The Musician's Union has more than 30,000 members in the UK. According to their study, almost half of them have already had to look for work outside the music industry. 70 percent are not able to carry out their profession as before. 87 percent are struggling with major financial difficulties.

The Musicians' Union has called on the government to take urgent action to protect and safeguard the future of the music and culture industry in the UK. It has also written an open letter to the authorities in Northern Ireland, who are currently banning public performances by musicians.

The Grand Théâtre de Genève has been performed by the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande since 1962. As a rule, eight operas (most of them in-house productions), two to three ballets and a few other pieces of music are performed each season. The artistic director is Aviel Cahn.

Opernwelt, a Berlin-based trade journal for music theater, annually identifies the best opera houses, productions, singers, directors and choirs in Germany, Austria and Switzerland for the previous season. Around 50 opera critics from various countries are interviewed for the survey, which enjoys a high reputation among experts.

The award is published annually at the beginning of the fall at the end of the season. Most recently, the Theater Basel in Switzerland was awarded several times (2009 and 2010 Opera House of the Year).

Max Aeberli founded and conducts various choirs and large-scale orchestral projects, according to the canton's press release, with an innovative approach to early, dramatic, sacred, lyrical, contemporary and experimental music, often at special performance venues and in a harmonious atmosphere. He often sought out unknown works, with which he ensured Swiss premieres or world premieres.

Max Aeberli completed his professional studies at the Lucerne University of Music. He specialized in music education with Josef Röösli, choral conducting with Hans Zihlmann and Alois Koch, and piano with Rene Gerber. His circle of activities includes the Cantate choir, the Sängerbund, church choirs, children's choirs, the cantacanti choir and Dilettanti.
 

On September 25, the Culture Taskforce wrote the following about the design of the Covid-19 Act: "The cultural sector is largely pleased with the federal parliament's design of the Covid-19 Act. The continuation of support measures for the cultural sector is essential for the preservation of cultural diversity. The Culture Taskforce welcomes the following decisions in particular:

Art. 1 para. 3 Involvement of the cantons and umbrella organizations of the social partners in the development of measures

Art. 11 para. 2 The increase in the cost ceiling to CHF 100 million for compensation for cultural enterprises
The federal government continues to provide for loss compensation for cultural enterprises, half of which is to be co-financed by the cantons. Unfortunately, the cultural sector's call for organizers to be additionally covered by a kind of risk fund was not taken up. This makes it all the more important to find a practical, unbureaucratic form of compensation that gives event organizers as much planning security as possible. We regret that creative artists will be excluded from the cancellation compensation in future. It is therefore all the more important that the cantons also accept the fees and royalties of cultural professionals in the cancellation calculations of cultural enterprises.

Art.11 Ab. 3 Transformation projects
New formats must be tried out. However, pure streaming offerings cannot be a substitute for live performances, neither economically nor socially. Constructive cooperation with the funding bodies is necessary here so that new or adapted formats can be created. Not only cultural enterprises should benefit from this funding, but also collaborative projects by cultural professionals themselves.

Art.11 para 4 Continuation of essential emergency aid by Suisseculture Sociale
It is sensibly defined and now covers all important groups of beneficiaries. It is unclear whether the budget will be sufficient if cultural workers no longer receive compensation for loss of earnings, there is no more short-time working compensation for temporary employees and the compensation for loss of earnings for the self-employed will only be continued until mid-2021.

Art. 15 Measures to compensate loss of earnings for self-employed persons and persons in an employer-like position
Compensation not only in the event of business interruption, but also in the event of significantly restricted operation, is crucial for many and to be welcomed. However, it is regrettable how Parliament defines the "significant restriction": Only those with less than 55% of average turnover over the last five years are eligible. The period of validity until mid-2021 is also too short, especially for the cultural sector, as it will take longer to return to normal operations.

Art. 17 That the Short-time work for temporary employees is to be discontinued, we regret this. In the cultural sector, many people work in temporary, project-related short-term positions. They are already working in precarious conditions and do not meet the conditions for daily unemployment benefits. The only support available to them under the federal measures is emergency aid from Suisseculture Sociale. Unfortunately, the proposal to extend the framework period for unemployment insurance in order to allow short-term temporary employees access to unemployment insurance was not heard in parliament either."
 

