Articles by Sarah Batschelet

The restrained pacing of Larcher's opera suited the intimate setting of the Werkstattbühne.

The “Festival Tour” and its three-venue concerts of the Davos Festival programme included almost as many visual and outdoor delights as it did musical treats. 

Since its inception in 1986, the Davos Festival has given a platform to more than 2,080 young artists of promise. This 33rd festival year is no exception. 

As part of the annual Schubertiade festival, clarinettist Martin Fröst and pianist Roland Pöntinin recently gave an unforgettable recital.

An accomplished performance by the renowned Belcea Quartet marked the first of the summer’s “Serenade” concerts, an open-air series held in the park of the historic Villa Schönberg. 

Calixto Bieito sets Monteverdi’s L’incoronazione di Poppea in a hedonist, decadent society whose citizens are defined by their egotism, ambition and sexual exploits.

In a terrific performance under Manfred Honeck, the German violinist brings down the house with Beethoven's Violin Concerto. 

Promising new talents among Zurich’s “Young Choreographers” recently showed a variety of inviting works at the city’s opera house. 

The resident dance company of the Konzert Theater Bern recently paid tribute to Albert Einstein, who lived in the city from 1902-1905.

English and Russian repertoire for Switzerland's oldest symphony orchestra. 

Sir Simon Rattle conducted the London Symphony Orchestra in Gustav Mahler’s last completed symphony, the enigmatic Ninth Symphony.  

Edward Clug’s choreography is consistently imaginative and powerful, and exceptionally ambitious in the case of “Faust”, which recently celebrated its world première in Zurich. 

As part of the nationwide “Steps” dance festival, NDT2 gave a degree of precision, theatrics, musicality, and humour that truly set the group apart.

Members of the GöteborgsOperans dance company, along with members of choreographer Sidu Larbi Cherkaoui’s own Eastman ensemble, recently danced a joint venture of an extraordinary kind in Winterthur. 

Gaetano Donizetti’s Maria Stuarda is perhaps most famous for a single and highly emotional scene in which two monarchs engage in a venomous confrontation. One is doomed to die. 

The Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra under Jansons treated the Lucerne Festival audience to works by Schumann and Bernstein. But it was pianist Matsuev’s Rachmaninov that electrified the hall.

In a varied programme at Lucerne’s 2018 Easter Festival, Mariss Jansons conducted the BRSO and Choir in works by Stravinsky, Hummel and Beethoven.

Just as Igor Stravinsky’s Petrushka and Le Sacre du Printemps opened up new musical horizons for dance at the start of the 20th century, Ballett Zürich’s Stravinsky evening sees two leading modern choreographers revive these works.

Heinz Holliger’s Lunea, which recently premiered at the Zurich Opera House, is “not an opera”, or so the ground-breaking Swiss composer contends.

Claus Guth’s grandiose production of Parsifal made major headlines in Zurich in 2011. With its new cast of principals, this revival is no less a sensation.