According to the canton, the development of the mission statement allows fundamental issues to be addressed in greater depth. For example, whether the current funding instruments are still the right ones or to what extent the form of the board of trustees for cultural funding in the militia system is still appropriate and expedient. The cultural mission statement is being developed by the Office for Culture and Sport in collaboration with the Cantonal Board of Trustees for Cultural Promotion.

As a first step, an analysis of Solothurn's current cultural landscape will provide a comprehensive overview of the current situation. An important starting point for this is the cultural conference held in 2017, which provided essential information on the current situation and the future ideas of Solothurn's cultural players.

On four evenings in May, the Office for Culture and Sport will provide information on the status of the work. In the presence of Cantonal Councillor Remo Ankli, Head of the Department of Education and Culture, selected topics will be discussed together. Personalities from the worlds of culture and politics as well as interested members of the public are invited to attend.

The regional forums take place:
Monday, May 6, 6 p.m., Aula BBZ Solothurn
Thursday, May 9, 6.00 pm, Cultural Center Schützi Olten
Tuesday, May 21, 6 p.m., Dornach Monastery, Refectory
Tuesday, May 28, 6 p.m., VEBO, Restaurant Treffpunkt, Oensingen

The number of places is limited! Please register at least one week before the respective event date: aks@dbk.so.ch.

Samuel Steinemann, born in 1971, grew up in Zug and studied musicology, philosophy and ethnomusicology at the University of Zurich as well as cultural management at the ZHAW. During and after his studies, he wrote music reviews, program booklet texts and worked for artist agencies and concert promoters (including Tonhalle Zurich, KKL Lucerne, Kartause Ittingen).

In 1998 he co-founded the Zug Sinfonietta and between 2000 and 2008 he was the managing director of the Festival Strings Lucerne. Samuel Steinemann has been artistic director of the Theater Casino Zug since 2009.

The Künstlerhaus Boswil is a center for classical music, a place of encounter, international cultural exchange, artistic debate and retreat. The emphasis is on new music and the promotion of young musicians: with the Boswil Ensemble for New Music, the Aargau Youth Symphony Orchestra and the Freiamt Youth Orchestra, the Künstlerhaus supports three of its own ensembles in the field of orchestral education.

Born in Argentina and based in the Rhine Valley, Francisco Pablo Obieta moves between tradition and avant-garde as a double bass soloist, conductor and arranger. As a composer, he has produced more than forty works, ranging from chamber and orchestral music, sacred compositions to opera, such as "Destino Tango", which was premiered by the Theater St.Gallen in 2008.

As an orchestra conductor and lecturer, he inspires "young people and seniors, professionals and amateurs alike with his tireless passion for music" and leads them to captivating interpretations, writes the canton of St. Gallen. As a music teacher, he has also published several pedagogical works that have become standards for double bass players.

Viotti completed a master's degree in conducting with Nicolás Pasquet, Gunter Kahlert and Martin Hoff at the Franz Liszt University of Music Weimar until 2015. He has been principal conductor of the Gulbenkian Symphony Orchestra Lisbon since the start of the 2018/19 season.

Viotti was born in Lausanne into a French-Italian family of musicians. He studied piano, singing and percussion in Lyon. He later attended Georg Mark's conducting class in Vienna and played as a percussionist in various orchestras, including the Vienna Philharmonic.

At the age of 25, he won the Young Conductors Award at the 2015 Salzburg Festival, the 11th International Conducting Competition of the Orchestra de Cadaqués and first prize in the conducting competition of the MDR Symphony Orchestra. In 2017, he was named Newcomer of the Year by the International Opera Award in London.

The International Fröhlich Society Brugg, initiated by the singer Barbara Vigfusson, has been committed to the performance and dissemination of the music of the Aargau early Romantic composer Friedrich Theodor Fröhlich (1803-1836) since 2016. There is now also a Fröhlich Concert Choir Brugg, led by church musician Markus J. Frey, and a cultural association "Fröhlich Concerts Brugg".

The fact that Aargau produced Switzerland's most important early Romantic composer has been known at least since the dissertation by Winterthur grammar school teacher Pierre Sarbach in 1987 and his Fröhlich performances with the vocal ensemble pro musica. Fröhlich's Missa was published in 1987 in the series "Schweizerische Musikdenkmäler", but it turned out to be a copy by Fröhlich of a mass by Johann Gottlieb Naumann (1741-1801) from 1794. There is a great deal to discover in Fröhlich's own works: well-sung choral and vocal ensemble works, several orchestral overtures, many songs, chamber music and piano pieces - original Gebrauchsmusik in the best sense of the word. Incidentally, his estate is in the Basel University Library.
 