The debate on the 2021-2024 cultural dispatch went almost unnoticed. Parliament not only approved the budget proposed by the Federal Council, but also increased it in certain areas. The Culture Taskforce welcomes the fact that "compliance with minimum or indicative fees set by professional associations for cultural workers has been included in the cultural dispatch as an explicit condition for cultural funding. This is a positive signal both for Swiss cultural professionals whose livelihoods are threatened by the Covid-19 crisis and an invitation to other cultural funding institutions - cantons, cities and municipalities as well as private foundations - to follow suit."

The reports provided by the teams in the two competitions are published below in abridged form.

The 20th edition of the Eastern Switzerland Soloist and Ensemble Competition (September 5/6, 2020) should have been crowned with a big anniversary celebration. But the coronavirus has shattered all these plans. Thanks to the current situation and the great efforts of the organizers to comply with the protection concepts of the municipality and canton, the competition could be successfully held in Sirnach. Around 600 soloists and ensembles faced the judges at the weekend. For the competition participants, everything went as usual: playing in, the competition performance and finally the ranking announcement. But the whole "trappings" were completely different. There was no marquee, no festival benches and tables. There were only a few chairs in the performance halls to ensure social distancing. Wearing a mask was recommended. This was a very special feeling for the organizers and the audience, because before Corona, only full auditoriums were known.

The OSEW is very popular with both music teachers and pupils, as shown by the ever-increasing number of registrations. This year in particular, it is very pleasing that so many young people have enrolled despite the difficult circumstances. Some even traveled from central Switzerland or the canton of Bern. However, most of them came from the cantons of Zurich, St. Gallen, Thurgau and Appenzell. A sign that music is an important element in life and brings joy and motivation even in difficult times.
 

Photo: OSEW

The youngest OSEW participant, Julia Christen, took two podium places in the xylophone and snare drum categories

The ranking announcements were spread throughout the day. Participants and their families found this very convenient. This meant they didn't have to wait until the evening to receive the trophy they had been waiting for. "The standard of these girls and boys is really high," said one of the judges, impressed. Thanks to the numerous volunteers, everything ran smoothly.

The Board is already working on the OSEW 2021. The organizers are very keen to expand and rejuvenate the board and the music committee. Many of the current members have been involved since the association was founded and would like to hand over the reins to younger people.
 

Despite the school closures due to the coronavirus situation during the preparation period, a large number of percussionists prepared for and took part in the second Swiss Percussion Competition (September 19/20, 2020). Thanks to a very good hygiene concept and all the prescribed safety measures, this year's competition went off without a hitch.

Participants from all parts of Switzerland and neighboring countries faced the top-class jury (Gerhard Eberl, Iwan Jenny, Jochen Schorer, Andreas Csok, Marta Klimasara, Christian Hartmann, Emmanuel Séjourné) at the Teuchelweiher multi-purpose facility in Winterthur. 270 young participants in the categories children, advanced, elite and students played drum set, timpani, drums, all mallet instruments and other percussion instruments both solo and in various ensembles.

Several tons of percussion instruments had to be provided for the entire competition. This was possible thanks to many helpers. On the day of the competition, they were able to see for themselves that the great effort they had put in was worthwhile for the young people and the budding musicians. The many visitors also greatly appreciated all the effort. The organizers received a lot of praise throughout.

The great success is an incentive for the President of the Swiss Percussion Competition, Simon Forster from Winterthur, himself a professional percussionist, to organize the next competition on 18/19 September 2021, which will also take place in Winterthur again.
 

The 62-year-old Basel native, who has won numerous prestigious film and TV awards, achieved his international breakthrough in 1996 with the film "Jenseits der Stille" by Caroline Link, which received both the German Film Award and an Oscar nomination. Since then, he has composed the music for numerous audience favorites from the German film industry in his sound studio in Gundeldingerfeld, including the 2002 Oscar-winning "Nowhere in Africa" and "The White Maasai".

Niki Reiser studied classical music in Basel, specializing in flute, before studying jazz and film music at the Berklee School of Music in Boston. He usually records his film music with the participation of musicians from Basel and with his sound engineer Daniel Dettwiler at Idee und Klang Studio Basel. At the Zurich University of the Arts, he teaches on the master's course for film and theater music. As a jazz flutist, he was a member of the Basel klezmer jazz band Kol Simcha for many years.

