimed that have long since been published elsewhere. The author lacked the organizing hand of a master like Bach, which would have helped him to consistently implement a clear concept from the wealth of complex information in the book in such a way that the fundamental is separated from the details and the important from the trivial. Nevertheless, if you want to learn something essential about Bach's music, you would be well advised to take Bredenbach's book, which is well worth reading, and the sheet music of all the works discussed.

Ingo Bredenbach: Johann Sebastian Bach's piano lessons. Bach as a learner and teacher, 519 p., € 59.00, Bärenreiter, Kassel 2024, ISBN 978- 3-7618- 2617-1

The Geneva-born composer Gasparo Fritz (1716-1783) became particularly well known for his chamber music. He came from a musical dynasty, received a profound musical education and studied the violin in Italy with Giovanni Battista Somis, a pupil of Arcangelo Corelli. It can be said that the author's Italian influence is also clearly audible in his style and is evident in the melodic design and structural clarity of his works.

Published by Michael Biehl and Claire Genewein in collaboration with Peter Schmid, the VI Sonata a Violino o Flauto Traversiere solo col Basso op. 2 are among the composer's most outstanding works. Players have the choice between violin and flute as solo instruments. In some passages, alternative versions are given depending on the instrument.

Character

Nicola Schneider explains in the preface that the concept of a musical rococo undoubtedly applies to these sonatas. They often manifest a form of elegance that is considered characteristic of the transitional phase to the Classical period. Baroque formal rigor is combined with gallant lines, clear melodies and dialogic interplay. The flute is often led in a lively musical dialog with the bass voice with a distinctly fine feeling for cantabile lines, for example in the Andante in the 1st Sonata.

All of Gasparo Fritz's sonatas display galant elements, for example in ornamentation, lightness, dance-like rhythms and a certain grace. In addition, colorfulness is created by the numerous written-out ornaments as well as a longer composed cadenza in the Adagio of the 2nd sonata. The rapid changes of affect and the varied articulation often have the narrative effect of a story with many facets. The movement models are mostly in three movements and sometimes lead to a playful final movement with virtuoso variations, such as in the 4th sonata.

Echoes

Two significant parallels to other flute sonatas that last for several bars are striking: The first bars of the Andante from the 4th sonata are similar to the opening theme of Johann Sebastian Bach's Sonata in B minor BWV 1030 and in the cantabile Largo of the 2nd sonata there is an audible echo of the Siciliano from the Flute Sonata in E flat major BWV 1031 attributed to Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach.

Source situation

The first publication of these sonatas to feature a suspended continuo was the work by Frank Martin. Michael Biehl's intention with his continuo realization is to give a wider audience the opportunity to interpret the work and points out that this is only one possibility and that the figures could not have been written by Gaspard Fritz, but by his editor, as no autograph of the sonatas exists.

The lavish edition published by Schmid & Genewein in Zurich is based on the original print with an upper part and a figured bass, which is kept in the Zentralbibliothek Zürich, and also adopts its dynamic indications. It includes as scores the upper part with the continuo set out by Michael Biehl and, in accordance with the original, the upper part with figured bass, in two copies for the convenience of performers. A detailed critical report with numerous notes on the sonatas rounds off this new edition, which is successful in every respect.

Gasparo Fritz: VI Sonate a Violino o Flauto Traversiere solo col Basso, edited by Michael Biehl and Claire Genewein, SG010, Fr. 54.00, Schmid & Genewein, Zurich

Some people say that heavy metal is close to classical music. Well, that probably varies from case to case. In any case, virtuosity on the instrument or in the voice can be found in quite a few metal bands. What's more, many of the musicians in this sometimes amusing scene have undergone professional training.

Keyboardist Thomas Hiebaum sees himself as the composer of the Aargau symphonic metal band Deep Sun, which has now been in existence for almost 20 years. On their new album, the quintet mixes Storyteller all kinds of things together. Here the typically distorted metal guitar with its hard rhythmic riffs and the drum set with its fast bass attacks. Then there are the dense keyboard sounds, often reminiscent of a string orchestra, and the high soprano voice of Debora Lavagnolo, always moving in sustained melodies.

