With the exception of two motets and an ensemble piece, Johann Jacob Froberger's (1616-1666) oeuvre consists of compositions for keyboard instruments. "What Chopin became for the piano literature of the 19th century, Froberger was for the piano music of the 17th century: both placed the subjective feelings of player and listener at the center of their work and both succeeded in taking their instruments to the limits of sound and expression" (Siegbert Rampe).

Now Pieter Dirksen, the Dutch specialist in 17th century keyboard music, has reissued Froberger's suites, giving all keyboard players an insight into suite music before Bach and Handel. Here you can learn expressivity and the kind of sound design that comes from the "style brisé" of French music for lute. This peculiarity requires a meticulously notated resolution of the chords, which is not easy to read. A less crowded layout would therefore have been desirable, and the distribution of the musical text between the two keyboard systems could also have been more player-friendly. Even if one is surprised at some of the editorial decisions, the Henle publishing house has nevertheless closed a gap in a repertoire which can also be used with profit in piano pedagogy.

Johann Jacob Froberger: Suites for Harpsichord, edited by Pieter Dirksen, HN 1091, € 31.00, G. Henle, Munich

In his music, Pēteris Vasks searches for the last things. The Latvian composer wants to "feed the soul" and emphasizes the importance of emotions for his tonal musical language. His second violin concerto, composed in 2020 Vakara gaismā (In the evening light) unfolds a great deal of emotion and has great breath. A melancholy undertone lies over the five-movement work, which is mostly written in a minor key, but also contains combative passages and dissolves spherically in the bright light at the end. A last ray of sunshine before night falls, which the spiritual composer associates with death.

Antje Weithaas and the Camerata Bern dedicate themselves to this work, which is deeply rooted in the Romantic period and in some passages is also pompous, with great intensity and never flagging creative power. The great ups and downs that punctuate the opening Andante con passione have tension and direction. Weithaas' violin sound emerges almost imperceptibly from the tutti. It is only in the Cadenza I, characterized by double stops, that the solo violin comes to the fore. The long-standing artistic director of the Camerata Bern keeps the urgency high. And is able to increase the emotional and rhythmic intensity in the Andante cantabile, which is reminiscent of Shostakovich's music with its manic repetitions and forced string sound. The glissando crashes in Cadenza II are shattering, the clusters in the tutti tell of excitement and resistance. The strings of the Camerata Bern can grab hold, but also lay out a floating carpet. And always reflect the emotionality of the solo violin.

In the finale, the Andante con amore, the emotional struggles are over apart from one last rebellion. At the beginning of the movement, the solo violin floats above the orchestra's organ part as if redeemed. Even in the icy heights of the finale, Antje Weithaas' violin tone never becomes cold, but instead develops warmth and emphasis.

Pēteris Vasks: Violin Concerto No. 2 (Vakara gaismā/In the evening light). Camerata Bern; Antje Weithaas, violin and conductor. CAvi-music (only available digitally)

Stories that life writes: Thanks to a prize at the International Composition Competition in Boswil, Michael von Hintzenstern was able to embark on his first trip to the West from the GDR in 1976. Not only did he take advantage of the three-month work and study stay in rural Switzerland that came with the prize, but he also changed his itinerary - without permission from the GDR regime, of course: he also went to Cologne to visit the revered "master" Karlheinz Stockhausen. Stockhausen's approach to "intuitive music" would shape both Hintzenstern and his Ensemble for Intuitive Music Weimar (EFIM) - and ultimately also the richly illustrated and entertaining book Sounds of the momentwhich, among other things, reproduces some handwritten testimonies of the correspondence with Stockhausen.

The focus is on the history of the ensemble, which was founded in 1980 and consists of four musicians who are as active as they are experimental: Michael von Hintzenstern plays organ and all kinds of synthesizers, Hans Tutschku is the specialist for electro-acoustic and electronic music, the "jazzman" Daniel Hoffmann plays horn and trumpet, Matthias von Hintzenstern usually plays the cello, but also makes appearances with sound installations.