There is something theatrical about Brunnen on Lake Lucerne, with the water mirror as a stage and the mountains as a backdrop. If you wish, you can recognize pitches in the rise and fall of the peaks or a rhythmic form in the rise and fall of the waves during foehn storms. Untouched by the dramatic changes to the townscape over the last century, Villa Schoeck on the Gütsch is slightly elevated with a view of the lake. It is no wonder that Othmar Schoeck was fascinated by musical theater, with such images before his eyes.

This edition marks the start of a new cycle of the Schoeck Festival in Brunnen. The sponsoring association has set itself the task of embedding Othmar Schoeck's work in a larger context with an annual festival. This time, the focus was on images of women in Schoeck's works and in 19th and 20th century music theater. The festival title "Amazons" was a tongue-in-cheek reference to a particularly enigmatic figure in world literature and an almost avant-garde opera by the Brunner composer: Penthesileapremiered in Dresden in 1927 and has been a regular part of the repertoire of renowned opera houses ever since. But it was also intended to provide an outlook on women in artistic professions in connection with the #MeToo movement. The festival could have gone on for many more days before all the keywords were covered.

The fact that the board of the association did not allow itself to be slowed down or completely stopped by corona-related imponderables in the preparation and implementation of the festival is to be highly commended. Not having an audience was an adjustment that had a very direct impact on the budget. The livestream transmission placed high technical demands. And yet: the artists had the opportunity to play and the beautiful thematic focus did not fade into the background. On the contrary. Bravo to the festival organizers first and foremost.

A serenade to kick things off: The Brunnen Music Society, conducted by Michael Schlüssel, played Schoeck's "Military March" from the windows of the Künstlervilla. Photo: SMZ

Brunnen and its inhabitants were actively involved. The music society kicked off the festival and explored the village in the footsteps of remarkable women, adding to the festival's focus on everyday history.

The musical highlight of the festival on Saturday evening was eagerly awaited. Works by the contemporary composer Stefan Keller entered into a dialog with compositions by Othmar Schoeck. It proved to be a good decision by the festival directors to give space to contemporary art. Stefan Keller Three songs based on poems by Unica Zürn (world premiere), Swing (2015) and Piece for piano (2009) sounded exciting and were performed with great urgency and virtuosity. Truike van der Poelaccompanied on the grand piano by J. Marc Reichow, set strong emotional accents with the warm timbre of her voice, both for the songs of the Unica Zürn cycle and for the three Schoeck songs based on poems by Keller, Storm and Eichendorff op. 35. Rafael Rütti (piano) Mateusz Szczepkowski (violin) and David Snow (viola), which congenially combines the rhythmic tension of Stefan Keller's music with Schoeck's oeuvre (Andante in E flat major, Violin Sonata op. 46, Consolation and Toccata op. 29).

Alvaro Schoeck, a great-nephew of the composer, caused a minor sensation with the program compilation. It was unbelievable how the pieces resonated with each other and with their performance venue. They will probably never sound the same again in this dialog of confrontation and intermingling.

The performance in the studio of the Schoeck Villa was an emergency solution as a result of the corona restrictions, whereby the music revealed hidden and exclusive references to the space (after all, it was partly created here). The excellent acoustics and suitability of the studio for chamber music were also evident. We can only hope that the concert reached its audience via livestream. And also that this historic location and the villa as a whole will be preserved, a wish whose scope was further outlined in a panel discussion at the very end of the festival.

Panel discussion on the future of Villa Schoeck
From left: Chris Walton (music historian, Schoeck biographer), Monika Twerenbold (cantonal monument preservation), Christoph Dettling (architect, moderator), Roger Aeschbach (scenographer), Josias Clavadetscher (cultural commission of the municipality of Ingenbohl). Photo: SMZ

The performance homELESS was shown on two evenings and led back to the thematic focus. One speaker (Stephanie Gossger), a singer (Anna Schors), a pianist (Hélène Favre-Bulle) and women who have written music history in one way or another were suddenly in the room, including Fanny Mendelssohn and Clara Schumann, Pauline Viardot and Ethel Smyth, Cécile Chaminade and Alma Mahler. Daring combinations, embedded in text fragments by Colette, the versatile variety artist, author and passionate campaigner for women's rights. HeimatLOS plays virtuously with the voices of 19th and 20th century female artists who struggled with their claim to a stage life, subjectively, painfully, wittily and confidently. What worked for Colette and culminated in her celebrated retirement at the Palais Royal in Paris is a challenge for young women today, despite equal rights.