Fröhlich received his basic musical training at Hans Georg Nägeli's "Singinstitut" in Zurich. He was originally supposed to study law. However, musical life in Berlin really took off for him: he attended many concerts and came into contact with the best musicians of the time, including Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy and Friedrich Zelter from the Berlin Sing-Akademie. In this environment, Fröhlich also experienced Mendelssohn's music-historically significant revival of Bach's St. Matthew Passion with.

His Passion Cantata He wrote it shortly after his return from Berlin and performed it in Aarau in 1831 - not with an orchestra, but with piano accompaniment. Fröhlich had returned to a musical wasteland. There was no orchestra in Aarau and no regular music lessons at the cantonal school with which he could have made a living. So he founded his own singing school.

The texts for the Passion Cantatabased on the four Gospels, was provided by his brother, the reformed theologian Abraham Emanuel Fröhlich. The oratorio is extensive, consists of 21 numbers and not only has an original instrumentation, Fröhlich also "plays" with it: mixed choir, women's choir and men's choir sing in alternation, plus six soloists and a wind orchestra. The unconventional yet singable melodic line is striking; harmonically, he repeatedly finds interesting, early Romantic turns and colors. The instrumentation is surprisingly good.
 

Fröhlich's oratorio could now be experienced in the Stadtkirche Brugg under the masterful direction of Markus J. Frey. The participating Fröhlich Concert Choir Brugg also included the excellent female vocal ensemble Vocembalo, conducted by Barbara Vigfusson. This was clearly audible in the well-intoned, extremely high soprano parts. Overall, the choir and Chaart's orchestra mastered this work with fresh verve, good intonation and precise fugal entries.

Sunday also showed that this Fröhlich project involves good musicians who are committed to the cause. The song recital with soprano Muriel Schwarz and her subtly attuned pianist Andrea Wiesli embedded Fröhlich's songs - including some Swiss songs in dialect - between those of the siblings Fanny Hensel Mendelssohn and Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy. The Biedermeier-style pieces, which bear witness to Fröhlich's humor and joie de vivre, were performed sensitively and wittily.

In addition, violinist Sebastian Bohren and the Stradivari Quartet took on the Swiss premiere of the Piano Quartet in D minor (1835), first published by Amadeus-Verlag; Benjamin Engeli was at the piano. They played the work by the early Romantic composer from Aargau after Mozart's Piano Quartet No. 1 in G minor K. 478 and showed that it could certainly hold its own alongside Mozart. They infected the audience with their delight in Fröhlich's sense of sound and cheeky spirit. It would be time to promote this locally and nationally significant Fröhlich initiative more strongly in terms of cultural policy.
 

Susanna Cohen and Ehud Bodner from Israel's Bar-Ilan University examined 202 orchestral musicians in terms of their relationship between performance stress on the one hand and flower experiences on the other.

The evaluations showed that principals and first soloists are more in flow than second soloists and tutti players. Second soloists (associate principals) struggle with more stress than first soloists, and percussionists are more in flow than string players. According to the findings, older musicians are also more in flow than younger ones.

Original article:
Susanna Cohen and Ehud Bodner: "Flow and music performance anxiety: The influence of contextual and background variables", Musicae Scientiae, April 2019, https://doi.org/10.1177/1029864919838600

Together with the Swiss National Sound Archives and with the support of other specialized institutions, such as Swiss Radio and Television SRF and the Lucerne Central and University Library, over 3000 artist biographies, 2500 hours of sound recordings, media reports and images, videos and all promotional material have been professionally processed.

The archive documents jazz and improvised music in Switzerland since the early 1990s. The audiovisual collection consists primarily of concerts, audio and video recordings recorded live by SRF, and recordings submitted by bands to the program committee.

The online archive will be launched at the opening of this year's festival on Wednesday, 22 May 2019 at the Kulturzentrum Kammgarn. Selected years will be accessible there at the start, and more will be added gradually.
 

What connects the city of Bern on the Aare with the Black Sea metropolis of Odessa? Nothing, unless you consider the "Odessa Classics in Bern" concert held at the Yehudi Menuhin Forum as part of the Ukrainian Culture Days. Alongside violinist Michael Guttmann and cellist Samuel Justitz, Ukrainian pianist Alexey Botvinov sits at the grand piano and plays in such a way that it is immediately clear: Someone has a mission here - Odessa Classics. The pianist, who often makes guest appearances in Switzerland and has been an indispensable pillar of many ballets by choreographer Heinz Spoerli (Goldberg variations) was and is tirelessly committed to the festival in his home town.

