The Los Angeles artist Doug Aitken set set up this temporary amazing piece of art called „Mirage Gstaad“. All the surfaces of the house, that looks typical for the American West is covered by a mirror surface. The house reflects the countryside, the sky and the whole changing atmosphere and virtually melts into the landscape.

The mirror house can be visited for free. It will be available until spring 2021.

The art object is above the village of Gstaad in the Canton of Bern. This village is quite famous for its international billionaire clientele owning huge luxurious chalets. Many of those super wealthy people only live in Gstaad a few months or even just a few weeks a year.

Lent is the season (of about 6 weeks) leading up to Easter. In this season often sacred music concerts get performed in churches or concert halls up and down the country. As it is still chilly and often wet too it is wonderful to attend such an event.

I just attended the Stabat Mater concert by Rossini at the reformed church in Burgdorf. The Stabat Mater is actually a 13th century latin catholic hymn to Mary. Mary, the mother of Jesus, suffered immensely as she witnessed how her son, Jesus Christ, died on the cross crucified. Many different composer such as Vivaldi, Domenico, Scarlatti, Haydn, Rossini, Dvorak, Verdi and others composed music to this latin text.

It is quite interesting that the Stabat Mater is clearly from a catholic tradition, with a strong emphasis on the mother of Jesus. Reformed theology would rather focus on the son, Jesus Christ and his redeeming work on the cross. However today the Stabat Mater is acknowledged as a cultural heritage that is also fully accepted and enjoyed by a reformed or a secular audience.

Recently we were treated to a concert by a few students of the Zakhar Bron Academy in Interlaken. We were blown away by the young soloists playing at a level beyond belief!

Professor Zakhar Bron has a Russian background and is a master violinist. He has won prizes at the world’s most prestigious competitions including the Queen Elisabeth Competition in Brussels and the Henryk Wieniawski Violin Competition in Poznan.

The gentleman is a very active retiree. About a 100 days a year he lives in Interlaken, where he teaches master classes to young people with an outstanding talent. Professor Bron is able to individually coach the best out of his students, who travel from all over the world to Interlaken to be taught by him for a week or two. When Professor Bron isn’t residing in Interlaken he travels the world teaching, playing music and looking out for young prodigies!

In the concert we attended the youngest violin soloist was a girl, barely 10 years old, with a British and Chinese background. She played the very demanding Tschaikowski’s Souvenir d’un lieu, op 42.

Elli Choi from Korea, Eleanor D’Melon from Jamaika and Elvin Ganiyew from Turkey and Azerbaijan and a few other extremely promising young people performed as well. We, the listeners were were just stunned by the skills and the ease with which these young people played extremely difficult, demanding and beautiful classical music.

When Professor Bron teaches in Interlaken his master classes are open to the public. Check the net for a classical treat in Interlaken or find out, when he is near you.

In Switzerland you will often find walls along the train tracks or the highways sprayed with graffitis. Daily heaps of people pass by and will catch a glimpse of these acts of vandalism or in same cases truly a piece of art.

The police are on the lookout for illegal sprayers and when caught bring them to justice. Often the sprayers are teenagers and will have to pay dearly for their acts of vandalism.

Sprayers from the city of Berne often use 031 as a signature. This is the phone area code of the city of Berne.

Each year enormous sums are spent on removing graffiti from places where they don’t belong. Every owner of a house is obliged to have a house insurance. Depending on the location of the house one is wise to include coverage for removing graffitis.

The graffiti in the picture is definitely a piece of art. It is part of the Reitschule in Berne. In another blog I will tell you more of this interesting and politically hotly debated place.