Performance "heimatLOS" in the artists' studio. Together with director Tamara Heimbrock, Anna Schors (front), Stephanie Gossger (above) and Hélène Favre-Bulle developed a play tailored to the space. Photo: SMZ

The director Tamara Heimbrock be grateful for their courage, their erudition and their good reference library, which has made the wealth of associations of homELESS were the basis. The lyrics of the poems and songs were not just atmospheric images, but a system of references to women, each of which depicted an entire universe. Alongside Colette, Marlene Dietrich (her famous song If I could make a wish praises the renunciation of fulfillment as the real secret of enjoying life), Pauline Viardot (the celebrated diva of the Belle Epoque and Turgenev's muse) and Mascha Kaléko (as a Jew, she experienced a particularly tragic but stoically endured discomfort that filled her poetry with never-ending warmth and tenderness). Another trail led to the composer Judith Weir, who achieved the greatest possible professional recognition as Master of the Queen's Music. A hodgepodge? But yes. This is exactly what the Wunderkammer principle of the studio space, which was played with wit and daring by the artists, is all about. References to the performers' own history were edited into the film and showed their lives today: Berlin subway instead of Palais Royal, birch grove in Mauerpark instead of aristocratic country estate and the vibration of a railroad bridge instead of waltzing in the Savoy ballroom.

During the day, the Atelier was twice a meeting place for international musicology, both physically and virtually. A top-class symposium in cooperation with the Institute of Musicology at the University of Zurich (Inga Mai Groote, chair of the panel discussion) and the Mariann Steegmann Foundation under the direction of Merle Tjadina Fahrholz with female voices and female roles in 19th and 20th century opera (program and CVs of the participants at https://schoeckfestival.ch/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/frauen-stimmen.pdf). The balance between music theory and performance practice was very successful.

International Symposium "Women:Voices - Roles and Personalities"
Subtitle: "Opera in transition from the 19th and 20th centuries". Some speakers were connected via Zoom, lectures and discussion rounds were streamed live. Photo: SMZ

The social situation of female stage artists between 1870 and 1930 was examined, the attribution of immorality to female singers, the dilemma of success, because because gainful employment was considered reprehensible for middle-class women, financial success was all the more so. From a moral point of view, a life as an artist could be nothing other than a failure. Women tried out individual career strategies by staging themselves as divas or tying themselves to famous names, one example being the alto Ilona Durigo (1881-1943) and Othmar Schoeck. As an interpreter of his songs from 1911 onwards, she played a role in his biography that was perceived as binding by the public. The Zurich patron Mathilde Schwarzenbach called them a "musical couple" (Anna Ricke).

Barbara Beyer, a dramaturge and director with practical experience on numerous opera stages in German-speaking countries, gave an outline of images of the feminine from Claudio Monteverdi's L'incoronazione di Poppea about Händel's Alcina to the female roles of the 19th century. While baroque opera was extremely experimental in its play with gender roles - in this respect, the artistic practice of the time is a forerunner of feminist research today - in the bourgeois age, the role and character images became more fixed. Stereotypes emerged that often made women the victims of their love. What was special about this, however, was that the man's soul was saved. In the 19th century, marriage and gender were important topics of discourse, reported music historian Melanie Unseld, hardly anything else preoccupied society so much in the 19th century. The natural differentiation between the sexes was based on a strict dichotomy: the man was the normal, proper sex, the woman the "other" sex, beautiful, weak, inadequate.

And Penthesilea? Schoeck was in his late thirties when he took on the material, and we don't know what exactly motivated him to do so. Penthesilea's bloodthirsty murder of the unsuspecting Achilles is pure battle of the sexes, but in Kleist's work, the Amazon queen's rebellion against a normative social order appears to be the real drama. Did Schoeck follow him in this? He wrote provocatively expressionist music with unusual instrumentation that was a hit with audiences.

