Abruptly in the middle of the piece, the quieter stream of sound breaks off abruptly, the musicians pause, a loose thread still seems to float lost in the air. And the Italian composer Clara Iannotta also speaks of being lost in her commentary. An illness forced her to change in 2020. Instead of being able to concentrate on her work, "I felt lost [...], I don't yet know who I am and what my music will be". Her piece where the dark earth bendscomposed for the incredibly subtle trombone duo Rage Thormbones and the SWR Symphony Orchestra, was nevertheless a first highlight. The way in which the solos, the orchestra and the electronics merge into a single unit was simply masterful. The ear was drawn in.

Diffuse and pale

This was not always the case at this year's Donaueschingen Music Days. Indeed, a sense of forlornness hovered over many a piece this year, but the music rarely managed to gain a presence. Some of it remained too diffuse and powerless. Even the poetic and convincing composition Haze - as if everything is coming backwhich Elnaz Sayedi created together with the poet Anja Kampmann, seemed at times like a dystopian idyll.

Perhaps it is due to the circumstances of the times, no: these brutally warlike months, that a certain hopelessness is spreading, disillusionment that may not gain traction. The saxophonist Matana Roberts, for example, in their Elegy for Tyre: "Welcome to the World through my eyes ..."which commemorates an African-American killed by police officers in Memphis, the SWR Symphony Orchestra improvised on a text score, which unfortunately developed too little expressiveness. The orchestral sounds were less depressing than the whispering at the end. The attempt by the US-American Jessie Marino to create a murder ballads to banish violence against women through gentle songs faded completely. The piece by the otherwise brilliant percussionist Tyshawn Sorey, For Ross Gay (the biographer of basketball legend Julius Erving), rose to a glistening crescendo at the end after an even conduction.

Nuanced and impulsive

In her first largely self-directed year, festival director Lydia Rilling has set herself the theme of "collaboration" (in addition to a high degree of diversity). Although this is certainly present in the "classical" tradition, it is limited to certain areas such as text setting or interpretation. The fact that an orchestra improvises or at least creates large parts of a score that may no longer exist or is graphic is the great exception. French composer Éliane Radigue, however, demands precisely this from her musicians. In her orchestral piece Occam Océan Cinquanta the SWR Symphony Orchestra played according to the instructions of co-composer Carol Robinson from the moment, whereby the playing style and also the form had been worked out in broad outline beforehand. The result was an extraordinarily nuanced performance, a vast soundscape.

However, when it came to the flexible juxtaposition of free playing, improvisation, concept and score interpretation, their jazz colleagues were far better placed. For the great New York quartet Yarn/Wire (with two pianos and two percussions), saxophonist Ingrid Laubrock and trumpeter Peter Evans created two diverse and stimulating pieces that once again brought a lot of life and drive to this festival. A conclusion full of contradictions after this weekend.

Touching and ecstatic

As is so often the case, however, it was turned on its head in the final concert. Younghi Pagh-Paan commemorated in her touching orchestral piece Woman, why are you crying? Who are you looking for? of her late husband Klaus Huber. The Italian Francesca Verunelli played in Tune and Retune II with various detunings - and received the SWR Orchestra Prize for it. Finally, Steven Kazuo Takasugi's piano concerto once again tore down all walls of sound: splintering layers, probably generated in the electronics with the help of algorithms, continued in the orchestra, poured down on the audience, very loud in passages: a real joy! Nothing more of lostness ...

Born in Zurich in 1930, Fritz Muggler studied piano, school music, organ and later musicology at the University of Zurich with Paul Hindemith and Kurt von Fischer, as well as art history, journalism, music theory and composition. He was organist in Schlieren for 35 years and wrote for various newspapers, including the NZZ. He studied recorder with Hans Martin Linde at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis. He founded the NewConsortZurich, an ensemble for early music in combination with contemporary music. He attended the Darmstadt Summer Courses for New Music for many years. He also chaired the Swiss section of the International Society for New Music (IGNM).

In January 2008, the SMZ a music protocol with Fritz Muggler by Johannes Anders. It contains somewhat more detailed information about his biography (Download PDF).

Fritz Muggler has reported on the Donaueschingen Music Days in the SMZ for many years. Some PDFs for download:

2007
2008
2009
2010
2011
2012

 

Chronicler of post-war modernism

Obituary for Fritz Muggler by Max Nyffeler
(published slightly abridged in the Swiss Music Newspaper 12/203 of November 29, 2023, p. 31 f.)