Photo: Odessa Classics

Festival director Alexey Botvinov

The now 54-year-old musician founded it at a time when the armed conflict in eastern Ukraine was flaring up, which continues to this day. "Suddenly the war was there. Nobody could have imagined it," says Botvinov, speaking of his anger and inner protest, but also of his pain and grief over the many people who died. "At the time, I thought to myself: What can I do to counter the war and the terrible situation that is unsettling everyone?" Music! "Friends did say to me: What you're imagining with your festival is completely unrealistic." But Botvinov got the Odessa Classics festival off the ground, which was primarily funded by private individuals, but now also by the city of Odessa and the region. It was successfully staged for the first time in 2015. The initial four festival days have now grown to nine. "But I want to expand even further - to two or maybe even three weeks," emphasizes Botvinov and dreams of "a Salzburg for Eastern Europe". This doesn't seem unrealistic at all when you consider the growing number of visitors who come from places like Kiev, Kharkiv, Lviv (Lemberg) and, increasingly, from abroad.

Those traveling to Odessa from Western Europe may be surprised to find the same artists and ensembles in the playful Mediterranean port city as in their home country. In the recent past, these have included Vadim Repin, Maxim Vengorov, Dimitri Ashkenazy, Antonio Meneses and Matthias Goerne; this year, you will encounter pianists Cyprien Katsaris and Pietro De Maria, violinist Daniel Hope, the Zurich Chamber Orchestra and the Mischa Maisky Trio. A glance at the program shows that a large number of works by Mozart, Beethoven, Rachmaninov, Chopin, Tchaikovsky, Grieg, Vivaldi and Gershwin will be performed. Tango Sensations but also compositions by Piazzolla, Lipesker and Bernstein. Roby Lakatos and his ensemble reinforce the impression of a festival that offers much for many. So just standard repertoire? "No," says Alexey Botvinov, "we are also dedicating an entire evening to the contemporary Georgian composer Gija Kantscheli. He now lives in Antwerp, but is keen to come to Odessa."

Photo: Odessa Classics

Daniel Hope (right) is Artist in Residence

If you want to understand the meaning of Odessa Classics, the pianist emphasizes again and again, you should never forget one thing: "Ukraine became independent in 1991. But since then, no great artists from abroad have come to our country. Artists and composers who have long been known to Western Europeans are often not familiar to Ukrainians, which also applies to a composer like Erwin Schulhoff, for example. That's why I have to try to maintain a balance between the known and the unknown. Stars are very important for our audience. They have missed them in the recent past; now they should be able to get to know them." One of them is Daniel Hope, who will be Artist in Residence at Odessa Classics for three years.

As part of an extra series with highly talented young Ukrainian musicians under the motto "Pilgrims", specialties such as the concert "Mirror in the Mirror" with works by Arvo Pärt and Max Richter will be cultivated. A youth music competition will also be organized. In addition to a cash prize, the winner will also have the opportunity to perform at the free open-air festival at the foot of the Potemkin Stairs, which director Sergei Eisenstein depicted in his film Battleship Potemkin world-famous. In short: Alexey Botvinov is attempting a balancing act with Odessa Classics. On the one hand, he wants to appeal to "the local audience, who love and understand music", and on the other, to a Western European audience.

Photo: Odessa Classics

Concert at the Potemkin Stairs

In addition to the main concerts in the magnificently renovated Opera House and the Philharmonic Hall, the main attraction is Odessa, the port city founded by Catherine the Great in 1794, with its eastern charm and southern flair. The history of today's metropolis of millions has traditionally been shaped by many peoples, religions and art. Alexander Pushkin once said: "In Odessa, you breathe Europe." Without the inspiring effect of this city, would the poet ever have written his verse novel Eugene Onegin would have written? But Odessa is also the home of legendary violinists such as David Oistrakh, Nathan Milstein and Zakhar Bron, and no less legendary pianists such as Emil Gilels, Svyatoslav Richter and Shura Cherkassky.

Yes, Odessa is irresistible, says Alexey Botvinov. Even he is constantly surprised by the special atmosphere of his home city. During the festival period, especially at the open-air concert: "When I look up at the 10,000 spectators on the steps of the Potemkin Staircase, it's an incomparable experience every time."
 