Consistently inductive, the conductor and mediator Graziella Contratto in the analysis of Schoeck's images of women: She moved from the small structural unit to the larger insight. By including not only large stage works but also songs in her considerations, she brought astonishing things to light: Othmar Schoeck dealt with female figures who were outsiders, be it the enigmatic Peregrina (op. 17 No. 4), the vagrant heroine of a cycle of poems by Eduard Mörike, the violent Venus, a rebel who physically destroys her admirer, or the terrible Penthesilea, who fails because of her excess of feelings. Then the change: "With the birth of the daughter Gisela, not only did a change take place in the personality of the apparently happily fulfilled father in his social behavior, but also in the compositional aesthetics can be seen, for example, in the Stargazer op. 52/7 demonstrates that the texture has a greater inner resonance, an even more careful care of the polyphonic voice tissues. Is it a protective gesture that also contributes to a repression of the past catastrophes of the Second World War or simply a transfiguring perspective of old age, inwardly warmed by fatherhood?"

The next festival will take place from September 10 to 12, 2021 under the motto "passé composé" - Neoclassicism in Switzerland.
https://schoeckfestival.ch
The Swiss Music Newspaper was the media partner of the 2020 festival.

Yannis Pouspourikas is originally from Marseille and now lives in Geneva. He studied at the Geneva Conservatory before becoming Sir Simon Rattle's assistant at the Glyndebourne Festival. He has been a guest conductor at the Opéra National de Paris, the Zurich Opera House, the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, the Teatro Real and many others.

Pouspourikas' five-year contract with Theater Orchester Biel Solothurn begins with the 2022/23 season. The position of Chief Conductor of Sinfonie Orchester Biel Solothurn and Director Concerts of Theater Orchester Biel Solothurn now includes the musical direction of one opera production per season in addition to numerous concert conductorships.

Kaspar Zehnder has been Chief Conductor of the Biel Solothurn Symphony Orchestra since 2012 and is Director Concerts of the Theater Orchester Biel Solothurn, an institution newly founded in 2013 following the merger with the theater. From summer 2022, Zehnder will devote himself to new tasks, but will remain closely associated with TOBS, the orchestra and its audiences.

Final works, especially unfinished ones, always carry a secret. How would the ending have turned out? What else would the musical world have had to expect? Franz Grillparzer's epigram for Schubert's gravestone immediately springs to mind, in which he speaks of "even more beautiful hopes" is the talk of the town. In fact, there are some prominent "missing parts" in the history of music: the end of Bach's Art of the fugue (even if he didn't die over it), Mozart's Requiem, the finale of Bruckner's Ninth or Mahler's Tenth almost as a whole. With other great composers, however, one looks in vain for such weighty words of farewell: Haydn, Mendelssohn, Schumann, Brahms. And with Beethoven? The sketches for a tenth symphony date from the years between 1822 and 1825, and the last string quartets were all published in print by August 1826. Anton Diabelli had already asked Beethoven about a composition for string quintet - a chamber music genre in which a second viola or a second violoncello can achieve completely different sound effects, but also a genre in which, as a rule, only individual works were ever presented (with the exception of Spohr and Onslow).

After his early Opus 4 (1795/96), the Quintet op. 29 (1801) and a Fugue op. 137 (1817), Beethoven also seems to have been reluctant to write for this instrumentation again for a long time. On September 26, 1826, however, he announced to Diabelli that he would complete a work in just six weeks, demanded a fee of 100 gold ducats and also noted: "I will respect their wishes, but without compromising my artistic freedom." However, the six weeks did not come to fruition, and the work apparently barely made it out of the initial sketches stage. When the estate was auctioned off in November 1827, Diabelli (as the correspondent of the Leipzig General Musical Newspaper to report) by his companion "at a relatively exaggerated price also Beethoven's last work, a quintet begun in November 1826, of which, unfortunately, hardly twenty to thirty measures have been put on paper in draft form". The manuscript is lost today, but Diabelli published his own arrangements for piano two and four hands in 1838, renewing the words that it was "Beethoven's last musical thought". This is a Andante maestoso in C major of 10+14 bars each to be repeated, harmonically not surprisingly wandering into the distance and obviously intended as a slow introduction to the first movement. However, Diabelli probably took the notation, which was certainly intended as a particella, far too literally, as there is a considerable distance between the sketch (or draft) and the finished work in Beethoven's case. One should therefore not be too disappointed when listening ...

