Sarah Batschlelet, long based in Switzerland, took a degree in Art History from Smith College, Northampton, Massachuetts, and lives as a freelance writer and editor near Zurich.
The extraordinary Italian pianist Beatrice Rana and the Philharmonia Zürich orchestra under Fabio Luisi lit up the stage in an unforgettable performance.
The world premiere of Annabelle Lopez Ochoa's ballet about the legendary Mexican painter Frida Kahlo is unsurprisingly colourful and highly dramatic by design.
In its revival here in Zurich, the soloists and choir of Beethoven's Fidelio give stellar vocal performances. But having done away with any real set, the opera was not without its shortcomings.
Ballett Zürich’s tribute to the visionary American choreographer William Forsythe included three ballets that had never before been performed in Switzerland.
Nothing on New Year’s Eve could have been more festive than the spirited production of Rossini’s La Cenerentola that Zurich Opera staged with Cecelia Bartoli in the lead role.
Rudolf Buchbinder and the Lucerne Festival Strings recently performed Beethoven’s First and Fifth Piano Concertos in the last of the prestigious Piano festivals at the Lucerne Culture and Congress Centre.
The highly decorated Austrian pianist, Rudolph Buchbinder, launched the Lucerne Piano Festival by playing and conducting the complete cycle of Beethoven’s five piano concertos.
Lawrence Cummings conducts Zurich’s Orchestra La Scintilla in Handel’s oratorio-cum-opera, Belshazzar. The music was celestial; the staging was a bombastic mix of excess and vaudeville.
Under its new Chief Conductor Paavo Järvi, Zurich’s Tonhalle Orchestra features a riveting programme of works by Tchaikovsky and Copland with clarinettist Martin Fröst as soloist.
As part of a programme of works by Mozart, Debussy and Stravinsky, conductor Andris Nelsons recently paired up the venerable Gewandhausorchester Leipzig with the fine German pianist, Martin Helmchen.
Conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin’s recent debut with the Lucerne Festival Orchestra was a dazzling Beethoven-Shostakovich programme that epitomised the “power of music”.