Lavagnolo writes the lyrics himself. They are about mysticism, about - as the song descriptions say - the "triumph of rebirth", about "stories from the forests or from the lakes" or about the "irrefutable strength of women". One suspects that a certain pathos, which is probably inscribed in symphonic metal, is not far away and it is also redeemed in the form of dense sound clusters, which are also heavily built up with a lot of reverb and compression. So: there are many virtuoso interludes from the guitarist and the drummer; also many episodes to sing along to and invitations to sway with a "feel-good factor". But at some point you think: a little less of everything would probably have done in the end.

Deep Sun: Storyteller. Power Blast Records

The chords that follow each other so regularly seem familiar and yet they are not, especially not in their sequence. They go through the minutes, changing constantly, sometimes more, sometimes less, but not for the sake of complacent nuance. Sometimes the sounds get stuck in time, sometimes they surprise us with twists and turns, then they remain constant again; meandering and moving forward are no longer opposites. Et cetera. Something similar could be said about many pieces by Aarau composer Jürg Frey, such as the second album of piano music recorded by Dutch pianist Reinier van Houdt (Composer, alone; Elsewhere Music, 3 CDs).

But the human voice adds a different quality: something warm, slightly unstable, more lively. The brilliant London vocal ensemble Exaudi, founded in 2002 and specializing in new music, has now recorded six of Frey's works. Most of them date from the past decade and yet, despite their stylistic uniformity, they show diversity. For example in the choice of texts, which range from a poem of his own to Far Eastern poetry and Emily Dickinson. The harmonic and vocal color changes with each piece. Some movements are as bright as day, others shadowy, even allowing for a certain dimness. Sometimes they are sounds that seep only faintly into the ear, but unfold their gentle brilliance there. A minimum of emphasis, which rarely arises, has a great effect. Yes, even a certain spirituality can be felt at times, as a focus on a point outside. And incidentally, it becomes clear how far these outwardly inconspicuous sounds have come: They are not only heard in London, but also in Montreal, New York, Tokyo and wherever else: the lowly, solitary, solitary becomes - once again - cosmopolitan.

Jürg Frey: Voices. Exaudi Vocal Ensemble; conducted by James Weeks. New Records

The time has truly come to take another look at Sofia Gubaidulina, who died in March. She has found her permanent place in the imaginary museum of music history. But too often Gubaidulina's biography and aesthetics have been reduced to rather simple denominators: the composer who suffered under Russian censorship, the religious brooder and - from the point of view of the progressive parties - the traditional composer who did not embrace progressive compositional techniques from 1950 onwards.

The new Naxos CD Figures of Time paints a different picture. Gubaidulina's 30-minute orchestral work of the same name is just as captivating with its enormous tension and progressiveness as the following piano concerto Introit with a brilliant Alice Di Piazza at the keys. There is no ornamentation or unnecessary gimmickry. Thinned-out, quiet chamber music or solo passages are followed by brusque, expressive orchestral discharges - without giving the impression that the thread has been lost. The words that Gubaidulina herself found are always comprehensible: "There are composers who build their works very consciously, whereas I count myself among those who tend to 'breed' their works. And that is why the entire world I have recorded forms the roots of a tree, as it were, and the work that grows out of it its branches and leaves."

Catchy jazz rhythms, including walking bass, characterize the fun, originally created in 1976. Revue Music for Orchestra and Jazz Band. There is a lot of tongue-in-cheek here, not at all the work of a "religious ponderer", but of an unexpectedly open, thoroughly humorous composer. It is true that Gubaidulina's wink with subversive jazz from the West was not at all well received in the Soviet Union - and the empathy of the sensitive conductor Titus Engel, who leads an outstanding Basel Sinfonietta with the participation of the NDR Big Band, is always in tune. In short: a production well worth listening to. On top of that, with many a gain in knowledge!

Figures of Time. Works by Sofia Gubaidulina. Basel Sinfonietta; NDR Big Band; Alice Di Piazza, piano; Titus Engel, conductor. Naxos 8.551487

From 1778 to 1790, the Bohemian cellist Anton (or Antonín) Kraft was first cellist in the chapel at the court of Prince Nikolaus Esterházy (1714-1790), where Joseph Haydn also worked. Kraft took composition lessons from him from time to time and it can be assumed that Haydn composed his great second cello concerto in D major for Kraft. It was even mistakenly attributed to him at times.

