To find out whether genetic factors influence music enjoyment or the perception of reward from music, the team used a research design comparing the similarity between identical and fraternal twins: If identical twins are more similar than fraternal twins, genetics probably plays a role.

In collaboration with the Karolinska Institute in Sweden, the team was able to use data from more than 9,000 twins, including information on the perception of reward through music and the ability to perceive musical characteristics such as pitch, melody and rhythm.

The results show that the ability to enjoy music is partly inherited: Using the twin design, the team was able to determine that 54 percent of the differences in the Swedish sample were genetic. They also found that the genetic influences on the musical sense of reward are partly independent of musical perception skills and the general (non-musical) sense of reward.

More info: 
https://www.aesthetics.mpg.de/newsroom/news/news-artikel/article/ist-musikgenuss-in-den-genen-verankert.html

Founded in 1988, the Liechtenstein Symphony Orchestra represents the Principality of Liechtenstein as a cultural location through guest performances and concert tours - in 2025 at the Vienna Konzerthaus and in 2026 at the Ludwig van Beethoven Easter Festival. It has worked with conductors such as Riccardo Chailly, Lawrence Foster, Kevin John Edusei and John Axelrod. In collaboration with the Liechtenstein Academy of Music, it regularly promotes young talent.

Born in Poland, 33-year-old Dawid Runtz was Principal Conductor at the Royal Opera in Poland from 2017 to 2025 and has been Chief Conductor of the Zagreb Philharmonic Orchestra since 2021.

The Cultural Commission of the City of Bern was created in 2024 from the previous divisional commissions. It currently consists of up to 45 people and is diverse in terms of expertise, experience and perspectives. The municipal council has now amended the regulatory basis so that the Culture Commission can now comprise up to 50 people.

Barbara Boss, Antonia Brix, Sandra Forrer, Tanina Jenk, Johanna Pärli, Tiziana Simpson and Joel Zumbrunnen were newly elected to the Culture Commission. One member was no longer elected because, according to the city's press release, he "attracted attention through hate speech on social media".

The following people represent music on the City of Bern's Culture Commission: Avital Cohen (flutist, sound and performance artist, educator), Maxi Ehrenzeller (painter, writer, musician), Marcel Kägi (musician and producer), Hannes Liechti (musicologist), Gwendolyn Masin (violinist, musicologist, curator and lecturer), Johanna Pärli (musician, music educator), Estelle Plüss (musician, author), Hassan Taha (musician, lecturer and composer), This Wachter (audio producer), Florence Weber (musicologist, cultural manager) and David Zürcher (musician, filmmaker).

Marguerite Wassermann studied baroque violin in London and Basel. She is a prizewinner of the Italian early music competitions Premio Bonporti (2023) and Marco Uccellini (2022). In addition to her collaboration with various early music ensembles, she regularly performs with the orchestra Le Concert des Nations and can be heard as a soloist on their recordings of Vivaldi concertos. In April, Wassermann and her ensemble The Levée will release a CD with newly discovered violin sonatas by the French theorist and music theorist Etienne Denis Delair (1662-1750).

The International Telemann Competition, which was launched in 2001, was held in two categories for the first time in its history in 2025. 31 musicians took part in the historical string instruments category. 11 international ensembles, formed by 46 musicians, competed in Magdeburg in the chamber music ensembles category, with the first round being held in video mode before the start of the competition.

According to Caiti Hauck, postdoctoral researcher and head of studies at the Institute of Musicology at the University of Bern, the publications show that the history of Swiss choirs not only reveals aspects of musical life. Historical research on choral life in Switzerland also sheds light on socially relevant topics such as political and social life, the role of women and even the establishment of a national unity around the founding of the Swiss federal state.

Hauck's project "CLEFNI - Choral life in the cities of Bern and Fribourg in the long 19th century" was funded from 2019 to 2023 by the European Union's Horizon 2020 program as part of the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA).

