The year 2027 promises to be a big year for Beethoven. With the composer’s 250th anniversary in 2020 more or less completely swallowed by Coronavirus, classical music institutions are marshalling their forces to commemorate the other end of his life – marking 200 years since Beethoven’s death. Switzerland’s premier public-facing concert series, Migros Culture Percentage Classics, is no exception.
From March, Beethoven fans should watch out for Esa-Pekka Salonen’s performances with the Philharmonia Orchestra in Zurich and Bern, pairing the composer’s revolutionary “Eroica” Third Symphony with Sibelius’ Seventh – both pieces demonstrating radical approaches to symphonic form in their respective eras. Then in April, Iván Fischer and the Budapest Festival Orchestra perform Beethoven’s towering Ninth Symphony, with soloists including Maria Bengtsson. This performance is for one night only at the KKL Lucerne, but Fischer’s performances are always worth attending if one can get a chance.
Beethoven’s Ode to Joy has become the unofficial anthem of the European Union, and this performance itself marks 50 years since the Treaty of Rome. A Pan-European Choir has been assembled for Fischer’s performances of the Ninth through 2027, which culminate in Lucerne in April. The Migros Classics themselves culminate with Beethoven in May, with Kirill Gerstein’s marathon of the composer’s piano concertos, performing the Second, Third and Fifth with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe, directing from the piano as Beethoven did.
Away from the Beethoveniana, the 2026–27 Migros Classics comprise a variety of other programming too. The season is launched in October with violinist Ara Malikian’s unusual fusion of Cuban, Klezmer and Flamenco music, alongside Bach and Mozart. Born in Beirut to an Armenian family, Malikian was the concertmaster of the Orquesta Sinfónica de Madrid, and for these performances he’s joined by four Cuban musicians on piano, guitar, bass and drums.
Migros Classics also presents a rare chance for Swiss audiences to hear famed US saxophonist Branford Marsalis perform and conduct, when he presents music of Duke Ellington alongside Gershwin’s An American in Paris with the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, as well as a new Saxophone Concerto by Jeff Beal. There’s another Swiss premiere on the cards too: a new cello concerto by contemporary composer Max Richter, performed by Gautier Capuçon with the Orchestra de Paris, conducted by Andrés Orozco-Estrada. Richter’s music is familiar and versatile, capable of rubbing along with a classical symphony – in this case Tchaikovsky’s Fifth – as well as scoring to picture, as he has most recently in Hamnet.
Another composer who was comfortable scoring to picture was Benjamin Britten – the 50 years since his death in 1976 is also being marked by programmers this coming season. In November, the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra arrive in Lucerne to perform one of Britten’s most famous large-scale works, the War Requiem, with an international cast of soloists, including Russian soprano Elena Tsallagova, German baritone Christian Gerhaher and English tenor Andrew Staples. Conducted by Kazuki Yamada, as with the original performances in 1962, this occasion draws together representatives from all the great wartime powers, with Japan also represented in the shape of Yamada. Considering the CBSO combining with the indelibly English sound of the Choir of Trinity College Cambridge, this looks to be an essential performance of Britten’s great work.
Britten’s War Requiem was also conducted by one of the composer’s great collaborators, Mstislav Rostropovich, and his ghost may well be at the feast of Gautier Capuçon’s performances of Dvořák’s Cello Concerto, which follow shortly after in November. Andris Nelsons and the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra pair Dvořák’s concerto with his admirer and contemporary, Johannes Brahms, performing his self-conciously Beethovenian First Symphony. And Britten’s requiem is itself echoed after the new year, with Mozart’s comparably diminutive (and unfinished) Requiem performed by Marc Minkowski and Les Musiciens de Louvre, who also perform Mozart’s devastating late motet, the Ave Verum Corpus.
The Migros Classics are also known for their populist slant, typified this season by the appearance of young Hungarian pianist and producer Peter Bence with the Sinfonietta de Lausanne. Performing works by John Williams, Hans Zimmer, Queen and Michael Jackson, this crossover event is a showcase for Bence’s personal brand of showmanship.
This season’s performances are spread around Switzerland in Geneva, Zurich, Lucerne, Bern and Sion, and tickets are at a range of price points, with admission for under-26s available for only 10 francs. With some of the finest European ensembles making visits, and a mix of classic and contemporary repertoire, these concerts would be ideal for families – as is very much the Migros ethos.
See all events in Migros Culture Percentage Classics 2026–27.
This article was sponsored by Migros-Kulturprozent-Classics.