The cello plays the central role in Kraft's compositional oeuvre. Edition Walhall has now republished his two surviving cello concertos. Both are in the key of C major and are roughly the same length, lasting between 20 and 23 minutes.

The first concerto follows Haydn's orchestration in solo concertos with 2 oboes, 2 horns and strings. The solo part is demanding, but is written in a grateful and balanced manner (range C-g2). The second concerto op. 4 has an almost Beethovenian orchestral size: 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, 2 trumpets, timpani and strings. The cello part is virtuosic and full of technical difficulties (range C-h2), comparable to the solo cello part in Beethoven's Triple Concerto.

In both editions, the extensive preface provides information about the sources and contextualizes the concertos in the musical field of tension between Haydn and Beethoven. It is to be hoped that these editions will lead to both works being studied more often at music academies and thus performed more frequently.

Anton Kraft: Concerto No. 1 in C major "Seydl", edited by Max Möllenbeck; score, EW 996, € 43.50; piano reduction, EW 1157, € 24.80; Edition Walhall, Magdeburg

Id.: Concerto No. 2 in C major op. 4; score, EW 1031, € 49.80; piano reduction, EW 1273, € 28.50

The "Leichtbauten" series by Beat Gysin and Studio-klangraum is entering the next round. After Chronos (2015), Grille (2017), Pipe mill (2019-2021) and House (2022-23) is Movements I is already the fifth project that deals with the relationship between music and architecture.

And while the previous work caused a sensation with some spectacular buildingsThis time it's more about the frog's-eye view, namely how we perceive sound and noises in a changing space when we can't see anything. The principle is as simple as it is effective: you sit on wheelchair-like moving platforms, put on a blindfold and let yourself be pushed around by another person from the audience. Halfway through, the roles change - you go from blind passenger to guide and vice versa. During the ride, you hear random noises from the surroundings as well as musical and tonal interventions at various stations. These were composed by Gysin himself and the Spanish composer Teresa Carrasco.

Rooms full of sounds and music

On the weekend of September 5 and 6, 2025, the Movements I in the Gundeldinger Feld in Basel. The district center at the southern end of the city covers around 12,000 m² and was significantly developed by architect Barbara Buser: from a former engineering factory to a lively neighborhood meeting place with a wide range of cultural facilities. Today there are breweries, restaurants, studios, construction offices, therapy practices, music schools, violin-making workshops and climbing gyms. Ideal for a sound tour.

We start in the circus school, where two members of the Collegium Novum Zurich are waiting and set the mood for the acoustic experience with violin, clarinet and spoken word: "I'm here - you're there - come to me - shall I come to you?" can be heard from both sides to activate spatial hearing. Then the journey begins, first with shorter, then longer distances: through a construction office, the lively inner courtyards, into the recording studio, through the bar, into the stairwell, into the workshop or the climbing hall. The guides are instructed by hand signals from Gysin's team where to take which turn and where to stop the rolling platforms at the individual stations.

Orientation is quickly lost

Most of the pushers are very careful and considerate of their passengers, warning them when a doorstep or bump is approaching and trying to make as few swerves as possible. There are also a few boisterous capers from younger participants, but these are soon stopped. And that's a good thing, because as a blind passenger you soon become disoriented: It is surprisingly easy to lose track of whether you are moving or not, how much time has passed and where you are in the area, even if you know it.

It is also difficult to classify whether the various noises and sounds are actively part of the performance or not. While more or less common instrument solos are played at some stations, which comes close to an active music listening experience, most of the time you move around in a sonic mixing room: sometimes office conversations and vibraphone-like sounds combine, sometimes pencils are sharpened or boxes are painted while a musician trumpets through a tube. At times, you are briefly immersed in atmospheric sounds from the recording studio, and then back again. And sometimes the percussionist bangs on the banisters or steel beams while someone in the workshop next door chisels away at a sculpture.