Comprehensively educated music critics who are equally well versed in early and contemporary music and are also active as practical musicians are rather rare today. Fritz Muggler, who died in Zurich on September 25 at the ripe old age of 93, was one of them. The public hardly noticed. He had long since retired from the critics' business and only appeared at concerts that interested him personally. And as far as contemporary music was concerned, these were fewer and fewer; he let the latest developments pass him by.

Contemporary of the post-war avant-garde

Born in 1930, Fritz Muggler belonged to the same age cohort as the protagonists of the post-war avant-garde: Ligeti, Stockhausen, Nono, Boulez, Kagel, Schnebel ... He trained his criteria on their works. He had acquired in-depth musical knowledge during his piano and organ studies at the Zurich Conservatory and in musicology with Paul Hindemith, who taught at the University of Zurich from 1951. However, as a young, curious musician, he also attended the Darmstadt Summer Courses at an early age. This made him one of the few connoisseurs of the emerging serialism of the time. I gained an impression of his expertise at the beginning of the 1960s when, as a budding musicologist, I took part in a seminar on music in the 20th century with Kurt von Fischer in Zurich - an absolute novelty at a university at the time. At this seminar, von Fischer invited Muggler to give a guest lecture on Stockhausen - he himself was not so well versed in this new subject. Muggler's appearance was a benefit for everyone.

His professional career spanned more than half a century. After journalistic beginnings with the daily newspapers National law and The deed he was appointed in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung for decades to become an important voice for all things contemporary, and he also wrote a great deal for the Swiss Music Newspaperor later for the Swiss Music Newspaper. He was always there when there was something new to hear, whether at home or abroad. At one meter ninety, he was an unmissable figure, and as a conversationalist he was exceptionally friendly - an attentive listener who was tolerant of other opinions and discreetly withdrew his own ego. As a wide-awake music critic, he noted down his impressions and reflections at the moment of listening - in shorthand, so that he could keep up with the music in writing. His notebooks are a huge store of knowledge acquired through listening and must have filled shelves.

Facts instead of opinions

Excited disputes about right and wrong, once a specialty of avant-garde circles, were just as little his cup of tea as criticism or its opposite, today's widespread pandering and frenemy journalism. Nor did he engage in socio-political debates, a perennial topic in feature pages and specialist circles after 1968, and their by-product, book-filling theorizing. He preferred to stick to the recognizable facts and sound results and strove to communicate them to his readers in simple and clear language. His role was that of the rationally arguing observer, open to anything new, who put his impressions and reflections down on paper in a matter-of-fact, modest tone - more of a soberly judging recorder of events than an advocate of artistic utopias. With this attitude and his profound knowledge, Muggler became an important chronicler of post-war modernism.

Sharp statements

For all his liberalism, he did not shy away from sharp statements. His reports from the Donaueschingen Music Days, which he organized until 2012 in the Swiss Music Newspaper are a treasure trove of pointed criticism. A few tidbits (from the PDFs listed above for download):

• The composition Apon by Beat Furrer also ran itself to death in the small sound groups, which then always gave the speaker space for a text that you still couldn't understand. Furrer tried to recreate the sound of speaking orchestrally, which he obviously did not succeed in doing.
• About Bernhard Lang, Monadology IXThe constant small-scale repetitions, which seem chatty and don't bring anything new, get on your nerves in a good 65 minutes.
• A fundamental problem for many composers in post-modern orchestral music, however, is filling the body of sound, which used to be done with chordal material. Both the Italian Aureliano Cattaneo (...) and the Paris-born Franck Bedrossian in Itself accomplish this with simple groups of notes that are endearingly banal, with the latter's blah-blah interspersed with awkward bursts of power. This is music that obviously doesn't expect you to listen to the details, that only cares about the superficial.

