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12 July — 31 August 2024

Cycle «Change II» 2023 — 2025

Video

Enjoy the great Jaap van Zweden conducting Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 4 at the Gstaad Festival Tent.

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The Orchestra

“This is what real world-class sounds like” (Hamburger Abendblatt reviewing the concert at the Elbphilharmonie Hamburg)  

Every year, the Gstaad Menuhin Festival & Academy thrills its audience with unique concerts and top-class musical programmes set amidst magnificent countryside. The Gstaad Festival Orchestra (GFO) grew out of the vision to spread the innovative, inspiring spirit of the Menuhin Festival abroad and to enable this celebrated annual music festival to resonate on an international platform. 

The Gstaad Festival Orchestra is made up of the best musicians from Switzerland's leading orchestras. These high-class musicians are now forming a sort of musical 'national team'. Its members are musicians from the Tonhalle Orchestra Zurich, the Zurich Opera Orchestra, the Kammerorchester Basel, the Basel Symphony Orchestra and the Bern Symphony Orchestra. Furthermore, some of the best students from international music institutions are selected every year to play with the GFO. The aim is to bring high-quality sound and famous musical spirit of the top Swiss orchestras together, in order to create a process of dialogue between the musicians and to forge at the same time a dynamic, unique-sounding orchestra every year. Jaap van Zweden is renowned internationally for his success around the world.

Jaap van Zweden, who conducted the GFO for the first time in 2017 and has been conducting the New York Philharmonic since the 2018/19 season, is back this summer with Wagner, Mozart, Shostakovich and Mahler. 


The venezuelan principal conductor of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, Domingo Hindoyan, makes his debut as conductor of the GFO this summer. He will conduct a semi-staged performance of Puccini's opera "Tosca" in Gstaad and in Baden-Baden at the Festspielhaus. 

Since its formation in 2010, the GFO has been soaring to ever-new musical flights. Within the course of its tours the orchestra e.g. played at the Rheingau Music Festival, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern Festival, Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival, Grafenegg Festival, Festival La Chaise Dieu, Herrenchiemsee Festival, Meran Festival, Stresa Music Festival, the Vienna Concert Hall, the Cologne Philharmonic Hall, Festspielhaus Baden-Baden, Festspielhaus Bregenz, Dresdner Frauenkirche, the Philharmonic Hall at Gasteig in Munich, or Elbphilharmonie Hamburg.
       

The Gstaad Festival Orchestra has established itself as a brilliant and charismatic first-class orchestra. Season upon season it has experienced new success. The soloistic partners of the orchestra include amongst others, Sol Gabetta, Hélène Grimaud, Jonas Kaufmann, Martin Grubinger, Seong-Jin Cho, Jan Lisiecki, Renaud Capuçon, Patricia Kopatchinskaja, Khatia Buniatishvili, Fazil Say and Vilde Frang. 

A wonderful video recording of Tchaikovsky's Fifth Symphony, conducted by Jaap van Zweden, was made in the summer of 2017 in the Gstaad Festival Tent, which can be seen on gstaaddigitalfestival.ch.During a celebrated concert tour in the summer of 2015 the first live cd recording took place. It was published by Sony in January 2016. It features the new version of the Swan Lake suite by Tchaikovsky created by Kristjan Järvi. 

The GFO regularly performs new compositions, e.g. by composers like Fazil Say, Daniel Schnyder, Dieter Ammann, Isabel Mundry, and Georg Breinschmid. These works include a newly composed piece by Mark-Anthony Turnage: “Dialogue” (2015), with the soloists Patricia Kopatchinskaja (violin) and Sol Gabetta (cello). 

In summer 2023, the GFO will - for the ninth time since 2014 - be a part of the Gstaad Academy’s heart piece Gstaad Conducting Academy, acting as “Orchestra in Residence”. 10 junior conductors from all over the world will be given the opportunity to work with the GFO for three weeks and conduct at its performances. This Conducting Academy, which is unique in Europe, will take place under the artistic direction of Jaap van Zweden, Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla and Johannes Schlaefli.


10.01.2023