But anyone really looking for Beethoven's last notes should consult a letter to Karl Holz dated December 3, 1826. There you will find a musical sentence that can also be read as a canon: "We are all wrong, but we are all different" (WoO 198).
 

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Link to the project homepage "52 x Beethoven"

In the Bachelor of Arts in Music program, 61 graduates received their diplomas, 43 of them in the Classical profile and 18 in the Jazz profile. A total of 45 diplomas were awarded in the Master of Arts in Music program, most of them in the classical performance profile (16). In the Master of Arts in Music Education, 53 graduates obtained their professional qualification for teaching at music schools or secondary schools, with the majority of diplomas in the classical profile (31).
In addition, 45 professionals completed their further training with a Diploma of Advanced Studies (DAS) or a Certificate of Advanced Studies (CAS).

At the graduation ceremony, three prizes, each worth 2,000 francs, were awarded by the Strebi Foundation for particularly outstanding Bachelor graduates. The winners were Nils Fischer (Bachelor of Arts/Music and Movement),
Flora Karetka (Bachelor of Arts in Music, classical music profile, majoring in flute) and Luca Koch (Bachelor of Arts in Music, jazz profile, majoring in singing).

More info:
https://www.hslu.ch/de-ch/hochschule-luzern/ueber-uns/medien/medienmitteilungen/2020/09/23/diplomvergabe-fuer-die-166-absolventinnen-und-absolventen-der-hochschule-luzern-musik/
 

According to Dirk Mürbe, Director of the Department of Audiology and Phoniatrics at Charité, the results show that aerosol emissions are also significantly higher in children when singing than when speaking, but vary greatly and are well below the emissions of adults. The results of this study will be used to specify the hygiene concepts for singing in schools and extracurricular activities and thus make it possible for children and youth choirs to sing again under certain conditions.

Four boys and four girls from the Berlin State and Cathedral Choir and the Girls' Choir of the Singakademie Berlin, who had many years of experience in children's choirs, took part in the study. The tests were carried out in the research clean room of the Hermann Rietschel Institute. The children completed various test tasks, using a laser particle counter to determine the number of aerosols formed in the size range from 0.3 to 25 micrometers.

Preprint of the study:
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.09.17.20196733v1

As a result, the BAK writes, reluctance has increased. At the beginning of June, only a quarter of the population wanted to wait until the end of the crisis before visiting cultural events. The survey also shows that the protective measures adopted and the support provided by the public sector to the cultural sector have met with broad approval.

At the beginning of June 2020, 24% of respondents were still prepared to visit cultural institutions or events again "without major reservations". The proportion had fallen to 18% by the end of August. 42% of respondents stated that they would not resume cultural visits before 2021; in the first survey, the figure was 22%.

There are certain differences in terms of the type of cultural offerings: While 36 percent of respondents state that they do not intend to visit a museum or exhibition before 2021, the proportion with regard to "performances such as concerts, theater, opera, dance, etc." is 43 percent.

Original article:
https://www.bak.admin.ch/bak/de/home/aktuelles/nsb-news.msg-id-80461.html

The name ELYS is a neologism made up of the initials Elsässerstrasse and Lysbüchelstrasse. The two buildings have been renovated over the last three years and separated from each other above ground. The resulting courtyard between the buildings, called Esplanade, invites people to linger and meet. ELYS is easily accessible by public transport, but also offers an underground parking garage with over 100 publicly accessible parking spaces.

In addition to the cultural and commercial building, the more than 26,000 square meter cantonal part of the Lysbüchel site will also be home to cooperative apartments, affordable apartments as part of the "1000+" municipal housing program, an elementary school with two kindergartens and daycare facilities, new workplaces, public green spaces and a neighbourhood square.

The Klingental church has been completely renovated and offers space for 30 cantonal sponsored studios for visual artists. It also houses the Klingental exhibition space, a platform for contemporary cultural activities.

