In parallel to his cultural management duties, Bucher is pursuing an artistic career as an organist, which, according to the Geneva Chamber Orchestra's press release, has taken him regularly to western Switzerland, France and Europe. Under his leadership, the Orchestre de Chambre de Genève (OCG) will "continue its mission as an orchestra resolutely focused on the 21st century". With a program that combines classical repertoire, contemporary music and interdisciplinary projects, it aims to make classical music accessible and approachable for everyone.

The OCG is currently expanding its activities thanks to increased support from the City and Canton of Geneva, the upcoming move to the Concorde cultural space and thus new artistic ambitions under the direction of Maestro Raphaël Merlin, who has been reappointed for the next three years.

Dieter Ammann, co-director of the Lucerne Festival Academy's Composer Seminar, conductor Baldur Brönnimann and contemporary dramaturge Mark Sattler have selected the two. They have been commissioned to write new works for orchestra, which will be premiered with the Lucerne Festival Contemporary Orchestra (LFCO) as part of the 2027 summer festival.

Arnau Brichs, born in 2000 in Sant Joan Despí, Spain, lives in Paris. He studied composition at the Royal Academy of Music in London and graduated with distinction. He has been Composer in Residence at IRCAM in Paris since 2024. Brichs attended the Lucerne Festival's Composer Seminar in 2021 and has participated in numerous international academies, including Viitasaari and Madrid.

Aregnaz Martirosyan was born in the Armenian capital Yerevan in 1993 and lives in Lucerne. She studied composition at the Lucerne School of Music. She also took part in the Composer Seminar at the Lucerne Festival Academy in 2022. Her works have been performed by Ensemble Modern, the Basel Sinfonietta and the Biel Solothurn Symphony Orchestra, among others.

The "Roche Young Commissions" were launched in 2013 as a cooperation between Roche, the Lucerne Festival and the Lucerne Festival Academy. The "Roche Young Commissions" give up-and-coming composers up to the age of 30 the opportunity to write works for orchestra, alternating with the "Roche Commissions" in the following year. Applications are invited via an open call.

The process of renewing the cultural funding guidelines, which began in 2023, was completed this summer, according to the city's press release. The main requests from cultural professionals were for more precise wording, more information on the application process, simplified application submission and generally better communication of information relating to cultural funding (important dates, infrastructure funding, posters, etc.).

The new cultural funding guidelines are more precisely formulated and clearly laid out. A Q&A provides brief and concise information on cultural funding in Aarau. The translation into simple language should also make it easier to access cultural funding. Digital projects and the promotion of artists at the beginning of their careers have been given greater weight in terms of content. It is also emphasized that support is always re-evaluated and that even if funding is approved several times, there is no entitlement to future funding. All documents are available on the website of the City of Aarau.

At its meeting on August 21, 2025, the Cultural Promotion Commission dealt with 18 applications from various sectors, with the new cultural promotion guidelines already being applied. In total, the Cultural Promotion Commission awarded grants amounting to CHF 56,900. More than half of these were for projects in the field of classical music/chorus music - the sector that was most strongly represented with ten applications.

According to the magazine's press release, Makarova was The Strad Born in Moscow in 1981, she studied at the Moscow Conservatory. At the age of ten, she won first prize at the International Tchaikovsky Competition for Young Musicians in Moscow. In 2008, she became a member of the orchestra of the Palau de Les Arts Reina Sofía in Spain.

As part of her chamber music career, she has worked with cellist Patrick Demenga, among others. She has held teaching positions at the Gnessin Academy in Moscow and the Scuola di Musica di Fiesole in Florence and has been a professor at the Haute École de Musique in Lausanne since 2014. In addition to her career as a musician and teacher, she is a regular jury member at international competitions.

Original article:
https://www.thestrad.com/news/violinist-svetlana-makarova-appointed-professor-in-vienna/20119.article

The Gössi motion (24.4596) is entitled "Better protection of intellectual property against AI misuse". Suisseculture supports the motion in the "well-founded view that licenses and remuneration will create an advantageous market order and that several copyright models will be available for this purpose". According to the umbrella organization of cultural associations, the concerns of science and business could be taken into account in the licensing and remuneration models. It describes one of several possible solutions.

The large language models, image, music and video generators and similar systems of generative artificial intelligence such as ChatGPT or Perplexity have circumvented copyright law and the principle of consent, Suisseculture continued. In addition, these models generated similar and new content based on large amounts of copyrighted data, which jeopardized economic investments and artistic interests.