At the beginning, Stockhausen's works take center stage, such as the 15 text compositions for intuitive music in variable instrumentation From the seven days (1968) or the well-known Zodiac (1974/75). Increasingly, also due to the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the programs expanded. Tutschku increasingly contributes his experience with French electro-acoustic music, the EFIM seeks out venues far away from concert halls, plays in parks, botanical gardens or in potash mines 670 meters underground. The EFIM can now also accept concert and workshop invitations to 30 countries on 4 continents.

Anyone who is enthusiastic about experimental music will also be thrilled by this documentary. But it is also worth reading for anyone interested in the cultural history of the GDR. There was a great deal of freedom in music in particular - freedom that the EFIM used in an astonishingly open, intelligent and sympathetic way.

Michael von Hintzenstern: Klänge des Augenblicks - 44 Jahre Ensemble für intuitive Musik Weimar 1980-2024, 256 p., over 300 illustrations, € 44.00, Weimar 2024, ISBN 978-3-00-078834-5,
hintzenstern.eu

Which new work was performed for the first time on April 2, 1800 by Schuppanzigh, Schreiber, Schindlecker, Bär, Nickel, Matauschek and Dietzel at the Hofburgtheater in Vienna? A septet for strings and winds by Ludwig van Beethoven. Was it a "Sinfonia concertante", a genre that enjoyed great popularity at the time, or a symphony for chamber music ensemble?

With its six movements and a playing time of almost forty minutes, this composition far exceeded the dimensions of the other works played that evening, the 1st Piano Concerto and the 1st Symphony, which were also premiered. The delightful interplay of the string quartet, without second violin but with double bass, with the winds playing in harmony and the solo parts of the violin and clarinet, whereby the former is required to display the highest virtuosity comparable to the later Violin Concerto op. 61, especially in the cadenza of the last movement, was received with enthusiasm and subsequently enjoyed great popularity.

Beethoven's Septet also became a model for Franz Schubert and his Octet in F major D 803, composed in 1824, and other works with similar instrumentation by Louis Spohr, Ferdinand Ries, Franz Berwald and others. Beethoven's satisfaction with the septet continued after his pride at the first performance in the Vienna Castle and his remark to Joseph Haydn: "This is my Creation" in later times according to Ignaz Pleyel. The work was published by Hoffmeister in 1802 with a dedication to Empress Marie Therese.

This Urtext edition was edited by the English Beethoven scholar Jonathan Del Mar, who completed the Beethoven symphonies in the new edition in 2000, which is now used by all well-known conductors as a basis for interpretation. The study score also contains four autograph pages from the Biblioteka Jagiellońska in Kraków and is excellently equipped with a preface and detailed source notes.

Ludwig van Beethoven: Septet in E flat op. 20, edited by Jonathan Del Mar; parts: BA 10944, € 38.95; pocket score: TP 944, € 18.95; Bärenreiter, Kassel

I met Walter Fähndrich quite by chance in the summer of 1984 at what was then the Quellenhof student hotel in Schuls. Even back then - before I even knew he was a musician - I was struck by his uncompromising attitude and ambition. It was only later that I became aware of his publications on the subject of Music and spaces and I heard about his incredible electro-acoustic sound installation at Lago del Sambuco in the upper Maggia Valley.

Fähndrich, born in Zug in 1944, is a trained violist, composer, theory teacher and improviser. For 25 years he was a lecturer in improvisation/life composition in Basel and set up a master's course in improvised chamber music. His eight compositions for solo viola were written up to 2002 Viola I to Viola VIII.

In the booklet Why do we improvise? Fähndrich presents a music-theoretical foundation for his specialty, chamber music improvisation. In this respect, the slogans on the blurb are provocative: "Total freedom - everything is possible and right!!!", "You can play whatever you want!!!" and "You can't make mistakes!!!". The opposite is true: if you follow Fähndrich's reasoning, you are indeed limited.

His reflections begin with "Ten aspects of improvisation". These range from "communication", "willingness to take risks" and "energy management" to "product, purpose". Fähndrich understands improvisation as "A player with equal rights and full responsibility in the compositional process, at the heart of which is a result that is realized with great playfulness, unpredictable and yet as convincing as possible". He also makes a strict distinction between the positive Acting outwhich he has shifted from the negatively connoted Letting go stands out.

