Class Descriptions

MPI is built around the belief that artistic growth happens not only through intensive individual work, but through listening, reflection, discipline, physical awareness, community, and shared experience.

The rhythm of the week has therefore been designed with great care. Masterclasses, performances, warm-ups, concerts, conversations, walks, and moments of rest all form part of the artistic process. Inspired in part by Marina Piccinini’s longtime practice of kung fu, MPI approaches music as a complete discipline, one that engages the mind, body, imagination, and spirit together.

Students are encouraged not only to refine their playing, but to deepen their relationship to interpretation, communication, collaboration, and the larger artistic world around them. The goal is not simply technical excellence, but the cultivation of thoughtful, curious, resilient, and fully engaged musicians.

At the heart of MPI is the belief that serious artistic work can be both rigorous and deeply human, and that the colleagues we encounter as young artists often become lifelong sources of inspiration, support, and shared growth.

Masterclasses with Marina Piccinini
Beyond the Score™: Expression through Interpretation

At the heart of MPI are Marina Piccinini’s masterclasses, Beyond the Score™: Expression through Interpretation.

Shaped by Marina’s life as a performer, teacher, and longtime practitioner of kung fu, these classes approach music as a complete discipline: physical, intellectual, emotional, and spiritual. The goal is not only to play with refinement, but to understand how sound, breath, structure, imagination, discipline, and presence come together in meaningful interpretation.

Students will perform several times throughout the week, allowing them to return to the stage with new awareness, to hear their own development, and to absorb what they learn from one another. The work is rigorous, but never isolated. MPI is built on the belief that young artists grow most deeply in a community where standards are high, listening is active, criticism is honest, and generosity is real.

Beyond the Score™ asks each student to look past notes and correctness toward the larger question of expression: what is being said, why it matters, and how one brings one’s whole self to the act of performance.

Daily Warm-Ups with Katy Wherry

Each morning begins with an optional communal warm-up session led by Katy Wherry at the hut. These sessions offer a shared and focused way to enter the day, preparing the body, breath, and mind before the work of listening, playing, and learning begins.

The short uphill walk to the hut is part of this rhythm: a simple physical transition into the day’s work, with movement, mountain air, and a gradual sense of arrival.

Orchestral Masterclass with Giorgio Consolati

These sessions focus on practical preparation for orchestral auditions and orchestral playing, led by Giorgio Consolati, whose active work in the field gives students direct insight into current professional expectations and standards.

Topics may include audition preparation, excerpt interpretation, orchestral style, preparation strategies, and the musical and psychological demands of orchestral performance.

June 10 – Afternoon Pause and Etude of the Week

After several concentrated days of work, the afternoon is intentionally left open. Students may practice, rest, walk, swim in the lake below, explore the surrounding area, or simply allow the work of the week to settle.

In the evening, Katy Wherry will lead a session of her renowned platform Etude of the Week, a focused session on how technical study can become a source of musical imagination, discipline, freedom, and expression.

June 11 – Zauberklang Concert Evening

The afternoon remains free before the evening’s Zauberklang concert in Bürglen. Students may use the time to go down the mountain, explore Altdorf and Bürglen, walk by the lake in Flüelen, visit nearby historic sites, or simply enjoy a change of atmosphere before the evening.

At 17:30, students are invited to join the Zauberklang Apéro before the concert, with food, drinks, and featuring the famous Urner Bärgblüemli Yodeling choir. This offers a chance to experience the region not only through its landscape, but through its living traditions and community spirit.

The evening concert features the Leonkoro Quartet, one of the most exciting young string quartets performing today and newly appointed resident artists at London’s Wigmore Hall, in a program of Mendelssohn and Schubert’s Death and the Maiden, a work with deep resonance for flutists through its thematic and emotional connection to Trockne Blumen.

For MPI students, the evening is an invitation to step outside the immediate world of the flute and immerse themselves in the extraordinary depth, intimacy, and expressive range of the broader chamber music repertoire. Hearing chamber music at this level, in close proximity and within the larger artistic atmosphere of Zauberklang, becomes an essential reminder that musicianship is nourished as much by listening as by playing.

June 12 – Building a Life in Music

An open conversation with Marina Piccinini about the realities of an artistic life: creativity, discipline, ambition, collaboration, resilience, teaching, purpose, and the human questions that shape a musical career.

This session offers students the opportunity to ask questions openly and to reflect on what it means to build a sustainable, meaningful, and deeply engaged life in music.

Closing Concert

The week concludes with an informal closing concert at Alphotel Biel-Kinzig. Students may share solo repertoire as well as chamber music collaborations that have grown naturally during the week. The concert is meant to be relaxed, generous, and communal: a final opportunity to play, listen, and celebrate the work of the days together.

Closing Celebration

The final evening brings everyone together for a shared Raclette dinner at Alp Käserei Biel-Kinzig. After a week of music, work, walks, conversation, and discovery, the closing meal offers a simple and joyful way to end the program in the spirit of community that lies at the heart of MPI.