For more than ten years, the name Sarah Chaksad has been synonymous with jazz full of concise motifs, subdued sounds and complex rhythms. Until the coronavirus pandemic, the saxophonist, composer and bandleader was primarily on the road with her "Orchestra", with which she also released two albums. For her latest work, TogetherShe has not expanded her ensemble, but reduced it to 13 musicians. According to the 40-year-old, the current formation is therefore more flexible and enjoys additional space for improvisation.

Rare instruments, odd meters

In an interview with the author of these lines in 2022, Chaksad explained that her aim is to continue to develop and that music serves as a place of strength for her. Both are reflected in her ten new pieces. The majority of the compositions were triggered by the death of her father, who came from Iran. This prompted her to delve deeper into traditional Persian music. As a result, she has expanded her dynamic sound with instruments such as the eufonium, valve trombone and Persian violin, which are little known in jazz.

In addition, almost all the songs on Together are based on odd meters. While the playful Imagine Peace features a 13/8 time signature, the atmospheric title track uses a 5/8 time signature and is particularly appealing thanks to Misagh Joolaee's soulful solo on the kamanche, a spike fiddle. Numbers such as the elegiac Love Letters or the cheeky Lostwhich was inspired by parental life in Berlin, are imaginative, inspired and stick with you.

Ultimately, the album is characterized by depth of focus, diverse timbres and careful solo contributions. Sarah Chaksad would like to Together The band's music is full of curiosity and moves from genre to genre, which is easy to understand.

Sarah Chaksad Large Ensemble: Together. Clap Your Hands CYH

Line up: Yumi Ito (voc), Hildegunn Øiseth (tp, goat horn), Paco Andreo (vtb), Lukas Wyss (tb), Sophia Nidecker (tuba), Catherine Delaunay (basset horn), Christoph Bösch (fl), Fabian Willmann (ts), Julia Hülsmann (p), Fabio Gouvea (g), Dominique Girod (b), Eva Klesse (dr), Misagh Joolaee (kamancheh), Sarah Chaksad (ss, as, comp)

Switzerland has a lot to offer in the field of choral music thanks to its different national languages and the associated cultural areas. The Swiss federation Europa Cantat took this as an opportunity to publish a compact choral book with Carus-Verlag, which aims to reflect this diversity and make it better known internationally. A challenging undertaking.

The result is an interesting collection of 28 pieces of varying length and difficulty for mixed choir a cappella in all national languages as well as English and Latin. It includes folk song highlights, works by well-known and lesser-known composers from the Swiss choral music scene, short pieces by the "stars" Heinz Holliger and Beat Furrer and the latest compositions by the younger generation, including four female composers.

In addition to truly original and recommendable works, the now widespread, sales-oriented soft sound with the same old cuddly chords also finds its way into choral music. Perhaps it would have been worth taking a look at truly representative greats such as Willy Burkhard, Adolf Brunner, Arthur Honegger or Frank Martin. However, QR codes for the pronunciation of the three Rhaeto-Romanic pieces and beautiful recordings of all the works on CD with the Swiss Youth Choir are useful additions.

Swiss Choral Music, Chorbuch Schweiz (SATB), edited by Patrick Secchiari and Johannes Meister; Carus, Stuttgart.

Orders from Switzerland via Editions Henry Labatiaz: Choir book CV 2.305/10, Fr. 23.00; choir book with CD, CV 2.305.00, Fr. 37.00 (lower graduated and special prices for SFEC members)

"Make an effort to play easy pieces well and beautifully, it is better than performing difficult ones mediocrely." Robert Schumann's tip from his Musical house and life rules could be a guideline for this wonderful CD released by the Austrian label Gramola. The 28-year-old Georgian pianist Giorgi Iuldashevi, who studied in Zurich and also lives there, not only played Schumann's well-known pieces from the Album for the youth but also many other pieces that might be familiar to the piano student: Excerpts from For Children by Belá Bartók, from the collection Játékok by György Kurtág or pedagogically motivated pieces by Sergei Prokofiev or Peter Tchaikovsky. Less common, but no less attractive to the ear and fingers, are the 12 pieces by composer Nodar Gabunia, born in Tbilisi in 1933: From the diary of a pupil.