Naturally, much of the volume remains very verbose and theoretical. There are no notated examples, because the improvised music is precisely not written down. Fähndrich's book is a must-read for anyone who takes a serious and reflective approach to improvisation.

Walter Fähndrich: Why do we improvise?, 80 p., € 18.00, Wolke-Verlag, Hofheim 2024, ISBN 978-3-95593-270-1

"Zogä am Bogä, de Landammä tanzäd, wieä dr Tiifel dur Dieli dure g'schwanzet ..." - With these cheeky lines and the lively rhythm, the Uri composer and musician Bärti Jütz (1900-1925) poked fun at the widespread ban on dancing at the beginning of the 20th century. It was only a good ten years ago that the original writing by Zogä am Bogä in the canton of Uri. Written by hand on squared paper and signed by Bärti Jütz.

Michel Truniger, the director of Theater Uri, recognized the play's potential for larger ensembles. Together with the Haus der Volksmusik Altdorf, the clarinettist, conductor and arranger Roman Blum, who was born in Aargau and lives in Root (LU), was entrusted with the preparation of the sheet music for individual registers and voices. Arrangements for brass band, choir and for the marching booklet are now available.

The sheet music is also suitable for ensembles at music schools. "The publication is in line with the House of Folk Music's fundamental aim of promoting local folk music and making it accessible to as many people as possible," says Markus Brülisauer, Managing Director of the House of Folk Music Altdorf.

Free download of the arrangements: hausdervolksmusik.ch/baertisjuetz

Musical homage to the composer

To mark the 125th anniversary of Bärti Jütz's birth and 100th anniversary of his death, the House of Folk Music Altdorf is focusing on the life and work of the Uri composer and musician throughout the year. Together with Theater Uri, a concert tribute will be performed on 17 May 2025. To the event

Steff Signer, alias Infrasteff, has never cracked a hit parade, nor filled stadiums or otherwise sent the box office into raptures. At least his opera Late afternoon in paradise at the Rossini Opera Festival on the island of Rügen, after which conductor Wolfgang Danzmayr praised the work as "ravishingly wacky". And once the experimental rocker, composer, poet and painter, who was born in Hundwil in the canton of Ausserrhoden and is now 74 years old, even found himself in a key position: from 1989 to 1994, he was head producer for the "Musikszene Schweiz" series run by Migros Culture Percentage.

It is precisely the unexpected (lateral) leaps that make Hanspeter Spörri, the former editor-in-chief of the CovenantThe chronicle, written by a friend of Signer's since his school days, is such an enjoyable and nourishing "deep dive" into the musical and social history of Eastern Switzerland. Signer's archive is now maintained by the Cantonal Library of Appenzell Ausserrhoden. "As a contemporary testimony, the diverse materials document a period of Appenzell's history that was previously inaccessible in museums, archives or libraries," writes library director Heidi Eisenhut. "The Signer private archive is a testimony to a subculture at home; characterized by 1968 and Frank Zappa, 'alternative', 'freaky', different from the usual and yet deeply connected to Appenzell in many reference points."

Thanks to a generous selection of QR codes, the book does full justice to Signer's multimedia work. The sounding examples begin with youthful "piano jazz" and range from early "beat" combos, Zappaesque experiments (Signer never got rid of the title "Appenzell Frank Zappa"), jazz-rock big bands, occupations with new music and a pop phase in the 1980s to the satirical and loving exploration of the Appenzell environment in recent times. An exemplary book.

Hanspeter Spörri: Steff Signer. The musical biography. A piece of Swiss rock, pop and highmatt history, 400 p., Fr. 48.00, Appenzeller Verlag, Schwellbrunn 2024, ISBN 978-3-85882-888-0

The last few years have proven that it is always possible to be surprised by new, previously little-known or forgotten repertoire. A large number of string quartets have come to light that were unjustly kept in the dark for a long time, such as those by Franz Xaver Richter, Peter Hänsel, Adalbert Gyrowetz or Carl Czerny, to name but a few. However, it is extremely rare for a quartet - and indeed the only quartet - by a world-famous composer to suddenly become available in a version that differs considerably from the much-performed work.