To date, there has been a lack of legal certainty and transparency regarding this use of data. Swiss policymakers are faced with the task of finding solutions that reconcile the protection of creative works and achievements with innovation, the economy, academic freedom and access to cultural assets.

The whole statement: 
https://www.suisseculture.ch/?article=kuenstliche_intelligenz_und_urheberrecht_politischer_handlungsbedarf_und_loesungsansaetze

The services provided by Konsibern are to be compensated with a sum of 4.48 million francs in the coming year. This includes additional costs of 107,000 francs. These are due to an increase in the number of schoolchildren and an increase in teachers' salaries, writes the City of Bern.

The operation of Konsibern is financed by contributions from the city and canton of Berne, school fees and grants from third parties. The funds from the city of Bern still require the approval of the city's voters as part of the budget vote on November 30, 2025, writes Konsibern.

The music school was founded in 1858 by the Bernese Music Society BMG. With the founding of the Bern University of the Arts HKB in 2000, the general music school department of the former conservatory was transformed into an independent institution and the Bern Conservatory Music School Foundation was established as a competence center for amateur music-making.

The city is honoring sound artist Lisa Mark (*1996) with a cultural promotion prize of CHF 5000. Mark completed a degree in Sound Arts and Contemporary Arts Practice at Bern University of the Arts. She impressed the jury "with her versatility". In her art practice, she moves between sound arts, visual arts and music, writes the city of Thun. In her interdisciplinary practice, she "explores sound and conscious listening with sensitivity", summarizes the jury.

The cultural prizes of the City of Thun are awarded on the recommendation of the Cultural Commission, while the cultural promotion prizes are awarded by the Cultural Promotion Prize Jury. Both committees are chaired by Councillor Katharina Ali-Oesch. The prize money comes from the Heinrich and Martha Streuli Fund, while the cultural promotion prizes have been sponsored by the Amtsanzeiger Verwaltungskreis Thun municipal association since 2004.

According to the HKB press release, the prizes, each worth CHF 2,500, are being donated by a private foundation for the first time. They recognize "particularly talented and promising personalities who have impressed with their artistic quality and expressiveness in the aptitude tests". The aim is to provide targeted support and encouragement for students starting their studies at the HKB.

The award winners are Selma Aerni (MA Music Pedagogy Classical Music), Nathaniel Edelmann (MA Music Composition Contemporary Jazz), Sumanie Gächter (BA Music Sound Arts), Juliette Milone (MA Music Performance Jazz and Contemporary Music), Miquel Muñiz Galdon (MA Specialized Music Performance Classical Music), Dávid Mór Sándor (BA Classical Music), Laurin Stadler (BA Music Sound Arts) and Chloé Underwood (MA Specialized Music Performance Opera).

Over the past two weeks, up-and-coming conductors have had the opportunity to work with the Gstaad Festival Orchestra as part of the Gstaad Conducting Academy. Under the direction of Jaap van Zweden (Music Director of the Seoul Philharmonic and designated Music Director of the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France), Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla (Music Director of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra) and Johannes Schlaefli (Artistic Director of the Swiss Youth Symphony Orchestra SJSO and the Alumni Symphony Orchestra Zurich), Brahms' Symphony No. 3 and Dvořák's Symphony From the New World and Richard Strauss' Don Juan and Shostakovich's Symphony No. 5.

This year's main winner is Joséphine Korda (1996), who is currently Conductor in Residence at the Académie de l'Opéra in Paris. She will be guest conductor of the Bern Chamber Orchestra, the Philharmonie Südwestfalen, the Orchestre de chambre de Lausanne and the Sinfonie Orchester Biel Solothurn. Other prizewinners are Simon Clausse (2000) from France - he will be guest conductor at the Musikkollegium Winterthur - and Shira Samuels-Shragg (1997) - she will be able to work with the Basel Symphony Orchestra.

The Neeme Järvi Prize honors those participants of the Gstaad Conducting Academy who are particularly impressive in their development. Since 2015, the prize has been awarded directly after the final concert by a jury made up of teaching staff, festival management and members of the partner orchestras.

Performers will include Martha Argerich, Lang Lang, Joshua Bell, Mischa Maisky, Janine Jansen, Mikhail Pletnev, Gautier Capuçon, Bryn Terfel, Bruce Liu, Daniel Lozakovich, Alexander Malofeev, Marc Bouchkov, Timothy Ridout, Daniel Blendulf and many more. The Verbier Festival Chamber Orchestra will be at the heart of the festival as the orchestra in residence under the direction of its music director Gábor Takács-Nagy. There will be six concerts.