Yes, it sounds child's play - and not at all suited to a trained professional pianist who made his debut as a 12-year-old with Mozart's difficult Piano Concerto K. 466 in D minor. But, keyword Mozart: simplicity has its pitfalls. And Giorgi Iuldashevi not only masters these, but also demonstrates a rare range of musical expression in these very different pieces. Even the familiar appears fresh in his interpretations - also because he never lapses into superior distance or unnecessary romanticizing. Iuldashevi keeps the balance, and always in an exciting way. He garnishes Bartók with wit, Tchaikovsky with the necessary seriousness in places, and above all the tempi and the natural flow in Robert Schumann's pieces are inspiring.

If you are (or were) a pianist, you will immediately feel the urge to try out many a pretty miniature again. But this CD is also simply good for the listener: in its unobtrusive tone, in this expression that has nothing at all of the tense muscle play that is unfortunately common among piano virtuosos.

Simplicity. Giorgi Iuldashevi plays works by Gabunia, Bartók, Kurtág, Prokofiev, Tchaikovsky and Schumann. Gramola 99291

Would Jean Sibelius agree to the publication of these early works? The statements that the composer made in old age about his then lost or unpublished chamber music manuscripts vary. There is talk of "burning", another time he said: "It was the time when one was developing."

Before and during his student days, Sibelius composed a piano trio for his siblings every summer and performed them during the vacations with relatives and friends. He played the violin part himself. The place names "Havträsk" and "Korpo" go back to this genesis, but do not originate from the composer. Five multi-movement trios were composed between 1883 and 1888, none of which were printed during Sibelius' lifetime. He did not compose any more works for this instrumentation later on. His heirs donated the manuscripts of the two present piano trios to the National Library of Finland in 1982.

The editors Folke Gräsbeck and Anna Pulkkis have meticulously prepared these sources in 2021. The critical report in both volumes is almost as extensive as the musical text. There are even two versions of the first movement of the "Havträsk" trio. If you listen to the interpretations on the net, you'll be leafing through the pages!

In comparison, the shorter trio Havträsk in A minor (22 minutes) is the more catchy piece and is completely dominated by the spirit of Romanticism. It poses fewer technical challenges for the performers. In the more than half-hour Corpo-In the second trio, much more is demanded of them; as a violinist, Sibelius must have practiced a lot of Paganini! This second trio points to the later Sibelius. The second movement in particular, entitled "Fantasia", experiments with timbres, playing techniques and harmonies. Occasionally, the instrumental movement comes across as somewhat wooden, for example when the piano plays alone and accompanies its melody with crotchets for long stretches. However, when the strings take over in pairs, one can hear the tonal language of the later symphonies. There, the formal blocks seem much more coherent than in these early works. The master has indeed made great progress!

Tracing the genius of this important symphonist is probably the justification for examining his early works, even if he did not release them for printing.

Jean Sibelius: Trio in A minor "Havträsk" JS 207, for violin, violoncello and piano, edited by Folke Gräsbeck and Anna Pulkkis, EB 9448, € 39.90, Breitkopf &Härtel, Wiesbaden

id.: Trio in D major "Korpo" JS 209, EB 9449, € 39.90

Lili Boulanger (1893-1918), who was gifted at an early age but suffered from chronic lung disease, was able to study composition with the help of her older sister Nadia (1887-1979) and was supported by important composers. She won the Prix de Rome at the age of 23. Her 50 surviving works include secular and sacred choral cantatas and even an unfinished opera. Nadia, who was a famous composer (Copland, Piazzolla, Glass, Bacewicz ...) and piano teacher (Lipati) until old age, took care of the dissemination of the works after Lili's death.

Four pieces for violin and piano by Lili Boulanger have come down to us: D'un matin de printemps (1917/1918), Nocturne (1911), Introduction - Cortège (1914) and Pièce (1910). The editors used the first editions as models for the new edition. Autographs and alternative versions were only used to clarify editorial questions.