Condemnation and praise in the same breath

But in the same breath, the master of the succinct critique also knew how to praise:

• About Isabel Mundry, Me and youThe piano, even if soloistic and extremely virtuosic, is totally integrated into very precisely eavesdropped, beautifully balanced, highly complex sound combinations with a whirring, interwoven piano sound. In contrast, Enno Poppe in Old building with tonal gimmicks and imbalances.
• What Jennifer Walshe, Clara Maïda and Iris ter Schiphorst demanded was completely unimaginative, eternally repetitive, yet highly demanding singing, pimped up for fun with gestural, mimic and percussive actions, and only the Berliner Sarah Nemtsov with her Hoqueti was to be taken seriously in her typesetting skills and sensibly used additional effects.
• About Globokar, Radiographie d'un romanFor over three quarters of an hour, it was incredibly dense and, despite the variety of sounds and actions, including theatrical elements, formally completely convincing. The enthusiasm of the audience, especially the young ones, was huge.

Organist, IGNM President and radio critic

In addition to his profession as a music critic, Fritz Muggler was also very active. He studied recorder with Hanns-Martin Linde at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis and then founded the New Consort Zurich, as well as playing the organ in a church in Schlieren. His commitment to contemporary music found its organizational expression in his many years as president of the Swiss section of the International Society for New Music (IGNM) and as director of the IGNM World Music Festival, which took place in Zurich in 1991.

Muggler also focused intensively on the topic of music in the media. In the NZZ he published detailed radio reviews for many years, a type of text that would be important in the media age, but unfortunately no longer finds a place in the print media today. And what goes far beyond the scope of music criticism: as a passionate radio listener, he recorded countless music programs from Swiss, German and Austrian stations between 1954 and 1991, creating a unique archive of sounding documents.

Securing the legacy

The material has been conserved and inventoried since 2016 as part of a research project by the Zurich University of the Arts with the support of Memoriav, the association for the preservation of Switzerland's audiovisual cultural heritage; it will be available to interested parties on request in future. Originally, it comprised a total of 946 analog tapes with over 18,000 pieces of music from the Middle Ages to the present day, jazz and ethnomusicology. According to project manager Lukas Näf, a few hundred more tapes will now be added following a thorough review of the estate.

In addition, Muggler's extensive written legacy will also be evaluated and inventoried. Näf hopes that the huge amount of information that the tireless journalist has absorbed over the decades, both at home and abroad, and incorporated into his texts will provide a wealth of insights into recent Swiss music history. An initial project entitled "Heard abroad" will use Muggler's writings to document the presence of Swiss composers and performers at international new music festivals. A long-term side effect of such activities: As the collection and preservation of cultural data used to be criminally neglected by the responsible institutions in Switzerland, the evaluation of private sources now offers the opportunity to at least somewhat compensate for the omissions and thus strengthen historical awareness.

Fritz Muggler's archive will be a treasure trove for anyone who wants to delve into the recent history of music and its interpretation, as well as the changing musical tastes of the time. The sprightly author and collector, who is well over 80 years old, personally supervised the initial archiving work at the ZHdK. The results of his lifelong work as a chronicler in sound and writing will keep his memory alive.

 

Fritz Muggler's tape collection at the ZHdK:

https://www.zhdk.ch/forschungsprojekt/tonbandsammlung-fritz-muggler-553597

Research project "Heard abroad":

https://www.zhdk.ch/forschungsprojekt/im-ausland-gehoert-schweizer-komponisten-und-interpreten-an-internationalen-festivals-neuer-musik-569891

Memoriav: https://memoriav.ch/de/projects/fritz-muggler/

The website for the List of Living Traditions of Switzerland states: Naturjodel and Jodellied are widely regarded as the forms of singing that represent Switzerland. The UNESCO Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage obliges the acceding countries to draw up such a list. Yodelling, the list continues, is "a vocal form of expression in which phonetic syllables are sung in frequent alternation between the chest and head registers". This change of register creates laryngeal beats, which are made more or less audible depending on the singing tradition. And sequences of tonally different, alternating low and high tones are formed. The singing technique can be found on all continents in a variety of forms characterized by vocal formations, languages and dialects. Yodeling is also used in Georgia as "Krimanchuli" or in Northern Europe. There, the Sami people yodel.

Geographical connections

In their documentary, directors Lea Hagmann and Rahel von Gunten and producer Thomas Rickenmann portray these Sami and Georgian singing traditions alongside the Appenzell Rugguusseli. The young Appenzell yodeller Meinrad Koch, who has "absorbed the typical regional style of natural yodeling with his mother's milk", as he says, provides the narrative link. For the film, he travels to Georgia to meet Tbilisi music student Ninuca Kakhiani and to Norway to meet Marja Mortensson, who is as good with reindeer as she is with her voice. Together with drummer Jakop Janssønn and tuba player Daniel Herskedal, she fuses modern soundscapes, sampling and modal jazz with the traditional Joik of the Southern Sami in a fascinating way. Herskedal also composed the atmospherically harmonious title melody for the film.