Verdi is said to have been bored; a long break from rehearsals is said to have driven him away from singing and towards purely instrumental music, which he had not turned to until then and would not do so for the rest of his life. Verdi himself was surprised by the success of the "occasional work", which was premiered in a small circle in 1873. He located the string quartet as a genre in the German cultural sphere and considered it a foreign product to the Italian palate. Nevertheless, he studied its DNA secretly and very thoroughly, as the first published edition of 1876 impressively proves. The essence and character of the quartet are originally Mediterranean in coloration, while the underlying architecture is based on the products of the best masters of the guild, which the Italian considered a sanctuary.

Very few connoisseurs and interpreters are aware that the first-performed version was a completely different piece to the printed version. In their apology, it should be said that Verdi's manuscript drafts from the first period of composition - 41 pages of hard work - have only been accessible to researchers since 2019. The urge of the first listeners to make the famous opera composer public as a master of chamber music was initially met with brusque resistance from the composer, until he gradually warmed to the idea.

What followed was an effort that he would probably have preferred to avoid. After all, playing with the idea of being on a par with the best in creating a string quartet is one thing, putting it to the test internationally is quite another. It was clear to him that the feuilletons would be full of malice if he did not meet the demands from the north. The national concept of music at the time was also reflected in the exclusion and disparagement of other composers. As a Norwegian string quartet exotic in 1878, Edvard Grieg could sing a sad song about how he was reviled in "professional circles" for his gross incompetence. So Verdi, who had an impeccable reputation to lose, had to be careful. His composition, which he coquettishly called "senza importanza", kept him busy for a total of seven years.

However, it would be unfair to accuse the first draft of lacking quality. Verdi's approach there is less sophisticated and methodical, relying above all on his brilliant inventiveness to produce a fresh and very appealing work of alert genius. One might miss something of this irreverence in the published quartet, which is almost a third longer, if one had the opportunity to hear the two pieces side by side.

For me, who know the work from my earliest ensemble days, it is almost amusing to see how two of the most feared passages for the second violin in the entire string quartet literature vanish into thin air in the first movement: The theme in the first movement, somewhat awkward to play on the G string, intoned by the first violin, and the tricky scherzo fugue beginning in the finale, pianissimo leggerissimo articulate, there is none at all. Incidentally, there is no fugue at all. The whole thing is highly exciting ... The study score contains the first performance version as well as the printed version.

A big compliment to the G. Henle publishing house for working out the development of Verdi's masterpiece in such a comprehensible way!

Giuseppe Verdi: String Quartet in E minor, edited by Anselm Gerhard; Parts: HN 1588, € 25.00; study score: HN 7588, € 14.00; G. Henle, Munich

Aris Bassetti is something like the sun of the Ticino music scene. Twenty years ago, he formed the experimental rock band Peter Kernel with Barbara Lehnhoff, which has lost none of its original adventurous spirit to this day. His own record label, On the Camper Records, followed shortly afterwards. In addition to Lehnhoff's alter ego Camilla Sparksss, his current circle includes harpist Kety Fusco, the psychedelic band Monte Mai and yé-yé archaeologist Julie Meletta. With Mortòri, Bassetti is now embarking on his solo project. An urgently needed undertaking to explore the dark feelings associated with "love", he writes, citing Ornella Vanoni, Gino Paoli, South America, Italian-Swiss folk music and "Arabic music" as influences.

The first results, compiled on an EP, reveal their Italian roots above all in the vocal melodies and the lyrics, which Bassetti wrote in the endangered Ticino dialect. It sounds so peculiar that you could almost think he invented this language. Bassetti gives free rein to his experimental tendencies in the instrumentation without ever losing touch with palatable melodies. Thus O'l Amur driven forward by a vibraphone and bass riff, flute and hyperactive bongos. With GDC we are dealing with a kind of (electronic?) woodwind/cello combo and La Gata would have won the San Remo Festival in a better world. We look forward to more!