Pièce of the seventeen-year-old has only survived in manuscript form and is reproduced here as faithfully as possible. This mystical, slow piece with its undulating piano accompaniment contains surprising chromatic harmonic progressions, enharmonic reinterpretations and colorful dissonances. The racy first, the tender second and the flamenco-like third pieces also enchanted us as we played them. They were premiered by Yehudi Menuhin in 1972.

Lili Boulanger: Die Violinwerke, for violin and piano, edited by Edmund Wächter and Elisabeth Weinzierl, VLB 232, € 19.50, Schott, Mainz

The Concertino for cor anglais and orchestra by Gaetano Donizetti is one of the best-known and most popular works for this instrumentation. The situation of the sources and the transmission is complex and complicated; the ambiguities extend to the choice of key and the structure of the individual variations. A new edition, recently published by Boosey & Hawkes, describes and considers all the sources in detail and in particular weighs up the autograph (from Paris) and a later manuscript (not by Donizetti, from Bologna). As an extremely pleasing and profitable addition, the successful edition contains a double solo part in which both variations are printed on top of each other. In the variations in particular, it is a good idea to use both variants alternately for the repeats.

Gaetano Donizetti: Concertino for English Horn 1816, Critical edition by Stefaan Verdegem, Piano reduction with solo part, BB 3571, print edition € 28.00, Boosey & Hawkes / Bote & Bock, Berlin  

Stefan Müller-Altermatt, President of the Parliamentary Group for Music PGM, was joined by National Councillors Estelle Revaz, cellist, and Vroni Thalmann-Bieri, folk musician, at the group's latest meeting to discuss the discrimination of Swiss musicians on streaming platforms.

Switzerland ranks sixth in the world for per capita expenditure on recorded music. In 2023, Swiss customers spent CHF 234 million on recorded music, 88% of which was spent on streaming. This enormous amount is offset by zero: not a single one of the digital service providers (DSPs) has even one employee who is primarily concerned with Swiss music, and not a single one has a branch in this country. The curators work the Swiss market on the side, in the case of market leader Spotify from Berlin as an "encore" to the ten times larger German market. They are not familiar with the local scene and don't have the time to deal with it. Acts from French-speaking Switzerland and Ticino receive even less attention. As a result, Swiss music hardly features on the playlists they put together. This underrepresentation is exacerbated by the other playlists created by algorithms on this basis. There is clear discrimination against acts from comparable countries.

Previous initiatives by associations in this matter have been unsuccessful. Now Stefan Müller-Altermatt has submitted a motion demanding that DSPs of a certain size have a Swiss editorial office based in Switzerland. It will be dealt with by the councillors in one of the next sessions.

Detailed report on Swiss music on the streaming market

On the double-decker train, there are those who always sit at the top and those who sit at the bottom. There are Migros children and Coop children. Even the wolf has friends and enemies. We divide many aspects of our lives into either-or. Yet a little more diversity would do us a world of good. Not only as a society, but also when playing e-bass. It's the little things that make us realize this. In this case, the little thing is about 3 by 3 centimetres in size and is called a plectrum.

Most bassists play exclusively with their fingers or with a plectrum. The other technique is simply ignored, if not devalued. For me, this imprint led to a real awakening experience when I spent some time with the plectrum. It's not just a different world, it's a wonderful addition to my playing. But how exactly does it work? How do I practise it properly and who can give me some advice on how to get started?

As always, you can try it yourself. At some point you'll get the hang of the fire and then it won't be so difficult with the pick. But with the book Bass pick by Christoph Herder, success comes a little faster. And he doesn't make it complicated. He sheds light on the world of plectrum playing in a serious overview, gives tips, organizes the technical aspects and provides practice material. The basically simple exercises build on each other and help both beginners and those who are just starting out. Practicing will be rewarded with fascinating (new) soundscapes and sound technical know-how.

The only disadvantage: teaching aids for plectrum bass are still charming niche products. This is also the case with this one, which dates back to 2020 and comes with MP3 files on a CD. But if you can still find a drive somewhere, you can also use the crisp play-along grooves.