Ideologically divisive

Beyond Tradition is primarily characterized by the stupendous, virtuously composed images of the Norwegian, Appenzell and Georgian landscapes. Many of them, shot with a drone, aestheticize and transfigure the scenarios: The migrations of the northern reindeer herds look like flocks of birds from a distance, the desolate Georgian prefabricated housing estates develop a poetry of their own. The visual language is so strong that it threatens to push the actual theme of the film into the background and also to conceal thematic gaps: on the one hand, there is the question of how the raw primitiveness of nature's voices can become an art form when these two phenomena are actually mutually exclusive. Secondly, the production company Extramilefilms explicitly mentions "the critical examination of tradition and the inclusion of innovation and youth culture" as the motif of the documentary. The fact that tradition and renewal are often perceived as a conflict and that this is carried out emotionally is hardly noticeable in the film: how traditionalists view the innovative approach to the old is left open.

In addition to these differences, there are others: both Marja Mortensson and Meinrad Koch have a rather special relationship with food that takes some getting used to. Koch is a food technologist studying the potential of insects as a future source of protein, while Marja Mortensson bakes pancakes from the blood of slaughtered reindeer. The latter in particular breaks through the feel-good atmosphere of the film and hardly seems organically embedded in the overall narrative context.

Bulky topics

Other, more irritating or unwieldy topics that could disturb the peace are only mentioned and not really elaborated on: For example, one becomes perceptive when the charismatic choirmaster Tamar Buadze in Georgia rather incidentally addresses the conflict between the legacy of art socialization in the Soviet Union and modern cultural understanding (which incidentally also applies to some extent to Sami culture). The repressive policy of the Scandinavians, who pushed yoiking into obscurity with state bans, is also merely touched upon.

We would also have liked to know more when Meinrad Koch admits that the witty, creative and original approach of the "Hitziger Appenzellerchor" - the film clips with the ensemble founded by Noldi Alder are highly refreshing - to Appenzell's cultural heritage did not only arouse enthusiasm among traditionalists. What remains of the film experience are touching, sometimes overwhelmingly beautiful images and the successful synthesis of landscape poetry and vocal textures that make you forget time and the present in the cinema.

140 horn players aged 7 to 80 were taught by 15 instructors - making the Solothurn Horn Days one of the largest horn festivals in Europe.

Internationally renowned personalities such as Frøydis Ree Wekre, Pascal Deuber, Jörg Brückner, Christian Lampert, Anneke Scott, Olivier Darbellay and other top-class solo hornists from Paris, Budapest, Lucerne and music teachers from Switzerland formed a friendly team.

The three concerts were major highlights: Straussʼ Alpine Symphony with organist Nadia Bacchetta in the Reformed City Church and the solo gala concert by the lecturers in the concert hall offered the highest level of horn artistry. Finally, all participants performed a varied program in the auditorium of the cantonal school - an impressive testimony to what can be achieved in just a few days of rehearsals.

The main aim of the horn days was to play together in small and larger ensembles in order to put into practice in groups what had been learned during the year in individual lessons. This goal was fully achieved in various performance groups. The ensemble lessons were supplemented with individual lessons, which could be attended as desired.

The Horn Days were rounded off with exhibitions by Music Spada AG, Zoltan Juhasz Naturhörner and Buffet Crampon.

Due to its success, it was decided to hold the next event from September 13 to 15, 2024.

The program includes the Brahms Violin Concerto and the Mozart Requiem. In between, Peter-Lukas Graf, the doyen of the flute guild, will perform Mozart's Andante in C major, KV 315. The concerts with ticket sales will take place from October 27 to 29 in Zurich, Lucerne and Bern. The dress rehearsal on October 26 in Basel's St. Martin's Church is open to the public. The soloist in the violin concerto will be Elea Nick on the first two evenings, while Alexandre Dubach will perform in Lucerne and Bern.

