The Salzburg Festival keeps an archive of recordings and recordings from over 80 years of Festival history that has grown over the decades. It documents the highlights of European music and theater history and has been digitized professionally and permanently secured by the Austrian Media Library of the Technisches Museum Wien in cooperation with the Austrian Media Library since 2020.

The "Memory of the World" program was founded by Unesco 30 years ago. Its aim is to promote global efforts to preserve documents and make information accessible. Since 2014, the Austrian Unesco Commission has maintained the national Austrian Documentary Heritage Register, which lists documents and document holdings of outstanding importance to Austrian history.

As a performer, percussionist and founding member of the formation "Lauter Luisen", Karin Schulthess (*1969) sets contemporary poetry from the German-speaking world to music, according to a press release from the Canton of Schwyz. During her studio residency in Berlin, Karin Schulthess will develop and set new texts to music and would like to trace the tradition of German chanson and cabaret.

She is fascinated by interdisciplinary projects and intends to develop the fourth full-length program of "Lauter Luisen". Karin Schulthess also wants to "create space for new and unexpected things, to immerse herself in the Berlin scene(s), in this pulsating metropolis with its different cultures, its music and its rhythms".

In addition to Karin Schulthess, Lina Müller, illustrator and visual artist, Canton of Uri, and Béla Rothenbühler, author, Canton of Lucerne, will receive the studio grant in 2024.

About her new role Tabea Zimmermann"The focus of the foundation will continue to be on bringing the imaginative and versatile works of the composer Paul Hindemith closer to as many people as possible. It is very important to me to raise awareness of the originality of Paul Hindemith's musical personality. Hindemith's humorous approach to historical and contemporary themes can also be an incentive in today's world to develop social utopias with and through music. As a musician, I will increasingly encourage festivals, ensembles and teachers to take a fresh look at the music of Paul Hindemith and also to perform less frequently performed groups of works."

The Hindemith Foundation as the composer's legal successor, is dedicated to preserving and disseminating the cultural legacy contained in his musical and literary estate. It maintains the Hindemith Institute Frankfurtwhich, as a center of Hindemith research, also publishes the historical-critical complete edition of his works, as well as the Hindemith Music Center at the composer's last place of residence in Blonay/Switzerland. Courses and workshops on a wide variety of musical topics are held there. She is also the founder of the Paul Hindemith Archive at the University of Zurich.
 

"No pain, no gain." The motto is said to go back to Jane Fonda's aerobics videos from the 1980s. It also describes an attitude in 20th century music education: excellence can only be achieved by practising beyond the pain threshold. Important pedagogical schools even followed the principle that only those who were first broken emotionally could be developed into perfect virtuosity. In sport and dance, this mentality has largely been abandoned - or is in the process of being abandoned, as the recent scandals in Swiss gymnastics and dance training show.

This change of heart is also increasingly evident in music education. At the end of the 1990s, Horst Hildebrandt and Marina Sommacal set up music physiology courses at the Winterthur-Zurich University of Music and the Basel University of Music. In 2005/2006, this led to the founding of the Swiss University Center for Music Physiology as a cooperation project between all Swiss music academies. In addition, trombonist Pia Bucher initiated the Swiss Society for Music Medicine in 1997 as a contact and advice center.

In 2019, the Competence Center for Music Performance Research at the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts which aims to "make a sustainable contribution to promoting health and well-being" in music-making with specific projects and development measures. Part of the project was the symposium "Empowering Musicians: Healthy to Success" organized by music psychologist Elena Alessandri and her team. It broadened the horizon even further than usual: the program included presentations with online connections from New York, London, South Africa and - not that far away geographically, but at least as remarkable in terms of Swiss higher education policy - from Ticino (the Scuola universitaria professionale della Svizzera italiana).

There was a refreshing approach to the topic, for example in the online lecture by Noa Kageyama, who teaches violin and performance psychology at the Juilliard School. He demonstrated how musicians can benefit from the findings of sports psychology - in an unusually relaxed and unpretentious manner for us Central Europeans. Without any fear of commercialization, Kageyama also does this as a business model with offers available on a website called "Bulletproofmusician" can be called up. He made it clear that learning a skill and performing it are not the same thing and require different practice strategies.