Listen, smell and have confidence

"Confusing to the max" is how some people sum it up, while others report an "impression of a long journey" or a "crazy experience" after the trip. The majority of people realize that hearing is completely different when you lose your sense of sight. Better? It's hard to say, the "training" was probably too short for that. But certainly more comprehensive, more concrete, because there is less filtering out and more active hearing exploration. Another interesting aspect is the combination with the heightened perception of smell, such as how the wood or metal in the workshops sounds and smells, or simply the smell of coffee and beer in the air. - In a classical concert, this is usually something for the interval at most.

Movements I is not only a spatial, musical and sensory experience, it is also a social event. The division into teams of two (within a small group), who maneuver through the blind ride in role reversal, creates a situation of trust - this is coherent, as one loses a great deal of control and security through the sense of sight. And that brings us to the title of the project, which hints at a possible Part II. Studio-klangraum and Gysin are considering motorizing the moving platforms and having them controlled by an AI. However, in view of the faltering development of self-driving cars, this could still take some time. Gysin's project offers plenty of scope for further thought. Movements I uses music primarily as a stimulus for a holistic experience of the environment and understands it as both a natural and artificial part of it.

Further performances of "Movements I" will take place on October 17 and 18 at Campus Ost Buchs and at the Lokremise St. Gallen.

One thing quickly became clear at this year's edition of the Bern Music Festival from September 3 to 7: music is sensual again! Gone are the days when sparse sound was confused with musical innovation. Even the opening concert Liquid Room No. 11: Scattered Songs in the large hall of the Reitschule was a feast for the senses. Eleven musicians, divided into ensembles around the room, focused on the song genre for three hours, with music from John Dowland (1562/63-1626) to Leonie Strecker (*1995). Right in the middle of it all: this year's composer in residence, Svetlana Maraš (*1985), who created pleasant intermezzi with electronic improvisations. The 30 or so works performed were perfectly curated by Eva Reiter, viola da gamba player of the ensemble in residence Ictus.

Fragile sounds scattered around the room

Was there just something? The piece only lasts a few seconds Cadillac for solo guitar by the gifted Swiss composer Jürg Frey (*1953). But even this brief moment shows his musical prowess. Jürg Frey was represented with several compositions on this opening evening. What a gift! With an incredible feel for quiet, fragile sounds, Frey weaves a fine architecture of breathtaking beauty. The program also included some of his songs, which were interpreted with great flexibility by the singer Mimi Doulton - one of the great discoveries of this year's festival.

Occasionally, they still exist: the sounds that are based on the ideal of the Darmstadt avant-garde of the 1950s. They were also present at the opening concert, for example in the composition Mutation by Greek composer Panayiotis Kokoras (*1974) for clarinet and electronics. Although the composition, written in 2015, was played brilliantly by clarinettist Dirk Descheemaeker, it came across a little like a clumsy attempt from a 1960s recording studio and was already ancient in its tonal language, eons older than Franz Schubert's Lied The lyre manwhich proved its indestructible freshness and topicality as the opening piece.

Jewelry

One day later, the Schlachthaus Theater Bern sparkled and shone. The Bern Music Festival is known for its extraordinary events. Under the festival motto "Chain", this year's edition also gave academia a chance to have its say. Art historian Annette Kniep unfolded a revealing panorama on the subject of showpieces spanning several millennia. In her presentation, jewelry from different periods entered into a dialogue: Up until the end of the 18th century, Bernese patrician women displayed their marriageability with dignified bijous, while men used medals to showcase their level of power. And even 300 years later, jewelry remains a means of communication. In the hip-hop scene, gold chains are visible proof of success. In short: adorning oneself is a basic human need and a universal constant.

Béla Rothenbühler contributed multi-layered texts, which were congenially set to music by the singer and performance artist Corina Schranz (*1987): sometimes minimalist, but always sensual and beautiful in sound.

Chained

Anxiety is the great theme of the Western world, depicted in the finest ramifications in writings from Søren Kierkegaard to Jacques Lacan. The performative research journey Get well soon!which took us through various rooms of the Progr in a charming and visually stunning way, unfortunately only rarely penetrated the surface in its examination of the issue and remained trapped in relatively banal clichés. Nevertheless, there were some very atmospheric musical moments during the hour-long tour, particularly in the interaction between the flute (Luca Höhmann) and cello (Richard Ander-Donath).