Further information:  https://www.philharmonicacademy.ch

Interview on SRF on Peter-Lukas Graf's 90th birthday

https://www.srf.ch/news/90-geburtstag-peter-lukas-graf-ein-leben-mit-der-floete

How the Musikkollegium Winterthur Dominik Deuber is leaving the ensemble at the end of July 2024. He has led the ensemble since August 2020 and "in his function as Director
and helped to develop it into a nationally and internationally respected institution". Today, the Musikkollegium Winterthur is excellently established throughout Switzerland and Europe. Under his leadership, the number of subscribers has tripled.

According to Philipp Stoffel, President of the Musikkollegium Winterthur, the orchestra is reluctant to let Deuber go, but sees the opportunity offered to him at Norddeutscher Rundfunk (NDR). The succession plan will be initiated.

With her death at the beginning of December 2022, we not only said goodbye to a great musician and pianist, but also to an extraordinary woman who had been a meaningful person for countless people on their own journey through life. Eva Serman's passion for music went hand in hand with a deep reverence for life, an awareness of the uniqueness of every person and a palpable gratitude for the gift and task of being able to dedicate her life to music and people.

Born in Keszthely/Hungary in 1937, she began her piano studies in Budapest and continued with Hubert Harry at the Lucerne Conservatory after emigrating to Switzerland in 1958. She taught piano and chamber music there for 40 years from 1963. She also trained pianists through the Swiss Music Pedagogical Association, was involved in the board, was responsible for the classification of piano literature for the level examinations and was a sought-after expert. She was also a regular member of the jury at competitions, including the Swiss Youth Music Competition.

Eva Serman cultivated a broad pianistic and chamber music repertoire and was always keen to explore and grasp a wide variety of musical genres in greater depth. She had a special love for historical keyboard instruments. On these as well as on the modern grand piano, she was a confident teacher and concert pianist, including at the Lucerne International Music Festival.

Eva Serman was a competent and committed teacher and pianist for her students. In addition, she had the gift of not only seeing pianistic abilities in the person opposite her, but also perceiving them with the various facets of their humanity. She was a valuable support for many in the university, an inspiring musician and a person to whom we will remain grateful beyond her death.

 

The program includes a forty-voice motet, but there are only two singers on stage who take turns. The forty voices of the nine-minute piece are not sung simultaneously, as would normally be the case, but one after the other. Each voice is recorded individually, mixed with the previous ones and played back into the hall via sixteen loudspeakers while one of the singers sings the next. Instead of nine minutes, it takes forty times nine minutes, i.e. six hours of pure music time and, with breaks, eight.

The motet is called Spem in alium and was probably performed in London in 1573 for the fortieth birthday of Queen Elizabeth I; the composer is Thomas Tallis, a celebrity in his time, the two singers are the countertenor Terry Wey, who effortlessly climbs the soprano register, and the bass-baritone Ulfried Staber; they are members of the Viennese vocal ensemble Cinquecento and perform in the Tallis project under the name "multiple voices".

How a monumental sound is created

The performance was a focal point of the fall festival of the Early Music Forum Zurich. Anyone who took the time to spend a Sunday listening in the spacious neo-renaissance church in Zurich-Enge witnessed a fascinating experiment. One experienced the slow development of a magnificent vocal work, voice by voice it grew into a monumental sound event. With its undulating web of voices, it provided a spatial experience that was not inferior to the original with eight sub-choirs distributed throughout the room. The reduction to just two singers, who were supported by a sensitive technique (Markus Wallner and Bernd Oliver Fröhlich), meant that the color-graded interplay of the polychoral music was omitted, but the purity and homogeneity of the sound made for a no less exciting listening experience.

The concerts of the Early Music Forum, led by baroque flutist Martina Joos and former radio editor Roland Wächter, which take place every year in March and September, always feature original programs and thus intelligently bring music from earlier eras to today's audiences. In addition to the hard core of the more than two hundred members of the association, they also attract other listeners whose interests extend beyond the standard classical repertoire. And what may surprise some people is that this music does not sound strange to our ears at all. In the sound world of a motet by Tallis or a song by John Dowland, it is easy to recognize the roots of our modern understanding of music.