Valentin Gloor, the director of the host institution, explained in his welcoming address that the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts has made the topic of health a cross-departmental focus. This interdisciplinary and cross-domain thinking is reflected in the research activities of the Competence Center Music Performance Research, which also includes studies on music therapy treatments. For example, a consultation study is dedicated to the use of music by Parkinson's patients in Switzerland and poses the question of how those affected can use music to improve their quality of life. (Ed. see article by Dawn Rose, SMZ 4/2022, p. 4 or English version musikzeitung.ch/memory)

The symposium made it clear that the zeitgeist in pedagogy and in everyday musical life is changing. Instead of taking overloads as a sign that one is ready for peak performance, methods are now being developed to prevent acute and chronic damage from occurring in the first place. Instead of a repair shop that those seeking help perceive as an asylum of last resort, musicians' medicine is increasingly becoming a place of physical and mental well-being based on partnership.

Oliver Margulies, research associate at the music physiology and music medicine consultation at the Zurich University of the Artspresented an initiative designed to bring this preventative approach to music schools. A corresponding certificate should ensure that the management team of a music school is "aware of possible psycho-physical stress and health problems caused by making music", is committed to prevention and health promotion and offers music physiology training events at regular intervals.

The wish list for music education institutions also includes physical training, relaxation techniques and mental training as part of the musical training of additionally qualified music teachers and regular stage training with a selectable level of challenge in a protected environment. The "practical transfer of research findings on training theory, break concepts, muscle, breathing and hearing physiology, regeneration options, acoustics and instrument making into everyday teaching" are also listed there.

According to its press release, Bern's municipal council is focusing its cultural funding on sustainability, diversity and cultural variety. It is halving the number of funding loans and pooling funding and expertise. The municipal council has also approved service contracts with 25 cultural institutions and forwarded the corresponding commitment credits to the city council. The voters will be asked to decide on four loans in June 2023.

The loan for project and program funding will have uniform funding criteria and instruments for all cultural projects. And the existing expert commissions will become a pool with additional expertise from many areas that were not previously covered. This important innovation in cultural funding is supported by all parties and most associations and organizations.

The Bern Puppet Theater and the Freiraum / Heitere Fahne collective will now receive a tripartite contract and the Bern Music Festival a municipal contract. The Bern Chamber Orchestra will no longer be supported by a tripartite contract. Together with the Canton of Berne, the city will introduce orchestra funding. All ensembles that meet certain professional criteria can apply for a four-year sponsorship in response to a public call for applications. This gives the ensembles the same funding conditions and the necessary planning security to survive in international competition.

More info:
https://www.bern.ch/mediencenter/medienmitteilungen/aktuell_ptk/gemeinderat-verabschiedet-kulturbotschaft-2024-2027

Born in 1965 in Imatra, Finland, Lilli Paasikivi has helped organize and found several summer festivals in Finland in addition to an international career as a singer at leading opera houses and concert halls. She has been artistic director of the Finnish National Opera in Helsinki since 2013. Her work at the Finnish National Opera focuses on combining innovative technologies with the art form of opera.

22 people have applied for the Bregenz artistic directorship. The term of office of the designated festival director will initially run for five years.

Founded in 2002, the Bregenz Festival Private Foundation is the sole owner of Bregenzer Festspiele GmbH, which organizes the annual Bregenz Festival in the summer months. The founders are the Association of Friends of the Bregenz Festival, the Republic of Austria, the Province of Vorarlberg and the City of Bregenz.

Jost Meier was a Solothurn native with a special relationship to Biel and has lived in Basel since 1980. The conductor and composer was born in Solothurn on March 15, 1939. In 1955, he began his music studies with Rolf Looser in composition and cello at the Biel Conservatory. He also studied mathematics and physics for several semesters at the ETH Zurich. In 1964, he obtained his concert diploma as a cellist at the Bern Conservatory. He then studied with the composer Frank Martin in the Netherlands. This unconventional educational path shaped his life.

From 1964, Jost Meier played as a cellist in the Tonhalle Orchestra Zurich and the Camerata Bern. Between 1969 and 1979, he was co-founder and chief conductor of the Biel Solothurn Symphony Orchestra and had a major influence on musical life there as a source of musical inspiration. From 1980 to 1983, he was conductor at the Basel Theater under Armin Jordan. From 1983 he worked as a freelance composer and conductor. From 1985 to 2004, he was a lecturer at the Basel Academy of Music and also worked at the Swiss Opera Studio in Biel.

Inspired by his many years of theater experience, Jost Meier created his own operas with social themes in the 1980s. In 1982 he composed the opera Sennentuntschi based on Hansjörg Schneider's play of the same name. The premiere in Freiburg im Breisgau in 1983 made headlines due to its blunt social themes in the Alpine milieu. In 1994, the Deutsche Oper Berlin staged Jost Meier's opera Dreyfus - the affair based on a libretto by George Whyte. The piece showed Meier as a committed composer who was influenced by the movement of the 1968s and held little regard for bourgeois conventions throughout his life. In November 2017, his last opera Marie and Robert at the Theater Orchester Biel Solothurn.