The reopening and commissioning of the Klingental Church is an important milestone in the development of the barracks site. The conversion of the main building is still in full swing. From autumn 2021, around 5,000 square meters of space will be available there for culture, socioculture, creative industries and neighbourhood-related uses, supplemented by an innovative restaurant.

Gone are the days when critics could write diatribes about concerts that they hadn't even graced with their presence. Contact tracing is the magic word for putting an unloved guild in its place. So it was of no use to the reviewer that the Rychenberg Competition prizewinners' concert on September 9 was streamed live from the Stadthaus Winterthur. His lack of physical presence would have been noticeable despite his knowledge of the evening's proceedings.

Streaming was a stroke of luck, however, for the two composers Annachiara Gedda and Verena Weinmann, who had to stay away from the concert for quarantine reasons. Young composers rarely have the opportunity to put the sound combinations and dramaturgical sequences they hatch in the quiet chamber to the test of reality, especially with orchestral works. Digital technology has now allowed the two of them to at least not let the opportunity pass completely unused, even if the experience is not comparable to what you can hear in person.

Gedda and Weinmann are two of five prizewinners who were awarded prizes at the Rychenberg Competition and performed at the final concert. The international composition competition was launched in 2018 by the Musikkollegium Winterthur together with the Fotomuseum Winterthur, with the special feature that the participants had to relate their orchestral work to one of three photo series selected by the museum. An unusual task, for which 191 composers from over 30 countries have registered. In the end, 85 works were submitted by the end of March 2019, ten of which were nominated for the final concert by a jury led by President Alfred Zimmerlin. The Musikkollegium then made an effort for these ten pieces that cannot be overestimated. They were rehearsed within a very short space of time, recorded last summer under the alternating direction of Thomas Zehetmair and Pierre-Alain Monot and put online for a public vote. (They can still be heard at www.rychenbergcompetition.ch.)
 

The Audience Award was won by Fabian Künzli from Thurgau. His work The horizontal hourglass is a special case, as the version played at the prizewinners' concert did not correspond to the version presented online. This was accelerated by a factor of 8 while the pitches remained the same. This circumstance is somewhat thought-provoking. Because the fast-forward version, which the audience had chosen as the best contribution, seems like a caricature of music, flat and pale compared to the piece played live. It is a mystery how this experimental arrangement, which came across as cold, was able to warm up the audience. Perhaps it was the unusual concept?

The task itself also made you think. But there were no reflections on the relationship between visual and sonic art. Nor were there any digressions on the subject of "art about art". What attracted attention was simply the fact that eight of the ten nominees had chosen the same series of photographs as the subject of their creative will. Find a way or make one by Geneva-based photographer Anastasia Mityukova is inspired by the story of the North Pole explorer Robert Peary. The self-proclaimed first explorer of the North Pole faked the route and success of his journey. Based on this, Mityukova's photo series is a fictitious documentation of a polar expedition made in Switzerland. It was significant how the composers involved in the final concert explained their choice. The quintessence that emerged from all of them was that they were fascinated by the contrast between movement and statics. The majority of participants approached the task from the most general possible point of view. Movement - statics is an opposition that pervades our existence (life - death) and is inherent in all art, both as a problem and as a driving force. Accordingly, no specific point of reference was sought, but rather a series of photographs was chosen that allowed the greatest possible freedom for the artist's own composition. This is not to be criticized in principle, but it does call into question the relevance of the task.
 

However, in the end, the works for Mityukova's picaresque piece won the audience award and second and third place. With ICE_one_h by the Italian painter and composer Valerio Rossi, a piece of music made it to the bottom of the podium whose delicate calmness might have escaped the attention of a less attentive jury. However, Rossi's delicate, wandering and changing sounds in the orchestra seemed too spun in the context of a competition to make it to the top. In complete contrast to the reviewer's second-placed favorite. Chasing Ice by Annachiara Gedda, born in Turin in 1986, impresses with its immense colorfulness and a richness that unites strong contrasts. "New" sounds meet circus, aggression meets tenderness, mischievousness meets pathos. The fact that the broad spectrum of expression does not fall apart is thanks to the composer's sense of sound, who knows how to use the orchestra's possibilities with pinpoint accuracy.