Transhistorical concert practice

In addition to Tallis, this year's autumn festival focused on the "triumvirate" of William Byrd, John Dowland and Henry Purcell, the first two leading composers of the Elizabethan era, the third the towering figure of English Baroque music. All four were presented in the opening concert, in a mixture of sacred and secular works typical of the period. As a small window to our own time, the choral movement composed shortly before the Second World War was heard in between Advance, Democracy by Benjamin Britten, who is considered Purcell's legitimate heir in England. The performers were the Vokalensemble Zürich West under Marco Amherd. The young ensemble, a prizewinner in the elite category of the Swiss Choir Competition, showed what it owes its reputation with its infectious joy of music-making and weightless melodiousness.

The program idea of combining old and new was also the inspiration for the concert by three members of the Ensemble thélème. Songs from the 1600 published Second Booke of Songs by John Dowland alternated with solo numbers from the songbooks of John Cage. An unconventional idea that was enthusiastically received by the audience. Only the minute-long scenic interludes such as card laying and the tying of shoelaces were dull and boring - a reference to the chance operations that were often part of Cage's compositional business. There was a lack of feeling for a coherent concert dramaturgy. Transhistoricism, which was practiced to some extent here as well as with the Vokalensemble Zürich West, could, however, prove to be a promising model for the future.

Composer between the times

The second major focus of the festival was the performance of the Messa Solenne a 3 Cori by Franz Joseph Leonti Meyer von Schauensee (1720-1789) by the vocal ensemble larynx and the Capricornus Consort Basel under the direction of Jakob Pilgram. The now largely forgotten composer, the son of a Lucerne patrician with excellent connections in the ecclesiastical and social establishment of his time, was a councillor, clergyman, organist and bandmaster at the Lucerne Court Church and at one point a mercenary leader in Italy. A jack of all trades, he gave free rein to his compositional enthusiasm after completing his musical training in Milan. In his Mass of 1749, which lasts over two hours and has now been made newly accessible in a critical edition by a team of musicologists from Geneva, this is reflected in a wealth of sometimes original, sometimes half-baked ideas and an extremely generous use of time; the first two movements of the Mass alone last seventy minutes.

Sacred and secular-concertante elements stand side by side. Each mass movement is introduced by a short Sinfonia, a reference to the early symphonic practice of the Milan School. With blaring brass and a four-four time signature nailed to the tonic-dominant alternation, a festive, pompous tone prevails for the most part, even spilling over into the first Kyrie at the beginning. In keeping with the convention of the time, three offertories and - again with much fanfare - even a rudimentary instrumental battaglia are inserted between the mass movements. But the composer was also able to strike other notes. This is evident, for example, in the playful echo effects, in the darkly colored Crucifixus passage or in the fortissimo aria with three basses following the Sanctus. And two hundred and fifty years before the famous three tenors, Meyer von Schauensee already had a trio in this register.

For all its pomp, the mass breathes the spirit of the galant age, which is manifested in the simplified harmony and meter as well as a pleasing melody. The formulaic use of baroque figures and remnants of a harmonically starved basso continuo characterize the work as a late product of an outgoing era.

The outstanding feature of the mass, however, is its three-part texture. Meyer von Schauensee composed it for the canons of Beromünster Abbey, where there are three galleries, each with an organ. In Zurich's Fraumünster, this spatial arrangement was only used to a limited extent. The situation was presumably different in the monastery church in Muri, where the mass was performed for the second time a few days later. It was recorded by radio and television and will be broadcast on the upcoming Thursday, Oct. 5 at 8 p.m. on SRF 2 Kultur broadcast on television (with a selection of sentences) on December 24 at approx. 21.45h.

 

At their closed meeting in Regensburg on September 18 and 19 on transnational music policy issues, the heads of the music councils of Germany, Austria and Switzerland (D-A-CH) issued a declaration on the implementation of the Unesco declaration "Mondiacult": Culture is created locally. The background to this is the Unesco World Conference on Cultural Policy and Sustainable Development "Mondiacult" in 2022, when culture was declared a "global public good".

The D-A-CH Music Councils write in their declaration: "Social cohesion is created through local encounters. Cultural policy is social policy which, as a cross-sectional task, takes responsibility for almost all parliamentary committees and government departments in the context of European and international agreements."

Download the declaration (PDF)

 

 

At the end, the winner of the Grand Prix Music and the Federal President perform a duet. And you think: what a paradise we live in, where politics and culture get along so well, where there is such harmony. Alain Berset, now at the grand piano, has also previously given a truly spiritual performance that is reminiscent of the trumpeter's great career. Erik Truffaz with admiration and wit.