Christoph Herder: Plectrum Bass for four- and five-string, Everything you need to know about the Plectrum technique must know!, with CD and Plectrum, 128 p., order no. 20287G, € 23.95, Alfred Music, Cologne

Swiss composers have written countless wind quintets for the Stalder Quintet, which was founded in 1955, but not the ones that the Art'Ventus Quintet has recorded on its new CD. The ensemble, made up of some of the best young Portuguese musicians, has only been playing together for three years, but has already reached a very high level. The flautist and oboist studied in Switzerland. For their program Swiss Treasures they have chosen works by Peter Mieg, Paul Huber, Paul Juon and Gion Antoni Derungs; the first two are premiere recordings. The graphically appealing CD also contains an interesting booklet text by Dominik Sackmann.

When Goethe said about the string quartet that you can hear four sensible people talking, this should actually also apply to a wind quintet, despite the somewhat larger instrumentation. In Peter Mieg's quintet, which was completed in 1977, you get the feeling that everyone is constantly talking and no one lets the others have their say. A glance at the score shows that most of the time all five instruments play simultaneously, which is really a weak point of the composition. The beginnings of the movements sound promising, but interest quickly wanes because the music is incredibly repetitive.

The quintets by Paul Huber, who was a musical institution in St. Gallen during his lifetime, and Gion Antoni Derungs, who was an important representative of Grisons music, are significantly better. Both works, composed in 1963 and 1977 respectively, adhere to tonality, but from today's perspective this cannot be a sign of a lack of open-mindedness or quality. The Portuguese quintet audibly identifies with the pieces and guarantees ideal performances. Huber's work consists of an expressive, melancholy Adagio and a virtuoso Scherzino, in the trio of which Ferdinand Fürchtegott Huber's folk song Luegid vo Berg und Tal is easy to recognize. Derungs' Divertimento, somewhat more modern than the other pieces on the CD and difficult to categorize stylistically, is, contrary to the title, not a particularly cheerful piece and may not be obvious on first hearing.

Confectioners from the canton of Graubünden were successful throughout Europe and often achieved considerable wealth, as evidenced by the villas of returnees in Poschiavo and Val Bregaglia. Paul Juon, born in Moscow, was the son of a Grisons confectioner from Masein. He received a sound musical education and studied composition with Anton Arenski and Sergei Taneyev. He himself later taught at the Berlin Academy of Music before spending the last six years of his life in Vevey. You will search in vain for Swiss traces in his music, but there were contacts with Swiss musical life. The Wind Quintet op. 84 from 1928 recorded here is dedicated to Jakob Vogel, who was president of the Bern Orchestra Association for many years.

Some of the best-known and most frequently performed wind quintets were written in the 1920s, such as those by Paul Hindemith, Carl Nielsen, Hanns Eisler, Arnold Schönberg and Jacques Ibert. Juon's quintet can easily bear comparison with these works. It is impeccably crafted, powerful and imaginative, often harmonically bold and challenges every instrument. The new recording by the Art'Ventus Quintet is very energetic, but the first movement is played noticeably too slowly, which gives it too much earthiness. The dynamics should have been better respected in some of the quieter passages, as it would have given the interpretation a little more relief.

Overall Swiss Treasures a CD worth recommending, as it documents works by somewhat lesser-known Swiss composers.

Swiss Treasures. Chamber Music for Wind Quintet. Art'Ventus Quintet (Paula Soares, flute; Tiago Coimbra, oboe; Horácio Ferreira, clarinet; Nuno Vaz, horn; Raquel Saraiva, bassoon). Prospero PROSP0081

In his music, the German composer Johannes Schöllhorn (*1962) has repeatedly explored the music of others, transcribing and transforming it, making music about music, such as Bach and Ravel, Purcell and Satie and, wonderfully, Gabriel Fauré. Several of these pieces can be found on the double CD Sérigraphies (bastille musique 20).

Schöllhorn himself is therefore an expert in appropriating and transforming. His 500-page book, a partly loose and yet internally consistent collection of shorter texts, is also about the dialectic of this approach. The conquest of the world is at the center, as well as its accompanying music, which has always been one of appropriation, even theft - and one of ordering: that is why the map, clock and score play the main role in the title.

