As outlined in the message according to the canton's press release, a staggered increase in the subsidy from the canton is to take place. Its contribution to the Zweckverband Grosse Kulturbetriebe will be gradually increased by CHF 660,000 by 2026. The Lucerne Festival Foundation intends to expand its activities and gain international significance with an artistic reorientation.

The Commission welcomes the intended further development and the majority are convinced that the status and reputation of the Lucerne Festival will be strengthened. The Commission also takes positive note of the aspect of youth promotion. A majority of the SFBC is in favor of increasing the operating contribution and recommends that the Lucerne Cantonal Council approve it.

A minority of the committee is critical of the planned subsidy increase. Reasons such as the imbalance in the financing of small and large cultural institutions, the demand for greater financial independence for the Lucerne Festival or the desire to postpone the matter until the regulation of regional cultural funding (including project and structural funding) are among the reasons for the negative attitude, writes the canton.

Nikolaus Harnoncourt's estate consists of audiovisual media, around fifty meters of sheet music and almost two cubic meters of correspondence, essays, notes on works and performance practice, lecture manuscripts and material relating to his many years of university teaching.

The estate has already been viewed and the organizational, content-related, legal, technical and economic issues regarding the digital archiving and archive use of the material have been evaluated. As a result of this preparatory work, the Nikolaus Harnoncourt Center will now be officially founded at the Anton Bruckner Private University.

The estate is to be scientifically processed and digitized at the center. It will also serve as a "cultural-philosophical think tank with events in St. Georgen". The budget of the Nikolaus Harnoncourt Center is made available to the Anton Bruckner Private University from funds provided by the province of Upper Austria and amounts to around 460,000 euros per year.

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Apple Music Classical offers curated playlists, exclusive albums, biographies of composers, guides to important works, browsing features and more. Subscribers to Apple Music can download the app as part of their subscription at no additional cost. Apple Music Classical launches on March 28 and is available to pre-order now.

With the app, Apple is already competing with active classical music streaming providers such as Idagio, Primephonic, Qobuz, Spotify and Tidal. Deutsche Grammophon also offers expanded streaming services.

Thomas Aeschbacher lives with his family in Langenthal. He has been a member of the Pflanzplätz band since 1993, occasionally teaches advanced Schwyzerörgeli privately and works part-time as a music teacher at the Burgdorf upper school. He has been running Schwyzerörgeli courses at the folk music weeks in Arosa and for the Swiss Folk Music Association VSV for decades. He teaches alpine folk music/world music at the Bern University of the Arts.

He has already played the Schwyzerörgeli in various projects, including in the film "Mein Name ist Eugen" and with the whole family from 2008 in the "Bärner Jodlerpredig" by and with Hannes Fuhrer. The award ceremony for Thomas Aeschbacher will take place on September 30, 2023 in Langenthal.

The golden treble clef was created in 1958 by Paul Künzi to honor people who have made a special commitment to folk music and have thus rendered outstanding services. The most recent recipients include Claudia Muff, Johannes Schmid-Kunz, René Wicky, Ruedi Renggli, Arno Jehli, Dani Häusler and Heidi and Ruedi Wachter.

Reports of possible positive effects of listening to Mozart's Sonata K448 on epilepsy symptoms have received a great deal of media attention. However, the empirical reliability of the findings has remained unclear to this day. Now, psychologist Sandra Oberleiter and psychologist Jakob Pietschnig from the University of Vienna have shown in a study published in the journal Nature Scientific Reportsthat a positive effect of the Mozart melody on epilepsy has not been proven.

The alleged Mozart effect can be attributed to selective reports, too small samples and inadequate research practices in this body of literature, writes the University of Vienna.

Original publication:
Oberleiter, S., & Pietschnig, J. (2023). Unfounded authority, underpowered studies, and non-transparent reporting perpetuate the Mozart effect myth: A multiverse meta-analysis. Nature Scientific Reports. DOI: 10.1038/s41598-023-30206-w

As the current Rector Reinhard Schäfertöns will be leaving his position prematurely on March 31, 2023 after two and a half years, the position was advertised again. The selection process is currently underway.

Lang taught as a lecturer at the Zurich University of the Arts from 2010 and was appointed Professor of Music Theory and Composition there in 2014. In 2016, he was appointed Professor of Composition and Music Theory at the Hanns Eisler School of Music in Berlin. Since the 2018/19 winter semester, he has been teaching as Professor of Music Theory at the Rostock University of Music.

He studied composition, music theory, conducting and musicology in Rostock, Salzburg, Hanover, Lugano, Bremen and Edinburgh. He completed his composition studies with a concert exam and a doctorate, and his musicology studies with a doctorate.

According to the festival's announcement, the duo will introduce themselves as the artistic management team on July 5, 2023 as part of the "70 Years Künstlerhaus Boswil" anniversary concerts. They will organize smaller festival activities over the course of 2024 and then present the first full summer festival in 2025.

Julia Fischer, born in Munich in 1983, teaches at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater in Munich alongside her international concert activities and was Germany's youngest professor when she was appointed. She has been committed to bringing classical music to young people for years, which is in line with the focus of the Künstlerhaus Boswil, the festival continues.

Benjamin Nyffenegger, born in Bern in 1984, is deputy principal cellist in the Tonhalle Orchestra and is a member of the Julia Fischer Quartet and the Oliver Schnyder Trio. He is also artistic director of the Seetal Classics in Seon.

The new cultural strategy contains three fields of action: cultural offerings, framework conditions and access and anchoring. Seventeen action-oriented measures have been defined for these fields of action. In addition to reviewing and adapting the practice of cultural promotion, cooperation within the cultural sector and exchange with third parties should be encouraged. The city also writes that the space situation for cultural professionals needs to be improved. Aarau's visibility as a city of culture can be improved with targeted cultural marketing.