In the end, it is significant that the first prize went to a composer who had not chosen Mityukova's pictures. Adél Koleszár's photo series Wounds of Violencein which the idyllic landscape of Mexico is contrasted with the visible scars of abuse and cartel violence, does not allow an approach in abstract categories. The images of injury and pain are captured by Buenos Aires-born Cecilia Arditto in Tissue and this is immediately translated into sound. Microtonal vibrations make it appear fragile and open the ears to the finest emotions. A communicative composition that speaks directly to the listener and deserves the highest accolade.

And finally, the jury's special prize also went to one of the two exceptions to the rule. Verena Weinmann, a young artist from Frauenfeld, devoted herself to a single picture from Koleszár's series, the Hills of Torreón. In doing so, she again showed a different approach to dealing with an image template. She transferred the proportions of the photograph onto graph paper in order to gain guidelines for the formal design. She evidently implemented this concept with appropriate artistic freedom, as her work never seemed contrived.
 

The Parliamentary Group on Music (PGM) had no choice at its second meeting of the year. For better or worse, it had to deal with the consequences of the coronavirus crisis. While the topic had been on the agenda in the spring, but not really on the agenda, the motto was now "5 months of the Covid-19 storm: consequences and implications for the music sector". And the latter are really drastic, as Stefano Kunz, Head of Political Work at the Swiss Music Council, explained at the beginning. The industry's turnover is likely to plummet this year - in view of Suisa's license income from performance rights (from concerts, music in the hospitality industry or entertainment events), which is down by around two thirds this year. Suisa is also expecting significantly lower revenues in 2021 compared to 2019.* This will have serious long-term consequences for music creators, who will have to expect significantly lower distributions from the copyright society in the coming years.

But that's not all. Another important source of income is also disappearing: music schools are reporting a drop in student numbers of up to 20 percent. Freelance music teachers in particular are feeling the effects of this. It was therefore clear to the Music Council that the previous financial aid from the federal government must be continued - which the National Council decided on the same day, but the Council of States rejected again the following day for the time being. Furthermore, freelancers and the self-employed should finally be given access to unemployment insurance (ALV) and loss of earnings compensation (EO).

Beat Santschi, the representative of the Swiss Musicians' Association (SMV), did not have much better to say. The permanent members of the orchestra are still protected by the collective employment contracts and have "only" had to accept wage cuts of up to 20 percent in some cases. Freelancers also suffer the most in the orchestral landscape, as they are the first to be cut by orchestras. However, it is completely unclear how concert life and thus the orchestras' income will develop. Organizers are therefore increasingly demanding that they be released from any obligations in the event of concert cancellations. After seven months of crisis, many freelancers are now definitely on the brink of financial collapse, emphasized Santschi.

Christoph Trummer, Head of Political Projects at Sonart, the professional association of freelance artists, explained what this means for him: most of his concerts have been canceled or postponed until next year, and he has had only one booking for the new tour planned from December since April. Gigs with an entrance fee have become financially unpredictable. The fixed business costs - primarily a rent of 650 francs - are barely covered by 750 francs EO. According to Trummer, planning the 2021 season is practically impossible. Cross-financing models would disappear, there would hardly be any larger festivals, which would also leave the agencies with nothing. A clear-cutting of the cultural ecosystem is to be feared.

The ideas of many politicians that the worst is now over for culture because events - even larger ones - are possible again were contradicted by the representatives of music clubs, festivals, labels and music managers who were also present. A typical music event has a lead time of around six months. There are still major hurdles even in the programming stage: prohibitive requirements, planning uncertainty due to changing entry regulations and unpredictable last-minute permit withdrawals turn the organization into a lottery. Ticket sales are not at all back to pre-corona levels. As a result, most event organizers are still facing a drop in sales of 80 to 100 percent. On average, their liquidity will last for another six months, after which many will have to call it a day: Lights out.

The Culture Taskforce of the Swiss Music Council lobbied parliamentarians intensively following the Council of States' decisions. In the end, one week after the PGM meeting, the Council of States also largely followed the National Council's line. The support measures for the self-employed and freelancers will be continued with confidence in the self-declarations of those affected, albeit not until the end of 2021, as the Culture Taskforce had called for, but initially until mid-June next year.