Julien Cachemaille, the author of the comic, has already made a name for himself with the science comic La course de pirogues He gained experience in this form of knowledge transfer via pile dwellers in the Late Bronze Age. He sees it as an innovative and increasingly popular format of communication. According to Cachemaille, the use of images makes the text more compact and the information can be conveyed more simply and easily.

The links:

Swiss choral life since 1800: music, practice and contexts:
https://books.unibe.ch/index.php/BB/catalog/book/13

Three Swiss choral singers in the 19th century
https://clefni.unibe.ch/index.php/de/2025/03/05/comic-buch

Universal patterns such as the acquisition of basic rhythm and pitch recognition play an important role in musical development in childhood. However, there are also very individual patterns that are based on environmental, educational and innate factors. In order to document these precisely and thus close a gap in research, the research team at the Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics (MPIEA) has developed the "Child Musicality Screening" as part of a total of three studies.

This method can be used, for example, to recognize developmental trajectories, identify musically gifted children at an earlier stage and specifically promote musical education. The questionnaire was recently published with the study results in the journal PLOS One, where it is available as a free download.

Original publication: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0317962

Over the past year and a half, the Cultural Promotion Commission and the Cultural Office have worked together with Aarau's cultural practitioners to scrutinize existing cultural promotion practices. The focus was on clarifying the questions of what is already working well and where the principles need to be adapted.

Digital projects are now explicitly included in the funding. Experimental, daring projects are also welcome and will be able to obtain advice on feasibility from the cultural office in future. Communication is to be improved: cultural professionals should be able to obtain information more quickly and easily, for example about assistance with the implementation of cultural projects or about alternative funding bodies.

Funding is open to all age groups and will be generally strengthened in terms of communication: in addition to the guidelines in easy/simple language, there will now also be FAQs that answer important questions about funding. As before, only projects that are accessible to the people of Aarau and have a connection to Aarau in terms of content and/or personnel will be supported.

In the documentary "Vracht", the young sailor Rudmer works on a container ship and dreams of becoming a captain himself one day. According to the jury, the interplay between the visual and acoustic levels in the film is perfect. It is an immersive film for the eyes and ears, in which the individual artistic voices of direction, camera, editing and music have become a harmony.

Mirjam Skal, born in 1996, is a freelance media composer from Zurich. She studied composition for film, theater and media at the Zurich University of the Arts and has composed numerous soundtracks for short films, games, commercials and documentaries, for radio and television. In 2021 she was part of the Berlinale Talents. She has been honored with the Zollinger Art Prize, the Rolf-Hans Müller Prize for Best Film Music at the Televisionale Baden-Baden and other awards.

Since 2019, the German Documentary Film Music Prize has been awarded as part of DOK.fest Munich, the largest documentary film festival in Germany. It is sponsored by Versicherungskammer Kultur, is endowed with 5000 euros and is supported by the German Composers' Association.

Alicia Suárez Medina was born in Spain in 1997 and studied at the Conservatorio Superior de Música "Manuel Castillo" in Seville and at the Conservatorio Superior de Castilla y León before joining the Bern University of the Arts. She currently combines her artistic activities with her teaching work in Switzerland. She has been a piano teacher and accompanist at the Oberemmental Music School since 2023 and regularly performs at concerts and festivals in Switzerland, Spain, Germany and France.

The Kiwanis Music Prize is awarded every three years to graduates of the HKB's Master of Arts in Music Pedagogy program who are above average in both artistic and pedagogical terms. Great importance is attached to an exceptionally high level of pedagogical competence in passing on the skills acquired.

The first prize includes prize money of 1500 euros and a production budget of 5000 euros. Echo Theory are the HKB students Erin Torres (Master Specialized Music Performance, specialization Music in Context), Béatrice Garrido (Bachelor Classical Music) and Julian Schletti (Bachelor Sound Arts).

The second prize of 600 euros went to Duo Zwischen from the Stuttgart and Leipzig music academies, the third prize of 200 euros to soloist Tibor Kovács from the Mozarteum Salzburg and the fourth prize of 200 euros to the On5 Quintett from the Nuremberg University of Music.