The Verbier Festival is thus consolidating its activities with a winter event. The organizing partner is the Chinese agency Wu Promotion, which was founded in 1991 and has partnerships with the Vienna and Berlin Philharmonic Orchestras, among others.

The award was announced after Beliaev's performance in the title role of Eugene Oneginthe opera performed this summer as part of the Academy's Atelier Lyrique, accompanied by the Verbier Festival Junior Orchestra under the direction of Stanislav Kochanovsky.

Anton Beliaev graduated with honors from the Tchaikovsky Conservatory in Yekaterinburg in 2020, where he studied with Valery Gurevich. In the same year, he began his bachelor's degree with Michail Lanskoi at the Berlin University of the Arts, where he is currently completing his master's degree. He has been a member of the Semperoper Dresden Opera Studio since the 2023/24 season.

Yves Paternot was the founder of the Friends of the Verbier Festival and a member of the Board of Trustees. To honor his commitment, his friends created the Prix Yves Paternot after his death. The prize is endowed with CHF 10,000, includes an invitation to perform at a future Verbier Festival and entitles the recipient to funding of up to CHF 15,000 for artistic and professional development.

Jorge Rodriguez was awarded 1st prize at both the Moyse International Flute Competition in Sofia, Bulgaria (June 28 - July 2, 2025), and the Cluj International Flute Competition in Romania (July 5 - 12, 2025). According to the Basel University of Music, it is particularly remarkable that there were only three days between the two competitions.

As part of his success, Jorge will have the opportunity to perform as a soloist with various orchestras in Italy and Romania in the coming season. Jorge Rodriguez recently completed his Master's degree in Solo Performance at the Basel University of Music in the class of Felix Renggli.

The Lübeck holdings have been digitally recorded and semantically networked according to the latest standards. The focus is on the musical oeuvre: based on the objects in the collection, a large number of scholarly texts have been written that shed new light on the background to their creation and publication. Almost twenty authors from the German-speaking musicology community have dealt with the objects in the Lübeck collection.

As a lighthouse project for digitization, the Brahms Portal was financed by the structural and excellence budget of the state of Schleswig-Holstein and the Possehl Foundation Lübeck with 800,000 euros. All content is open access and based on the FAIR principles, according to which research data is recorded sustainably. Around 10,000 data records have already been linked in this way. The collection is not yet complete, but will be successively continued in the future.

Link: brahms-portal.com

Yunchan Lim, together with his teacher Minsoo Sohn, impressed the audience in the Rougemont church with a program that included arrangements for two pianos of Richard Strauss' Rose CavalierBrahms' Sonata and Rachmaninov's Symphonic Dances.

Yunchan Lim won the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition in 2022 at the age of 18. Since then, he has made his debuts with orchestras such as the New York Philharmonic, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Munich Philharmonic and the Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra. In April 2025, he gave his recital debut at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. Yunchan Lim will receive the Olivier Berggruen Prize after Alexandra Dovgan (prizewinner 2023) and Kate Liu (prizewinner 2024).

Established by the German-American art historian, curator and writer Olivier Berggruen, the prize includes a concert as part of the festival program and a trophy, which this year was designed by the Geneva-born artist Olympia Scarry, who now lives in New York. Berggruen comes from a family of patrons and is artistic advisor to the Gstaad Menuhin Festival.

Ekaterina Karpova graduated with honors from Gnessin College (2016) and the Tchaikovsky Conservatory in Moscow (2021). She completed her second Master's degree in Specialized Music Performance at the Bern University of the Arts (HKB) under the direction of Tomasz Herbut.

Marta Lucjan is a Polish violinist dedicated to the research and performance of contemporary music. She studied at the HKB under the direction of Corina Belcea (Master Specialized Performance, specialization in New Music). In addition to her academic activities, she is the founder and active member of the Aventurin Quartet.

The Eduard Tschumi Music Prize is awarded annually to the best graduate of the HKB's Specialized Music Performance Master's programme. This year's two winners have identical final grades. The prize is endowed with 7000 francs each. With the support of the Bürgi-Willert Foundation, the winner in the soloist specialization also receives the opportunity to perform as a chamber music partner or soloist in the Bern Symphony Orchestra's seasonal programme.