Carlo Balmelli, Mario Batkovic, Lucia Cadotsch, Ensemble Nikel, Sonja Moonear, Katharina Rosenberger, Saadet Türköz, Helvetia rocks, Walcheturm art space, Pronto. - There is also warm applause for all the other winners, and the chic program booklet and the elaborate video recordings of each and every one of them do not need to prove that they all more than deserve this award and the prize money. One can only agree when Erik Truffaz, in his acceptance speech, once again thanks Switzerland for inventing a prize that rewards people who care for the soul.

These differently knitted Helvetian souls also enjoy very different music and musical activities. The majority of the soul food awarded on this evening is urban, experimental, avant-garde and hybrid. (Incidentally, much of it precisely meets the aims of the new cultural message and fulfills à merveille numerous Pro Helvetia funding criteria). And so the local music paradise suddenly seems small. Prizewinner Rosenberger works together with prizewinner Walcheturm, prizewinner Cadotsch is accompanied in her performance by 2014 prizewinner Julian Sartorius, prizewinner Tuffaz has often performed with 2016 prizewinner Sophie Hunger. And he thanks Pro Helvetia for supporting him so often on tour.

The "responsibility towards the sounds" that Mario Batkovic refers to in his speech is something that many others in this country are also aware of. Of course, the top is being celebrated tonight. That is also true. But - truism - the top can only survive on a broad base. And this often has to deal with thorns and thistles, like the exiles from paradise. Keyword school music: the Confederation remains hidden behind clouds of federalism instead of - dream! - to convince the cantons with a flaming sword to provide this subject with solidly trained staff and sufficient compulsory lessons. Amateur music, choirs and music associations would also be fertile and grateful ground for more national attention. So that they could, for example, employ a professionally trained conductor, a voice coach or a choir director on fair terms.

There is a talking sequence in the video about Carlo Balmelli. The Ticino prizewinner stands alone on a stage and conducts. He conducts into the void, there is no wind orchestra present, no base. A cinematic highlight, of course, but nevertheless a frightening performance.

It was nice to spend an evening in paradise. Filled with joy, the national music policy can now think more about how to get the milk and honey flowing a little more abundantly outside the country.

The Tibor Varga competition is held in Sion every two years. It is the most important international competition for violinists under the age of 26 in Switzerland. This year there were 149 registrations, 24 participants were admitted to the first round and 12 to the second. The average age was 21.

The man from Altendorf Raphael Nussbaumer has been able to assert itself against international competition, some of which is much older. Since 2012, he has been taught by Philip A. Draganov, currently at the Bern University of the Arts (HKB).

The competition was won by 14-year-old Seohyun Kim from South Korea, while third prize went to 23-year-old Rennosuke Fukuda from Japan.

The best graduates in the Master Specialized Performance, the highest level of classical music education, are awarded the Eduard Tschumi Prize at the Bern University of the Arts (HKB).

This year, soprano Julia Frischknecht from Christian Hilz's class and violist Lukas Stubenrauch (New Music specialization) received this award. The two each won a prize of 7,000 Swiss francs. Thanks to the Bürgi-Willert Foundation, Frischknecht will have the opportunity to perform as part of the Bern Symphony Orchestra's seasonal program.

 

Originally specializing in Renaissance music, the Ensemble Orlando has developed into a professional vocal ensemble over the course of almost 30 years since it was founded under the direction of Laurent Gendre. Its variable line-up consists of ten to thirty singers. The repertoire stretches back to the 18th century. The ensemble works with various orchestras, performs at home and abroad and has recorded several CDs.

The vocal ensemble is still based in Fribourg. However, some of the singers come from German-speaking Switzerland and the ensemble would like to gain a greater foothold in German-speaking regions in the future. It is also important to him to connect generations. For example, founding members are still singing today, passing on their diverse experience to the young singers who have recently joined the ensemble. It also carried out a project with the University of Music of the University of Applied Sciences of Western Switzerland (HEMU) in 2022. 19 singing students were given an insight into the working methods of a professional choir by performing a concert together with the Ensemble Orlando.

https://orlando-fribourg.ch

 

Almost all cantons are sending their folk music representatives to Bellinzona. Most of the groups come from Ticino (56) and Bern (39), some also from Italy (5).