As a composer, Jost Meier was no avant-gardist or iconoclast. He composed for voices, ensembles and orchestras with a keen sense of interplay. Most recently in his concerto for cello and orchestra, which was premiered in Biel in November 2019. This brought us full circle to Meier's own beginnings as a cellist and conductor at the Theater Orchester Biel Solothurn.

Jost Meier's scores, written with graphic care, have been in the Vera Oeri Library of the Basel Music Academy since 2018. He was a meticulous worker and an extremely amiable, modest person who met you in conversation with quiet humor and great openness. It has now been announced that Jost Meier died in Basel on December 5, 2022 at the age of 83. We will remember him as an imaginative musician and person.

Jost Meier, "Nocturnal Flower, Lyrical Scenes on Paul Klee" (2006)

Autograph from the Jost Meier Collection, Vera Oeri Library of the Basel Music Academy
Photo: Madeleine Lüthi 2020

According to the press release, Désirée Meiser is co-founder and artistic director of Gare du Nord, the station for new music in Basel. Since the opening of Gare du Nord in 2002, she has been its artistic director (until 2008 together with dramaturge Ute Haferburg). She has made a significant contribution to firmly anchoring Gare du Nord in the Swiss and international contemporary music scene.

Over the last 15 years, Meiser has also staged several music theater productions and gradually established the Gare du Nord as a venue for contemporary music theater with the "Musiktheaterformen" series, among other things. The board of the Gare du Nord's supporting association has set up a search committee to look for a successor. The position is scheduled to be advertised at the beginning of January 2023.

Kurmann will continue to manage the division's extraordinary projects on a part-time basis. These include, in particular, projects in connection with the implementation of the museum concept and major construction projects in the area of culture.

In her approximately sixteen years as Head of Culture, Nicole Kurmann has played a key role in shaping the cultural city of Winterthur, writes the city. In addition to day-to-day business, she was responsible for various strategic projects, such as the spin-off of Theater Winterthur from the city administration and its transformation into a public limited company.

The City of Winterthur's Culture Department is responsible for promoting culture. This includes support measures for private cultural organizations and cultural professionals and the management of the city's own cultural institutions.

After his first positions as Principal Conductor of the Collegium Musicum Basel, and previously as a founding member and Artistic Director of the camerata variabile basel, Simon Gaudenz was appointed Principal Guest Conductor of the Odense Symphony Orchestra in 2010. In 2012, he was appointed Principal Conductor of the Hamburg Camerata chamber orchestra, with whom he regularly performs at the Elbphilharmonie Hamburg and continues to be associated as a guest conductor.

Founded over eighty years ago as the Jena Municipal Symphony Orchestra, the Jena Philharmonic Orchestra was given its current name in 1969. Under the then chief conductor Günter Blumhagen (1967-1980), the number of musicians was increased to 85. Christian Ehwald (1981-1988), Andreas S. Weiser (1990-1998), Andrey Boreyko (1998-2004), Nicholas Milton (2004-2011) and Marc Tardue (2011-2017) followed as General Music Director, before Simon Gaudenz took over the direction of the orchestra in the 2018.2019 season.

As the evaluation shows, the situation has stabilized somewhat in terms of membership numbers and finances, but this part of musical culture is also suffering from long Covid, the university writes. One in five choirs is still not rehearsing. In addition, ensembles that have been unable to recruit children and young people as a result of the pandemic often need to be rebuilt.

In spring 2022, just under a quarter of the otherwise active choir members among those surveyed were still inactive, which is the same order of magnitude as in 2021 and means that most choirs have not yet returned to their original membership numbers. The forecast for membership figures after the pandemic is somewhat more optimistic in 2022 than a year earlier, even though eight percent of choirs still expect a permanent and significant loss of members.

Original article:
https://www.ku.de/news/mit-zaghafter-stimme-welche-folgen-die-pandemie-weiterhin-fuer-die-chormusik-hat

Since taking over as Music Director at the beginning of the 2019/20 season, Paavo Järvi has pursued the goal of positioning the orchestra internationally. Numerous CD recordings in this short and corona-influenced period illustrate this, writes the Tonhalle-Gesellschaft. His first years also saw increased investment in audio-visual recordings and streaming of concerts.

The newly introduced format of residencies will be continued and expanded. The Conductor's Academy will continue to take place annually. At the same time, Järvi wants to continue investing in formats for a new generation of music lovers.

Ilona Schmiel would like to continue to open the Tonhalle Zurich to the younger generation.