Our European culture has made the globe its own with the help of these instruments. Schöllhorn follows these traces, to the printing press and across the seas, into painting and compositional technique, into the past and into the future. And because he has a broad horizon, there is an enormous amount to learn from him. The book seems to be written quickly and also reads quickly. This spontaneity is refreshing, full of verve, sometimes the author is gripped by anger, sometimes the thoughts run wild and confuse, because Schöllhorn ventures into unfamiliar territory with the help of good secondary literature.

The whole thing is unsystematic, does not bundle things together, but lays out threads that could be traced back to a core point. There are a few gaps you would like to fill, others you would like to know more about, and you often have objections while reading, many in fact, but they should be fine. Because the book is stimulating - and despite all the doubts and despair, it does not leave us hopeless, because "music can always do one thing - comfort us".

Johannes Schöllhorn: Map, clock and score. Variationen und Volten über Eroberung und ihre Begleitmusik, edited by Rainer Nonnenmann, 512 p., € 24.00, MusikTexte, Cologne 2022, ISBN 978-3-982467-0-2

Niklaus Keller knows no fear of contact. The catalog of works by the percussion teacher, who studied composition under Hans U. Lehmann in Zurich and Paul Glass at the Lugano Conservatory, begins in 1994 with a Ländler-Fox for marimba, electric guitar, drum set, vibraphone, melodica and electric bass. His last three works, available via Bandcamp, range from ecclesiastical-mysterious choral chants to a cheerfully rushing Sicerto for string orchestra through to country & western persiflage White Coffee.

Chrome Shuffle - a cycle of eleven pieces for a nontet with vibraphone, electric bass, electric guitar, drums, trumpet/flugelhorn, tenor saxophone, trombone and two synths/samplers (one of which is operated by Keller himself) - is yet another completely different "kettle of fish". The idea behind it was to write pieces that did not make any great technical demands, "so that I could devote myself to the music as such as quickly as possible without technical difficulties interfering with the performance", explains the composer, who works in Bologna. At the same time, however, he also notated the solos, "because improvised solos usually sound standardized and standardized".

The results - each piece a sonic short story - are incredibly difficult to describe. Vibraphone and horns characterize the consistently heartfelt mood, the rocky, funky rhythms, breaks and hooks pull you along, the melodies remind this ear, for rather inexplicable reasons, of the music of British eccentrics such as Kevin Ayers, Lol Coxhill or Art Bears. Conclusion: double and triple bass music that is reminiscent of many things, but remains uncompromisingly itself.

Niklaus Keller: Chrome Shuffle. Bandcamp

The Austrian guitarist, music teacher and publisher Michael Langer has enriched the "Saitenwege" series from Edition Dux with two more music books, this time with a total of 88 pieces for two guitars. The structure of the albums corresponds exactly to the editions The very easy entry and The easy introduction to the world of classical guitar Each volume presents between five and eleven more or less representative pieces from the Renaissance, Baroque, Classical, Romantic, Multicultural and Pop styles. The only difference, apart from the duo instrumentation: instead of the categories "very easy" and "easy", the two volumes are assigned to the categories "easy" and "moderately difficult".

Michael Langer deals freely with the musical material, with a good sense for a sensible middle way between faithfulness to the original and technically easy to realize interpretation. Most of the pieces are newly arranged by him. Thus we encounter not only typical guitar pieces, but also, for example, excerpts from Vivaldi's Four seasons or Mozart's Magic flute. Only a few duos - for example by Maria Linnemann - appear in the original musical text, and some arrangements were originally solo pieces.

Within the stylistic areas, the pieces tend to be arranged in progressive levels of difficulty. One focus, especially in the second volume, is on Latin American numbers from the simple Bailecito to the Libertango by Astor Piazzolla. In the pop category, there are real hits from Queen, George Ezra and Ed Sheeran included Happy by Pharrell Williams. If you don't know how this is supposed to sound on two classical guitars, you can download all of the publisher's recordings with a download code or listen to them on Spotify.