Mortòri: A Mort l'Amur. On the Camper Records

With their extraordinary CD Songs of the homeland from 2019, the renowned Lucerne soprano Regula Mühlemann not only showed courage in her choice of repertoire, she also triggered a new trend (Review by Verena Naegele). It is dedicated to the careful selection and revival of partly forgotten works by Swiss composers. Recently, a number of new recordings have appeared that are dedicated to such settings, some of them dialect poems, and thus shed light on the theme of home.

Swiss Love

Franziska Heinzen (soprano) and Benjamin Mead (piano) have created the "New Year's Piece" for the year 2025 at Zurich Central Library. Under the title Swiss Love. The sorrow and lust of love love stories of all shades are presented in a program in which the duo artfully interweaves songs by Lothar Kempter, Johann Carl Eschmann, Yvonne Röthlisberger and Wilhelm Baumgartner, some of them recorded for the first time, with newly arranged folk songs.

Hei cho

The second recording presents under the title Hei cho Settings of poems by Josef Reinhart, a well-known educator and writer from the Solothurn region in the first half of the 20th century. They were composed by Richard Flury, Ernst Honegger, Emil Adolf Hoffmann, Walter Lang, Friedrich Niggli, Heinrich Pestalozzi and Karl Schell. Soprano Stephanie Bühlmann - this is not her first dialect work either - has been able to recruit tenor Daniel Behle and pianist Benjamin Engeli, both proven specialists, for this project.

Forgotten songs, forgotten love

The third CD focuses on the work of Willy Heinz Müller, a violinist, conductor and composer from Vienna, who was active in the St.Gallen area until the 1970s and cultivated an international network of contacts. His songs, however, remained undiscovered for almost 100 years until the soprano Mélanie Adami, his great-granddaughter, finally took the time to study these forgotten works in detail during the coronavirus crisis. Convinced of their quality, she found equally curious fellow musicians in pianist Judith Polgar and baritone Äneas Humm, and together they made the recording entitled Forgotten songs, forgotten love to record. The compositions were complemented by works by other composers who had either made a great impression on Müller or with whom he had a personal relationship, such as Ernst von Dohnányi, Franz Ries or Carl Götze.

The musical level and recording quality is so high on all three recordings that you occasionally forget that you are not listening to standard or even master repertoire. For example, the fact that Daniel Behle is not a dialect speaker is only noticeable at the beginning. Overall, this feature also contributes to a certain ennobling of the overall sound. And even if there are occasional long stretches, the three recordings nevertheless invite listeners on a domestic voyage of discovery that will also reward a wider audience.

Swiss Love. The sorrow and lust of love. Solo Musica SM 477

Hei cho. Dialect songs on poems by Josef Reinhart. Solo Musica SM 464

Forgotten songs, forgotten love. Forgotten Songs by Willy Heinz Müller. Prospero Classical PROSP 0087

If the war-torn homeland becomes a threat to life or there is no longer enough money to live on, fleeing is often the only choice. But what happens in the other country? In other words, where refugees are cut off from their own culture? And in even worse cases, where they are not welcome?

These are extremely important questions of cultural policy that Music and migration is treated. Music has always been a defining identity factor. It is therefore not surprising that migrants or refugees continue to listen to and cultivate the music of their homeland - be it folk songs, rap in their own language or pentatonic tunes from their own cultural area. If you read the essays in this extensive anthology, there is something else: music alleviates suffering and helps people to deal with trauma. On page 215, Anna Papaeti and M. J. Grant report on a Syrian refugee. When he arrives by boat in Greece, he sings "a mixture of lament and prayer", addressed to the sea, which "may it stop killing children in its waves".

Such drastic situations are only a Aspect of the highly complex topic Music and migration. In addition, there are questions and problems of the "multicultural society", aspects of cultural appropriation, including the currently strange field of post-colonialism. The editors of the thick, 746-page anthology did well to explain "key terms" in lexicon style, not only "postcolonialism", but also many terms borrowed from ethnology or sociology, such as "agency", "embodiment" or "liminality". The field of research is fundamentally dependent on interdisciplinary cooperation, and therefore tends to be located more in "cultural studies" than in the more solid field of musicology. This makes it challenging to read in places. On the one hand, due to problems that are difficult to grasp and, on the other, due to research methods that are barely established.

