For more biodiversity in music

Heinrich Baumgartner - A music competition is only as good as its juries. If they know how to put themselves in the participants' shoes and support them from a wealth of experience, then the horrors of the competition are lessened for the participants and the possibilities of the competition are exhausted.

Over the years and decades of its existence, the Youth Music Competition has succeeded in building up a large network of competent jury members who are responsible for ensuring that the assessments and feedback to the participants are fair.

Pianist Simone Keller is one of the jury members who has been a highly committed member of the jury and expert committee for many years and has now decided to devote more time to other projects. We took this departure as an opportunity to ask her for a few more assessments on fundamental topics relating to the competition. Despite her packed calendar of appearances these days, she has taken the time to formulate a few written statements:

Simone Keller, what are your most important experiences with the Youth Music Competition as a participant, jury and expert committee member (positive, negative, changes)?

For me personally, competition does not only have positive connotations. In art in particular, I believe that supposedly absolute measurability and dogged competitive pressure can be extremely counterproductive. My relationship to music competitions has therefore always been ambivalent. However, as it cannot be denied that my own musical development has been greatly enhanced by competing in the Swiss Youth Music Competition, I am happy to support the positive aspects of the competition. In recent years, I have experienced a very differentiated culture of discussion in the expert commission and a very careful approach to this responsible task.

What do experimental and interdisciplinary formats mean to you personally? How did you find the approach? Experiences with different fellow musicians and audiences? Experiences with free space?

When I used to take part in the SJMW as a child, a so-called "compulsory piece" by a modern Swiss composer was prescribed for each category in each discipline. I was always totally thrilled by this little broadening of my horizons, which seemed to me like learning a new foreign language. When you then met the other participants at the competition, you could hear how different the interpretations sounded and draw a lot of inspiration for your own playing. I thought that was wonderful and never had any aversions or reservations about new sounds, but found it quite natural that musical expression can be very diverse. Perhaps this was also due to the fact that I grew up on a farm where biodiversity was part of everyday life.

I would like to see this "biodiversity" become even more audible and visible in our FreeSpace in the future. Although we have already received very diverse contributions, we hope that in the coming years we can motivate even more children and young people to expose themselves with unconventional ideas and surprise us with their music.

You have an international perspective on issues of cultural promotion and music education. Do you think there are developments that are fundamentally going in the right or wrong direction in our country?

Basically, I see a lot of positive developments in the musical promotion of children and young people and cultural participation in our society in general. Occasionally, however, I also see an excessive competitive pressure at Swiss universities, where fear of being overrun by foreign competition can arise instead of seeing the high international level as an enrichment.

Due to the global political changes of recent years, we will have to deal more intensively with the issue of refugees in the future. For this reason, I have founded the SYM association - Save Young Musicians - together with other musicians, with which we want to support young musicians from crisis regions, which is why I will be withdrawing from the SJMW in order to be able to concentrate more on this new task.