Michael Langer: Saitenwege for two guitars. Six centuries of guitar music for guitar duo; vol. 1, easy, D 918; vol. 2, medium, D 919; € 29.80 each, Dux, Manching

In 1680, Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber (1644-1704) wrote six suites as table music for his brother, Prince Archbishop Maximilian Gandolf von Kuenburg in Salzburg. They are deliberately not too difficult, in clear forms and do without virtuoso "show effects" - in contrast to most of Biber's instrumental works.

The editor has provided the first two partitas with modern clefs and time signatures. In the Partita I a Largo Sonata encloses the dance movements Allemanda, Courante, Sarabanda, Gavotte and Gigue. In the Partita II an Intrada opens three balletti in alla breve time, separated by two quiet sarabands. As the first viola never takes up the C string, there is an additional second violin part, so these suites could well be played with a string quartet (or orchestra) and continuo.

Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber: Mensa Sonora, Partitas I and II, for violin, 2 violas (2 violins, viola) and basso continuo, edited by Markus Eberhardt, EW 1051, € 19.80, Walhall, Magdeburg

Emilie Mayer (1812-1883) was a successful composer in her time. She lived in Mecklenburg and Berlin. Her works include symphonies, concert overtures, a singspiel, four-part choral pieces, piano and chamber music. Despite performances in numerous major European cities in the 19th century, most of her compositions remained unpublished.

The pianist Katharina Sellheim came across the unpublished manuscripts of the four piano trios and recorded three of them on CD with her Hannover Piano Trio (Missing Link: Emilie MayerGenuin 22790). Now, assisted by the members of her ensemble, she is in charge of publishing at Furore-Verlag Kassel.

Her efforts pay off: Emilie Mayer's piano trios radiate freshness and vitality; the composer was a master of her craft. Stylistically, this music lies between Beethoven and Mendelssohn. Anyone who goes on a treasure hunt, playing or listening, away from the main pillars of the repertoire and the "great" masters will make a delightful discovery with the Piano Trio in E flat major. Works by female composers of the 19th century are also rarely found in concert programs. Wrongly so, as Emilie Mayer shows us here!

In terms of playing technique, this piano trio is also accessible to experienced amateurs. It is less difficult than the works by Beethoven and Schubert. All instruments, especially the violoncello, can develop beautifully.

Emilie Mayer: Piano trio in E flat major, for violin, violoncello and piano, edited by Katharina Sellheim, score and parts, fue 10346, € 69.00, Furore, Kassel

Müliradverlag has published another interesting book of sheet music for violin or other melody instruments. It contains folk dance music from the first third of the 19th century and thus offers an insight into the early days of couple dance music; the collections known to date are almost all from later decades.

The booklet contains one hundred dances, most of them in three-four time. The discovery of the collection is due to the editor Brigitte Bachmann-Geiser. Nothing is known about the original owner Anton Hotz, but Bachmann credibly locates the dances in the Höfe/March area in the canton of Schwyz thanks to her immense knowledge of the sources.

Co-editor Christoph Greuter has transcribed the dances and provided chord indications, which are very useful for the accompaniment. You can tell that Greuter is an excellent expert on the subject. The dances are written down with a practical orientation, without ornaments and without first and second endings in the repetitions. At the time, it was left to the players' taste to make the pieces appealing. The notes were merely a template or reminder for the individual performance.

The pieces are attractive to play because the tonal language of the early dances differs significantly from those at the turn of the 20th century. In some cases, modal influences are still present, which later give way to cadential harmony. However, the booklet also offers historically interesting insights: Half of the dances are still in two parts, the other half are already in three parts. The term "Ländler" appears in some of the dances and is thus the earliest evidence of the term being used in Switzerland; others are referred to as "Walz" or "Walzer", some also as "Langus". The few two-quarter dances are entitled "Allemander" or "Allimand"; "Polka", "Galopp" or "Schottisch", on the other hand, do not yet appear.

The booklet, which is supplemented with informative information on its origin and edition, is therefore not only a pleasure to play, but also a rich source for the development of dance music in Switzerland.

Old Schwyz violin dances - The dance book by Anton Hotz, Höfe/March around 1830, edited by Christoph Greuter and Brigitte Bachmann-Geiser, Mülirad no. 1069, Fr. 38.00, Mülirad, Altdorf