Nevertheless, there is a lot to take away after reading it. Among other things, the insight that musical acculturation processes, i.e. the interpenetration of different cultures, are completely normal. Concepts of "own" and "foreign" are only auxiliary constructions - and this also exposes those patriots, nationalists and sometimes overly self-confident Europeans whose calls for a "dominant culture" or cultural "purity" are at best nonsensical abbreviations. As Katarzyna Grebosz-Haring and Magnus Gaul write on page 25? Plato already discussed the phenomenon of acculturation. And that was in the 3rd century BC!

Music and Migration, Volume 3, a book on theory and methods, edited by Wolfgang Gratzer, Nils Grosch, Ulrike Präger and Susanne Scheiblhofer, 746 p., € 69.90, Waxmann, Münster 2023, ISBN 978-3-8309-4630-4, open access

The new Köchel directory (KV or KV²⁰²⁴) represents the current knowledge of Mozart's individual compositions and justifies its high purchase price in every respect. It not only offers current research results, but also refers critically to the information in earlier editions from 1862 (Köchel), 1905 (Waldersee), 1937 (Einstein), 1964 (Giegling et al.).

The numbering of Mozart's works is based on the earliest in each of those editions, e.g. 314, but dispenses with the inconvenient double entries, e.g. 314/285d, and accepts that two entries are necessary for 314, namely for the flute concerto and the oboe concerto. This simplification means that the naming of the works in the chronological order of their presumed composition no longer plays a role, but this is done in a separate, concise overview with the greatest possible differentiation.

The music examples are simplified and do not provide a piano score of the first bars, but only the opening monophonic themes of individual movements. The appendices are also an asset: They contain the spurious works, Mozart's arrangements of other compositions as well as the scattered cadenzas and ornaments that have survived. The instructions for using the index even refer to future additions on the Internet. Unlike the new Bach-Werke-Verzeichnis, the Köchel-Verzeichnis is not stingy with references, but lists the origins of all findings in a clear bibliography.

With the Köchel-Verzeichnis, the editors Neal Zaslaw and Ulrich Leisinger, their main collaborators and an army of informants and helpers have achieved a milestone in decades of work, a starting point for future study of Mozart's work, behind which there is no way back. Hopefully the delicate spine binding of this 1391-page single volume will survive its frequent use.

Köchel-Verzeichnis, Thematisches Verzeichnis der musikalischen Werke von Wolfgang Amadé Mozart, new edition 2024, edited by Neal Zaslaw, presented by Ulrich Leisinger with the assistance of Miriam Pfadt and Ioana Geanta, BV 300, CXXV + 1263 p., € 499.00, Breitkopf & Härtel, Wiesbaden 2024

Theodor W. Adorno, the great music philosopher of the 20th century, was famously not a fan of jazz and pop music. His remarks about them are evidence of a defensive attitude rather than a fundamental openness towards different musical cultures. Adorno had his reasons (keyword "culture industry"). But the philosophy of music would do well to set aside its skepticism with regard to jazz and pop music and examine their respective aesthetic potentials more closely.

This is exactly what the philosopher - and trained jazz pianist - Daniel Martin Feige does in his new book Philosophy of music. Music aesthetics as a departure from Adorno. Using eight basic philosophical categories, he argues that terms such as "composing", "interpreting" or "improvising" should not be used as rigid, predefined measuring instruments derived from classical music, but should be rethought from the perspective of each musical work - dialectical conceptual work, in the spirit of Adorno.

Feige examines the aesthetic characteristics of Western art music, jazz and pop music with a lot of philosophical theoretical reference, for example the aspect of jazz improvisation with the help of G. E. M. Anscombe's theory of action, as well as against the background of the hermeneutics of Martin Heidegger, Hans-Georg Gadamer and John McDowell. Although the thoughts remain mostly on an abstract level (you can count the musical examples dealt with in more detail on one hand), Feige comes to some fundamental insights, especially with regard to jazz: for example, that the artistic production process is already inherent in the music itself or that the incalculable is included in the improvisation and that the meaning of an entire performance can only be established retrospectively and as a whole. Feige thematizes pop music primarily through the aspect of the medium by ascribing to it - in contrast to "art music", for example - primarily an existence as "non-documentary[...] recordings" (p. 143).