Subscribers to the Thurgau Cantonal Library can now use the music streaming service "Freegal Music" to discover tracks from a collection of over 15 million songs, music videos and audio books from more than 40,000 music labels worldwide, including Sony Music, Epic, RCA and Columbia. You can browse through playlists or create your own wish list.

With this offer, users can stream three hours of music, music videos or audio books every day. In addition, three free downloads of music or music videos are possible every week. The service can be used directly via the website or a free app without any additional software. All you need is a library card from the Thurgau Cantonal Library.

"How do we want to live?" is the motto of this year's Heidelberg Spring (March 16 to April 14). It is the final part of the Enlightenment trilogy, which in previous years dealt with the "foreign" and the "own species". In addition to orchestral concerts, chamber music and recitals, the festival also includes its own master classes such as the Chamber Music Academy led by Igor Levit and Thomas Hampson's Lied Academy, the artistic results of which can be heard in the festival program. Artistic Director Thorsten Schmidt is looking to the future, especially in the so-called LAB, which brings together representatives of different arts and experiments with new concert and music theater forms. With the world premiere of Castor&&Pollux the dignified, wood-panelled old auditorium of Heidelberg University presented a "multimedia music theater for ensemble, video art and 4D sound", as the 70-minute evening is called. That at least sounds very innovative and like a new listening experience. A grid floor has been installed in the old auditorium. Some ladies therefore have to swap their heels for heels at the entrance to avoid getting stuck in the walk-in sound system. An eight-column loudspeaker construction stands in the middle of the hall. Several monitors and a large screen at the head of the hall, where the baroque ensemble The Rossetti Players under the direction of Barbara Konrad is also positioned, complete the setting. The eight members of the vocal ensemble have mingled with the audience, some of whom are seated on wooden beams.

The evening is on the trail of the eternal desire for immortality and seeks to build a bridge between the ancient myth of Castor and Pollux and artificial intelligence, between the baroque sounds of Jean-Philippe Rameau's opera of the same name and the live electronics of Lukas Rehm, who also shot the videos for the evening. Unfortunately, the production (Lisa Charlotte Friederich: libretto and direction; Jim Igor Kallenberg: dramaturgy) does not live up to its promise. It gets tangled up in the many references it tries to spin. Above all, it creates too little musical-theatrical presence. Even the beginning is wasted when Natalie Pérez tells the entire story of the human-divine twins Castor and Pollux in a matter-of-fact way. What musical drama could have been developed from individual scenes, such as when Castor is fatally injured and has to go to the underworld, when Pollux is torn apart by longing and follows his brother to Hades for a day. Rameau's overture is only heard afterwards - initially played in a bouncy, majestic manner by the nine-piece baroque ensemble, then digitally processed and sent over the loudspeakers. The machine replaces the human. Videos of the Castor and Pollux massif in the Valais Alps flicker across the monitors, followed by statements from scientists and purely digital landscapes. The eight singers wander through the room, introduce themselves as Castor or Pollux and talk about the Heidelberg Human Brain Project, for which a human brain is being recreated as a giant computer in a four-storey building. The sung arias, duets and choruses by Rameau can create individual touching moments, but hang incoherently in the room. In between, Lukas Rehm's electronic music repeatedly shapes the action with billowing soundscapes, multicolored noise and thoroughly fascinating sound creations in excellent sound quality. However, there is no compelling contact between the various elements of the evening. Castor&&Pollux resembles a collage - assembled from set pieces that have too little to do with each other. The characters in this laboratory experiment remain the same until the final chorus Que les cieux, que la terre faceless and interchangeable.

David Philip Heftis Media nox for flute and chamber orchestra, on the other hand, has a very special tone. The work commissioned by the Heidelberger Frühling is the Swiss composer's third work in his four-part cycle Night watch. From the very beginning, it unfolds a special atmosphere between calm and restlessness, blurred and clear contours, tonal centers and quarter-tone ambiguities. For the flute part, which Tatjana Ruhland, principal flutist with the SWR Symphony Orchestra, models with the greatest art of differentiation, Hefti demands modern playing techniques such as multiphonics, percussive slap toungs and glissandi, which repeatedly pull the rug from under the feet. Hefti plays with timbres when the same tone is constantly remixed by the different registers. The Deutsche Radio-Philharmonie Saarbrücken-Kaiserslautern, under the sensitive direction of Jamie Phillips, also gets involved in this fragile music, which is enriched with many shades and which sometimes emerges for a moment from the twilight state into the glistening light and makes nightmarish grimaces.

