Lo & Leduc's song entered the singles charts in February at position 39, improved steadily and reached number one in March. It stayed there for 21 weeks and set a new all-time record: No other song has been placed at the top more often than "079".

"Schnupf, Schnaps + Edelwyss" by Trauffer topped the Swiss album charts for six weeks. The album was in the charts for a total of 47 weeks - and took the top position in the 2018 annual charts.

The two acts were presented with a Number 1 Award by GfK Entertainment. It honors national artists whose album or single tops the Swiss charts. The hit parade in Switzerland is determined by the German company GfK Entertainment on behalf of IFPI Switzerland.

The finalists of the competition will perform with the Philadelphia Orchestra under the baton of Yannick Nézet-Séguin. The Board of Directors of the competition consists of the Conservatory Director Li-guang Wang (President), Yoheved Kaplinsky (Artistic Director) and Richard Rodzinski. The event will be held as a piano competition in Beijing in May this year. The participants were selected by renowned teachers.

In addition to Kaplinsky, the jury consists of Dmitri Alexeev, Jan Jiracek von Arnim, Lydia Artymiw, Boris Berman, Michel Beroff, Fabio Bidini, Warren Jones, Katarzyna Popowa-Zydroń and Arie Vardi. The candidates are not current or former students of the jury members.

In addition to the prize money, the winner of the competition will receive career support. He or she will be mentored by the agencies Opus 3 Artists (USA) and Armstrong Music and Arts (China) and will complete a three-year concert tour.

"The appeal of the conducting competition is very high because our scene is strongly oriented towards reputation," Sandro Blank is convinced. The last winner made his breakthrough not least thanks to the performances in Baden. As a prizewinner, he was able to present himself wherever he wanted. Another reward was the opportunity to lead the Swiss Army match.

However, the victory shortly before the first interview also made Feldmusik Sarnen sit up and take notice - after a two-year process, Sandro Blank was finally chosen as the new conductor. The professional conductor is also musical director of the Lucerne Youth Wind Orchestra and the Stadtmusik Zug and plays in the Nexus Reed Quintet.

Sandro Blank attended conducting courses with Tony Kurmann as a teenager. However, his career only really took off at the beginning of his studies at the Basel University of Music. The saxophonist had chosen conducting as a minor subject - and Felix Hauswirth only needed one lesson to trigger the famous "aha" effect in the young musician from Schwyz: "I immediately felt that conducting was my thing," recalls the 2016 winner. The decisive factor is not the technical part, which has to work somehow. Sandro Blank's strength lies in his musical imagination, which he "really enjoys".
 

"Conductors should be self-critical and always question themselves," says Blank. Taking part in Baden gave him the confidence that I'm on the right track". However, this took "a few night shifts". Because although Blank put in a lot of effort and rehearsed all seven works before the first day of the competition, he also wanted to be perfect in the nuances.

He knew what was needed in Baden, not least from his first participation in the competition almost six years ago. Although success had not yet materialized at the time, Blank benefited greatly. The competition gave him a lot of confidence in his future work as a conductor. This in turn gave him the strength to face the challenges of the four-day competition again in 2016.
 

Blank appreciates facing a competition. The Baden Conducting Competition means that as a young conductor you have to perform immediately in front of an unknown orchestra. Leaving your comfort zone is an important experience. For Blank, the five-minute rehearsal with the semi-final orchestra is particularly crucial for the competition. For him, but possibly also for the jury, these were the most important minutes of the four-day competition. Because this is where it becomes clear whether a conductor understands his profession.

According to a press release from the Lucerne School of Music, Valentin Gloor studied solo singing at the Winterthur-Zurich University of Music and at the University of Music and Performing Arts Graz (Austria), where he graduated with distinction in Artistic Research in 2013. He was a research fellow and associate researcher at the Orpheus Instituut Gent (Belgium) and later worked as a freelancer. Already during his education, Gloor acquired in-depth knowledge of the Swiss educational landscape as President of the Professional Training Commission of the "Swiss Music Pedagogical Association SMPV" and Head of the "Swiss Academy of Music and Music Pedagogy Foundation" in management positions. He then successively expanded his management skills: first as founding rector of the Department of Music and later as a member of the Board of the Kalaidos University of Applied Sciences Switzerland and, from 2014, as Director of the Winterthur Conservatory. He also gained experience in political contexts as a board member of the Association of Zurich Music Schools and the Association of Swiss Music Schools (music education department and vice-presidency).

He has also worked as a private teacher and lecturer at music schools and cantonal schools, as a guest lecturer at universities in Brazil, as a freelance singer in Switzerland and abroad and as a choirmaster.

Choral music from Great Britain is becoming increasingly popular in Germany and Oxford University Press (OUP) is the leading provider of this repertoire. The works of contemporary composers such as Bob Chilcott and John Rutter as well as historical compositions by Thomas Tallis and Ralph Vaughan Williams inspire German audiences.

In British choirs, on the other hand, there is increasing interest in modern Urtext editions of choral symphonic works by J. S. Bach, Handel, Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven, Schubert, Mendelssohn and Brahms, for example - a core competence of Carus-Verlag.

Both publishing houses are thus counting on greater awareness and availability of their program for choirs and organists in the British Isles and Germany respectively. The cooperation starts immediately.
 

Bachtrack also notes, for example, that contemporary female composers are still severely underrepresented in the concert hall, with a particularly alarmingly low figure in Germany: of all contemporary works performed by German orchestras in 2018, only 5 percent were by women. Sweden has the highest figure here, at 37 percent.

Women are improving faster than men in the 2018 statistics, albeit from a weak starting point: Clara Schumann is in second place behind Lili Boulanger as the most performed female composer, and both also made it into the list of the top 100 composers, at 94th and 85th place respectively. They are the first women in the top 100.

Four German and one Austrian orchestra have made it into the top 10 most active orchestras in the world, with the Nordwestdeutsche Philharmonie in second place with 139 performances. Composer Jörg Widmann is in third place in the top 5 most frequently performed contemporary composers worldwide.

More info: www.bachtrack.com

The Arnold Schönberg Center in Vienna is organizing an international symposium in collaboration with the Arnold Schönberg Science Center and the Vienna School at the Institute for Musicology and Interpretation Research at the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna from 17 to 19 October 2019.

The symposium will focus on sketching in the Viennese School. The focus will be on compositional sketches by Arnold Schönberg, Alban Berg and Anton Webern from the transitional period around 1908/09 as well as the early phase of composition with twelve notes related only to each other in the years 1921 to 1924.

For the "Free papers" section, submissions are welcome on the thematic focus on compositional sketches by Arnold Schönberg as well as on questions of current Schönberg research.

The symposium offers scientists the opportunity to present the results of their research in a 20-minute lecture. Symposium languages are German and English. A publication of selected contributions and free submissions is planned for the Journal of the Arnold Schönberg Center 17/2020.