The Bern Music Festival aims to be more than just "L'art pour l'art". The program always conveys a political message. The festival's motto "Chain" meant that a reappraisal of slavery was an obvious choice. Under the direction of Moritz Achermann, the vocal ensemble tempo d'affetto juxtaposed music by the US composer and jazz trumpeter Jalalu-Kalvert Nelson (*1951) with Spanish Renaissance works. A subtle oscillation between colonial splendour and colonized suffering was achieved. The composer of black skin, who lives in Biel, recited very touching terms, names and invocations in various African and Caribbean languages during the concert, recalling his ancestors.

Bern Minster remains an indispensable venue during the music festival. Late in the evening, the composer in residence Svetlana Maraš presented a trance-like live performance in the choir room of the sacred building. Singer Andreas Schaerer interacted with the electronic tinkerer in a virtuoso performance of speech and song, exploring the entire spectrum of the human voice. - Oh, how sensual new music can be!

"Merci Michael!" is written on the large banner that is unfurled at the end of the farewell party for Michael Haefliger at the KKL, entitled "Les Adieux". The Lucerne Festival Orchestra, which he co-founded with Claudio Abbado in 2003, with Johanna Malangré on the podium, then undertakes a musical journey through the life of the outgoing artistic director, who led the Lucerne Festival for 26 years, as a farewell gift. There may Notation 1 by Pierre Boulez, with whom he founded the Lucerne Festival Academy for contemporary music in 2004, as well as the beginning and end of Bruckner's Seventh and Mahler's Third - Abbado's finest moments in the Festival's history. The Swiss songs Z'Basel an mym Rhy and From Lucerne to Wäggis are played in a symphonic high-gloss sound (arrangement: Simon Nathan), as is the FC Bayern anthem Always forwards. After her brilliant laudatory speech, Graziella Contratto had already translated the letters of "Michael Merci" into syllables and sung them together with the audience.

Inspired by Ludwig van Beethoven's StormThe Swiss conductor and producer Michael Haefliger compares the Lucerne Sonata, which Igor Levit has placed somewhere between immersion and intoxication, with the magician Prospero from Shakespeare's drama of the same name. He has turned the Lucerne Festival into a magical island and, with his magic slogan "young, excellent, innovative", has not only attracted sponsors (92 percent self-financing), but has also brought a breath of fresh air artistically with over 400 world premieres and new formats. Festival mottos such as "Diversity", "Diva" and "Crazy", which he has literally thought through, have anchored the festival in the present day. "Open End" is the motto for 2025 - the handover to his successor Sebastian Nordmann is already being prepared.

The familiar again and again

An open end is also perceptible in the concert program of the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra in the last days of the festival, which will be conducted by Lahav Shani in Franz Schubert's Unfinished develop a warm sound. The disinvitation of the orchestra and its designated Israeli chief conductor by the Flanders Festival in Ghent was met with much criticism in the cultural scene, for Igor Levit a case of "classical, disgusting anti-Semitism and cowardice". These tensions are not to be felt in Lucerne. Lahav Shani conducts without baton and with flowing movements, which in Ludwig van Beethoven's Violin Concerto sometimes lead to minor inaccuracies in the interplay with the sovereign Lisa Batiashvili. The solo cadenzas by Alfred Schnittke give the much-heard work a new color.

Richard Wagner's concertante Siegfried on period instruments under Kent Nagano, a project of the Dresden Music Festival, combines the familiar with the new. The orchestral part is given a rarely heard transparency that allows the singers to act more freely and without any forcing. Only in the third act does the orchestra, made up of the Dresden Festival Orchestra and Concerto Köln, lose a little of the quality of its interplay and intonation. In the well-balanced ensemble of soloists, Thomas Blondelle as the almost lyrical Siegfried, Derek Welton, who sings from memory, as the supple, supple Wanderer, Asa Jäger (Brünnhilde) with her wide-ranging soprano and Hanno Müller-Brachmann as the pithy Fafner (with bell) set special accents.