This year's competition jury consisted of Sonja Stibi, Professor of Music Education at the Munich University of Music, Anja Christina Loosli, Artistic Co-Director of the Schlosskonzerte Thun, and Bernhard Günther, Artistic Director of Wien Modern. The audience was also able to vote online.

Named after the minstrel Hugo von Montfort, the Montforter Zwischentöne international student competition for new concert formats provides a motto and a location each year that the participants have to address in their concepts.

The quintet consists of Guillem Cardona Zaera (trumpet), Joan Pàmies Magrané (trumpet), Maria Servera Monserrat (horn), Xavier Gil Batet (trombone), and Oriol Reverter Curto (tuba) and studies with Anton Kernjak and Claudio Martínez Mehner at the Basel School of Music, Classical Studies.

At the Ljubliana Festival International Competition, it performed in front of a renowned international jury made up of Branimir Slokar, Reinhold Friedrich, Nina Šenk, Radovan Vlatković and Andreas Martin Hofmeir. In addition to these two awards, including prize money, the winning ensemble will have the opportunity to perform in several concerts.

The Cité musicale-Metz comprises the Arsenal concert hall, the Orchestre national de Metz Grand Est and the Établissement public de coopération culturelle (EPCC). Martin will take up her post on July 1, 2025, succeeding Florence Alibert, who has been appointed Cultural Advisor to the French Embassy in Italy and Director of the Institut Français d'Italie.

Daniela Martin, who studied musicology and teaching music and literature, has been Managing Director of the Basel Sinfonietta since 2020. Among other things, she worked for several years in the organization of the Radio-France Montpellier Festival and was General Director of the Ensemble Variances, which she co-founded with composer Thierry Pécou in 2009.

The cellist won the Instrumentalist Award at the Royal Philharmonic Society (RPS) Awards 2025. The RPS Awards have been presented annually since 1989 for live classical music creation in the United Kingdom. In 2014, the prize was awarded to Patricia Kopatchinskaja.

Laura van der Heijden was born in England to Dutch-Swiss parents and made her first public appearance as a cellist at the age of nine. She is a student of the British-Russian cellist Leonid Gorokhov and has regularly taken part in masterclasses with David Geringas, Ralph Kirshbaum and Miklós Perényi. In 2016 she was honored by the Orpheum Foundation in Switzerland. She is involved with the Prince's Foundation for Children & the Arts and the Brighton Youth Orchestra.

Kulukundis comes from a Greek-American shipping family and worked for many years in the New York branch of the family business. He laid the foundations of his collection as a musicology student at Yale University in the 1950s. Even before the donation, Kulukundis loaned his collection to the Bach Archive in Leipzig for academic analysis.

The collection comprises a total of around 1000 documents, mostly music manuscripts, first and early prints and letters from the four Bach sons, who themselves embarked on a career as musicians. There are cimelia such as the long-lost autograph score of the opera Zanaida by Johann Christian Bach, letters from Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach to the Leipzig publisher Breitkopf (with a well-preserved Bach seal) and the first Bach biographer Johann Nikolaus Forkel as well as documents from Johann Christian and Johann Christoph Friedrich Bach, in addition to artistically hand-colored aria collections and family registers from the second half of the 18th century.

With "Förderung konkret", a new handbook is now available that provides guidance on funding practice. According to the canton's press release, a key component is the procedure in addition to the funding requirements and criteria. The most important change is that there are now only two submission deadlines for applications of CHF 10,000 or more - at the end of February and the end of August. Smaller project contributions can still be applied for on an ongoing basis.

The second part of the cultural concept is the "Perspectives" section, which reflects on the focal points of the last cultural concept and contains an overview of the resources used. The second part also captures the voices of various cultural stakeholders. They formulate their perspectives on cultural promotion in the coming years. Pictures by Bühler-based artist Regula Engeler give the publication a further perspective.

More info:
https://ar.ch/schnellzugriff/medienmitteilungen-der-kantonalen-verwaltung/detail/news/das-fuenfte-kulturkonzept-gibt-impulse-fuer-die-zukunft/