100 years of the State Institute for Music Research: Magazine published to mark the anniversary
Press release from 06/12/2017
The "Soundlabor" at Potsdamer Platz was founded in 1917 in Bückeburg, Lower Saxony: The SPK magazine traces its history and presents the current work of the State Institute for Music Research in reports, interviews and portraits. It is published thanks to the support of the Kuratorium Preußischer Kulturbesitz.
It is located in the immediate neighbourhood of the Berlin Philharmonie and is celebrating its anniversary: the State Institute for Music Research (SIM) with the Musical Instrument Museum. Before the smallest institution of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation is honoured as the largest non-university research institution for musicology in Germany in the presence of Minister of State for Culture Grütters on 23 June and hosts a public day on 24 June, the SPK magazine will be published this Monday with a new issue - thanks to the support of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Board of Trustees. In the new issue, Manuel Brug recalls why the music-loving Prince Adolf II zu Schaumburg-Lippe founded such an institute in 1917 and travels with the current SIM Director Thomas Ertelt by Westfalenbahn to the birthplace in Bückeburg.
Julia Spinola, on the other hand, met with musicologist Heinz von Loesch and violinist Michael Barenboim to investigate the question of whether the right interpretation exists in the wrong one - and vice versa. This is the subject of the large-scale research project "History of Interpretation", which von Loesch is leading at SIM. Frederik Hanssen was told by musician Katharina Bäuml how early music is kept fresh in the Musical Instrument Museum and what possibilities can be discovered in it. Finally, Richard Schroetter rediscovers one of the world's greatest pianists: Josef Hofmann, whose estate is one of the SIM's treasures.
The magazine is rounded off by an architectural review by Philipp Oswalt, who has taken a look at the posthumous "actualisation" of Scharoun's architecture in the 1980s by Edgar Wisniewski. And if you want to know why Alfred Hitchcock's birds sound very Berlin after all, the magazine is also recommended.
- Press copies can be ordered at pressestelle@hv.spk-berlin.de .
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