Together with Simone Escher and Kaspar Pankow, Julia van der Waerden is once again opening her workshop in Zurich's Hunzikerareal to violin making experts, active musicians and other interested parties. Some of the best European bow makers will be guests. In addition to Kaspar Pankow from Zurich, Doriane Bodart, Josephine Thomachot and Pierre Nehr will be coming from Paris, Verena Schauer from London, Jutta Walcher from Oxford and Andrea Proietti from Cesena.

In addition to the exhibition, there will be a supporting program with concerts (Duo Gehweiler, Gadjolinos), lectures (Kaspar Pankow, Thomastik Imfeld), a sound rehearsal (Marc Luisoni and Ronny Spiegel) and a dinner in the workshop with violinist Nina Ulli.

Program, dates, times and location: werkplatzgeige.ch
 

As announced by the Valais State Chancellery on April 18, the State Council created the "Valais Culture and Economy Prize" in 2018 on the basis of a joint initiative by the Department of Health, Social Affairs and Culture and the Department of Economic Affairs and Education. The aim was to honour and recognize the commitment of an institution, company or event that dedicates its activities to cultural and economic development. The prize, endowed with CHF 20,000, is awarded annually.

The decisive selection criteria are: "originality, quality and exemplary character of the productions and realizations recognized by cultural and economic circles; reach and long-term national and international appeal; cultural and economic impact for Valais; solid, long-term financing model."

The State Chancellery continues: "In 1974, the Hungarian musician György Sebök founded a music festival in Ernen. For him, the village was an oasis of culture and music, far away from the hustle and bustle: great music in a simple setting. A plausible concept with which he brought together exceptional musicians. Today, a literature week and a writing workshop are also held as part of the music festival. Although the death of the founder (1999) can be a difficult moment for a festival of this level, the Musikdorf Ernen association knew how to carry on his work. The association thus continues to make an important contribution to the musical image of Valais. It also makes a significant contribution to the attractiveness of the municipality of Ernen and the region. As a strong sign of recognition, the association received the Prix Montagne in 2013.

The association covers around three quarters of its budget of CHF 770,000 through the sale of its productions, sponsorship, private patrons and the direct contributions of its 470 members. The municipalities of Ernen and Brig, the canton and the Loterie Romande contribute just over a quarter with 200,000 francs (2018). These four sources of funding give the music village stability and longevity. The association thus finances half a million francs worth of wages and services in Valais. The organizers estimate the direct added value for the regional economy at around 2 million francs."
 

Traditionally, the reigning Swiss champion is allowed to take part in the annual competition as Switzerland's representative and compete for the title of European Brass Band Champion. The Valaisia Brass Band, the reigning European champion, won the Swiss Brass Band Competition last fall. However, it was already pre-qualified for the 2019 European Brass Band Competition, which means that the BML, as the second-placed Swiss band, is also entitled to a starting place. 

The European Brass Band Competition takes place in a different country each year and is being held this year in Montreux, Switzerland. The BML was the first Swiss band to win the competition in Perth (Scotland) in 2014.

More than 60 candidates applied to succeed Lucerne's artistic director Benedikt von Peter, who is moving to Theater Basel. The Lucerne Theater Foundation Board unanimously elected the future artistic director. Her contract initially covers the 2021/22 to 2025/26 seasons.

Despite the large number of applications, the selection committee decided to appoint the future artistic director directly. Karr was born in Stuttgart in July 1968 and studied music, musicology and modern German literary history. She was a dramaturge and project manager for contemporary music and music theater, worked at the Nationaltheater Mannheim before moving to the Oldenburg State Theater as opera director and finally joining the Mainz State Theater as chief dramaturge for opera.

In 2018, Ina Karr was also a production dramaturge at the Salzburg Festival for Mozart's opera "The Magic Flute". She develops new works in the field of music theater for young audiences, publishes in specialist magazines and is a regular jury member.

The main task of the position is to implement the city council's strategic mandate to position Winterthur as a city of culture. According to the press release, "the first step will be to compile an overview of the marketing activities of Winterthur's cultural players in order to subsequently determine the priority measures in the area of overarching cultural marketing". At the same time, a digital museum pass for Winterthur's museums will be launched as an initial measure to replace the existing analog museum pass.

32-year-old Laura Bösiger has lived in Winterthur for 13 years. She studied journalism and organizational communication and has extensive project experience in the cultural, communication, catering, event and marketing sectors. Laura Bösiger has been Co-Managing Director of the Winterthur Music Festival for three years and will remain so until after this year's festival.