26 years in one afternoon

Michael Haefliger's innovative spirit can also be seen. A purple UFO has landed on the Lido meadow near the Swiss Museum of Transport. Haefliger developed the Ark Nova, an inflatable concert hall, together with artist Anish Kapoor and architect Arata Isozaki for Fukushima in 2013 to provide the deeply unsettled people of Japan with a safe space for music in the wake of the nuclear disaster. This "sound sculpture" can now be experienced for the first and last time in Lucerne. The ten-day, musically diverse program in the Ark Nova is aimed at a wide audience; 30 of the 35 concerts are sold out. At the two concerts attended, however, the acoustically spongy, traditionally seated plastic shell makes you sweat. The fan does not provide cooling, but merely keeps the shell in shape. The experimental performance by Charlotte Hug (viola and voice) and Lucas Niggli (drums) has lengths and overly strong dynamic peaks.

Winnie Huang's digital-vocal show (visuals: Andreas Huck and Roland Nebe), which creates humorous virtuosity from chattering teeth and winking eyes, is far more original during Michael Haefliger's four-and-a-half-hour farewell. The jam-packed afternoon seems like a distillation of his work, which, however, loses concentration due to its length. Riccardo Chailly, who celebrated Italian overtures and opera choruses the day before with the orchestra and choir of La Scala in Milan, is back with a Rossini overture. There will be new music with Stefan Dohr's world premiere of Jüri Reinvere's Night picture with blue stars for horn solo, Dieter Ammans Violation (great on solo cello: Maximilian Hornung) and Pierre Boulez' Initial for seven brass instruments (ensemble of the Lucerne Festival Contemporary Orchestra). Members of the West-Eastern Divan Ensemble play Fanny Mendelssohn's String Quartet in E flat major with strange glissandi in the first violin. Patricia Kopatchinskaja and Sol Gabetta, who both won the Credit Suisse Young Artist Award in Lucerne at a young age, bring a new dimension to the concert with the brilliantly played Valse bavaroise and Toccatina all'inglese two works by Jörg Widmann, who will take over the Lucerne Festival Academy in 2026 as Wolfgang Rihm's successor. Open End in Lucerne ...

The instrumentation of this "house concerto" is revealed right at the beginning: string quartet, soprano, piano, but never all at the same time, but in various combinations or alone. It is a cycle of twelve short pieces that were composed independently of each other in the late 1930s. Erich Schmid compiled them under this title in 1941 as his Opus 13. The premiere of the Small house concert on June 25, 1959 at Radio Beromünster. Another performance took place in Zurich in 1985, on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of Pro Musica. This is the Zurich chapter of the IGNM; Erich Schmid was its president in the 1960s.

Conducting instead of composing

The lifetime achievements of this Swiss music pioneer are many and varied! As a conductor, he led the Tonhalle Orchestra Zurich (1949-1956) and the Beromünster Radio Orchestra (1956-1970), as well as the Zurich Mixed Choir (1954-1975) and the Zurich Male Choir (1961-1964). Many contemporary Swiss works were premiered under his baton. His own composing increasingly faded into the background. Erich Schmid was a student of Arnold Schönberg in Berlin, a course of study that came to a premature end in 1933 for political reasons. Schmid initially moved to Glarus, where he was music director of two choirs and the Harmoniemusik. Through Werner Reinhart, he repeatedly made guest appearances with the Musikkollegium Winterthur, including performances of works from the New Viennese School.

Together or individually

Back to this Small house concertThe pieces are written in twelve-tone or related techniques. One is reminded of the tonal language of Anton Webern, the music is delicate and intimate, the cryptic order behind the tones can only be guessed at. The performers are not pushed to their technical limits; all that is required is experience in non-tonal ensemble playing. In view of their genesis, these aphoristic pieces can also be played separately in a different program context, for example as "sorbets" between larger works from any period. Number VIII for violin and piano is particularly beautiful!

The first edition published by Boosey & Hawkes/Bote & Bock contains a critical report and much information on the work and the composer, as well as the twelve-tone rows of the dodecaphonic pieces.

You can listen to the Small house concert in the 1959 recording in the Swiss Radio SRG SSR archive on Neo.Mx3. The recording of the 1985 concert is also available in the SRF archive under the call number MG 47126.

Erich Schmid: Kleines Hauskonzert, Zwölf Stücke für verschiedene Instrumente und Gesang op. 13, texts from "Des Knaben Wunderhorn", edited by Iris Eggenschwiler, score, BB 3554, € 55.00, Boosey & Hawkes/Bote & Bock, Berlin (Schott)