Formations from A, such as the Alpinis from the Lucerne School of Music, to Z, such as the Zampognari Del Piano, will be performing. They play at 17 different venues, some of them in front of experts.

The Ticino wine festival PerBacco runs parallel to the folk music festival!

Detailed program at bellinzona2023.ch

Three years late, the Kampus Südpol was finally officially inaugurated with a celebration in Lucerne-Kriens. No fewer than eight institutions were involved: Kulturhaus Südpol, Lucerne City Music School, Lucerne Theater, Lucerne Symphony Orchestra, Lucerne University of Music (HSLU), Musik Hug, the Haus der Instrumente and the Werft rehearsal house. What was supposed to be a festival turned out to be more of an "open day" on a campus that is still under construction.

As soon as you arrived, you could see that the campus has by no means grown organically. On one side is the "Südpol", the "oldest" building, an unspectacular structure that houses the Lucerne City Music School, the rehearsal rooms of the Lucerne Theater and two halls for alternative culture. In front of it, the orchestra house of the Lucerne Symphony Orchestra, inaugurated in 2020, gleams in silver. Away from these two buildings stands the University of Music, which opened in 2020. So there is no well thought-out site concept.

A remarkable starting position ...

The institutions cover important stages of a musical career and can operate in a network at one location: from basic training to university and creative-professional practice. What sounds so fascinating in theory is a Herculean task in practice, as each segment functions differently and has different needs. September 2 was therefore chosen as the day of celebration, when the university and the LSO are still in summer mode and the rooms are not occupied for the day's work.

The selection of performances over seven hours was huge and ranged from intimate performances by individuals to rehearsals by wind orchestras or a workshop on "hands-on acting training". Rooms were used ranging from the rehearsal stage of the Lucerne Theater and the halls of the music school to those of the symphony orchestra and the university. Individual rehearsal rooms were also occupied. The range of venues available here is astonishing and inspiring.

However, the number of visitors was modest, and there was little sign of a festive atmosphere and hustle and bustle in the buildings. Was it due to a lack of interest or too little advertising? And orientation signs within and between the buildings were rudimentary, you had to work your way through somehow. Nevertheless, it's fair to say that those who didn't come missed a lot, as a tour of the site showed.

... for solo to tutti ...

Visitors were able to meet individual LSO musicians in the rehearsal rooms in the orchestra building. And in the rehearsal hall, over 80 young people from the Lucerne Youth Wind Orchestra, under the direction of their conductor Sandro Blank, presented a one-hour program that they will play at the Swiss Youth Music Festival in St. Gallen.

It was well worth listening to how the young musicians, sometimes as a whole formation, sometimes as soloists, illuminated the facets of brass music and how precisely the percussion instruments performed. Works by Teo Aparicio-Barberán and Amir Malookpour were played - unfortunately there was no program sheet. The acoustics of the hall, which offers optimal conditions for the LSO, were also astonishing.

The music school bakes smaller rolls. Its two halls are not acoustically ideal, but offer a variety of uses. Taster courses for "parent-child singing" were offered in the small hall at the festival, although these attracted little attention. The music school had a varied presence, for example with its band A-la-Ska, which consists of adult amateur musicians. In the small hall, Monica Faé-Leitl presented two recorder groups and demonstrated how she can get even less musical children involved.

The university's clarinet quartet played in the Salquin Hall of the university building, as did young people from the "Talent Promotion Music Canton of Lucerne". They presented their pieces under professional conditions with astonishing fearlessness. Here you could also admire the high-end "HörRaum", which is enriched with a huge vinyl collection and is actively used by students. However, it is a little-known fact that the "HörRaum", just like the library, is also open to non-students.

The Haus der Instrumente (Willisau Musical Instrument Collection until 2022) has just opened near the Kampus, which director Adrian Steger wants to establish as a place for "music and craftsmanship". A collaboration with Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts is already being considered, with a Master's student set to build experimental instruments in the house's studio.

... with regard to the audience

It is precisely this coexistence of young and old, professional and amateur, that makes this campus so special and has such potential. There is enough young talent in the concert business, but a thriving concert landscape also needs an audience that should be drawn to it. Concert halls such as the LSO's rehearsal room or the three halls of the University of Music offer the opportunity to listen to a concert without any threshold fear.

A total of around 700 events are currently held on the campus each year. Cooperation between the institutions has also contributed to this figure and is to be further expanded.