Overall, the book is a successful and illuminating opening of Adorno's aesthetics with regard to previously neglected musical traditions and offers numerous possibilities for connection - not least for studies that focus even more closely on the musical subject.

Daniel Martin Feige: Philosophy of Music. Musikästhetik im Ausgang von Adorno, 216 p., € 24.00, edition text+kritik, Munich 2024, ISBN 978-3-689-30028-9

The volume Thumb position is "a systematic, progressively structured collection with well-known songs and pieces as well as simple technical exercises for the high registers on the double bass". Charlotte Mohrs successfully summarizes what the edition has to offer with this first sentence in the introductory text.

The booklet is clearly structured, contains easy-to-follow explanations, easy-to-follow exercises and catchy melodies that invite double bass players to explore the thumb position from an early age. The focus is always on the joy of playing. The varied literature examples come from the solo and orchestral literature. In addition to excerpts, there are also longer pieces that musically summarize what has been learned. A detailed introduction is followed by eight chapters including diagrams of the basic patterns of finger positions; a piano accompaniment is available for download. The texts are written in German and English.

The third chapter, which deals with the 2nd upper register, is particularly successful. The pieces and exercises are easy to play thanks to two harmonics serving as a reference and fewer accidentals. The inhibition threshold of moving in this high register is overcome in a playful way. The fourth chapter, which is devoted in detail to harmonics, is also worthy of special mention and is usually a pleasure to play.

In a revision, it would be helpful to add a keyword index in the appendix. The volume also deals with bowing technique, which needs to be adapted in the high registers. An additional chapter with an overview of this would be valuable.

This booklet definitely belongs in the classroom of double bass teachers, and it is to be hoped that Thumb position will be a standard work of double bass literature in the future!

Charlotte Mohrs: Thumb position. Exercises and pieces to introduce the thumb position on the double bass, piano accompaniment to download, EC 23581, € 23.50, Schott, Mainz

Heinz Schütz: The name was previously unknown to me. However, he appears prominently in this history of the Electronic Studio of WDR Cologne. Dawn is the title of his short, concentrated tape piece from 1952. At times it even refers to Stockhausen's epoch-making Song of the youths (1955/56). However, Schütz did not see himself as a composer, he was a technician and had worked out a demonstration piece on behalf of studio boss Herbert Eimert. But with a lot of feeling.

This example shows how much creative potential there was in that studio, not only among the composers, but also in the technology. They were all curious and involved in the creative process. Electronic music, still incomprehensible to many listeners at the time, was a terra incognita that was explored as a team. Key works were created there until the studio was closed in 2001. The studio had a charisma that made it legendary - Miles Davis and the Beatles were inspired by it - above all, of course, by Stockhausen himself, who at times rose to the position of director. But there were also other innovations and highly exciting trends.

This becomes clear again and again in this publication, edited by former WDR editor Harry Vogt and radio producer Martina Seeber. It is a formative piece of music history that is documented and reappraised here in essays by various authors. The five enclosed CDs with more than six and a half hours of music are particularly valuable. In addition to the masterpieces, they also contain forgotten or untraceable pieces. From a Swiss perspective, the Dialogs from 1977, in which Thomas Kessler combined European and non-European instruments with electronics. When he arrived there, the recently deceased Kessler explains, Stockhausen had just finished his galactic Sirius had already finished. "I found that more interesting than any technical introduction, because I could imagine that my body could become an intergalactic antenna just by touching a device." The result is a rich compendium, highly informative, easy to read and peppered with delightful anecdotes.

Radio Cologne Sound. Das Studio für Elektronische Musik des WDR, ed. by Harry Vogt and Martina Seeber, 287 p., German/English, ill., with 5 CDs, € 39.00, Wolke, Hofheim 2024, ISBN 978-3-95593-259-6