The development of the strategy and its measures is based on a participatory event (over 100 participants) and was then reflected on again in an online survey (138 participants). The strategy was drawn up by a committee of representatives from the worlds of culture, politics and administration. The cultural strategy is valid until 2030. Parallel to the strategy paper, a detailed lead article was drawn up, which elaborates on the specific projects, tasks and the respective partners. The Culture Department is convinced that the implementation of the various measures can only succeed if we work together. In future, a regular newsletter from the Culture Department will provide information on the ongoing process and the weighting of the various topics.

More info:
https://www.aarau.ch/kultur-freizeit/kultur/kulturkonzept.html/164#kulturstrategie

Poschner has been principal conductor of the Orchestra della Svizzera italiana since 2015. He currently also holds the position of Principal Conductor of the Bruckner Orchestra Linz. With Tristan and Isolde he also opened the Bayreuth Festival in July 2022. The recording of Offenbach's Maître Péronilla with the Orchestre National de France was awarded the German Record Critics' Prize in 2021.

The Basel Symphony Orchestra was formed in 1997 from the merger of the Basel Symphony Orchestra and the Basel Radio Symphony Orchestra. It is financed by contributions from the cantons of Basel-Stadt and Basel-Landschaft, income from its own events, guest performances, rentals and third-party contributions. The British conductor Ivor Bolton has held the position of chief conductor since the 2016/17 concert season.

According to the Schola Cantorum, Petr Skalka grew up in a family of musicians in Marienbad (Czech Republic). After studying at the conservatory in Pilsen, his interest in early music and historical performance practice led him to the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis with Christoph Coin, whose musical approaches had a decisive influence on him. Since 2001, he has taught as Christoph Coin's assistant at the Schola Cantorum in Basel. He also held a teaching position at the Nuremberg University of Music from 2011 to 2015.

Petr Skalka is a founding member of the ensemble Café Zimmermann, named after the Leipzig coffee house Zimmermann, where Johann Sebastian Bach and other famous musicians performed their works. He performs regularly with renowned chamber music ensembles throughout Europe and has participated in numerous recordings, which have been awarded several prestigious prizes.

From fall 2023, he will take over the teaching of cello in old scale at the FHNW-SCB and pass on his passion for the instrument, chamber music and historical performance practice. The application deadline for violoncello for the 2023/24 intake has been extended to March 1, 2023. Interested applicants should contact the SCB office (scb.hsm@fhnw.ch) in connection.

Karl Rechsteiner only bought an Appenzell dulcimer at the age of 50 and learned to play his dream instrument by himself. After retiring as an SBB train driver, he began a second career as a conductor of various choirs and as a musician. He enriched the repertoire of the Stubemusig with his own compositions.

He became famous when his Stubemusig created the soundtrack for the successful Swiss film "Herbstzeitlosen" with Stephanie Glaser and Heidi Maria Glössner. The highlights of his performances were the film premiere of "Herbstzeitlosen" with his music on the Piazza Grande in Locarno, the television interview with Kurt Aeschbacher and a performance with Gustav, Marc Sway and former Federal Councillor Evelyn Widmer-Schlumpf at the 100th anniversary celebrations of Pro Senectute in Bern's Festhalle.

The historical-critical edition was begun in 1967. The most recent volume is number 27 with letters from 1875. If the edition were to be stopped now, the Bayreuth chapter would be almost completely missing, said Friedrich according to a report in the Neue Musikzeitung (nmz). The letters, which have not yet been edited, include the creation of Wagner's late so-called Regenerationsschriften, "which link his momentous racial anti-Semitism with his aesthetics of art religion and cultural theory", the petition states.

According to the University of Würzburg, the German Research Foundation (DFG) has funded the edition from 2006 to the end of 2022 as a long-term project with three staff positions, writes nmz. Further funding has been provided by the Upper Franconia Foundation in the form of printing cost subsidies for the edition volumes. The annotation of the outstanding letters has already been prepared. Around one million euros, spread over five years, are required for the remaining funding.

More info:
https://www.openpetition.de/petition/online/vollendung-der-richard-wagner-briefausgabe

The new funding instrument contributes to the gradual implementation of the so-called "tip initiative". At the end of 2020, the voters of Basel voted in favor of at least five percent of the regular cultural budget - symbolically: the tip - flowing into Basel's active youth and alternative culture in all sectors.

An interdisciplinary jury examined 264 applications. Of these, 29 projects are currently being supported with one-off grants of between 5,000 and 20,000 francs. These include, for example, CHF 5,000 for a research project entitled "Experimental sound sculptures and musical instruments" by Gabriel Kleber, CHF 10,000 for a research project entitled "Musikalischer Gehör-Gang der Bilder" by the collective WG Utopia (Ingrid Adler and Roger Egli) and CHF 10,000 for "clash of patterns - hierarchical structures in music-making" by Mira Pozzi and Xenia Wiener.

More info:
https://www.bs.ch/nm/2023-mit-recherchebeitraegen-neue-ideen-entwickeln-pd.html

The streaming segment, which now accounts for 85% of the overall market, remains the growth driver, while sales of downloads and physical sound carriers continue to decline. The moderate growth in vinyl that has continued since 2010 took a break in 2022 and turned slightly negative. On the other hand, streaming short videos with music on social media is now also gaining financial importance.

Together with income from video streaming, namely YouTube, ad-financed music streaming now contributes CHF 24 million (11%) to the Swiss music market, surpassing physical CDs and vinyl (CHF 21.4 million) for the first time.

Original article:
https://www.ifpi.ch/post/schweizer-musikmarkt-2022-noch-gr%C3%B6sser-noch-digitaler-1