Supermarket chain Migros is a familiar presence for visitors to Switzerland, and as one of the world’s largest cooperatives – with more than 2 million members across the country – it is one of the companies emblematic of the Swiss communitarian ethos. Migros’ Culture Percentage, the cooperative’s philanthropic arm, has a long-running concert series, the Culture Percentage Classics, which this year has a varied and notably international offering of orchestral concerts.
The series begins this October with a visit from the UK-based Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, well-known for performances on period instruments. John Butt conducts Handel’s oratorio Solomon, written in 1748. Famous for its instrumental “Arrival of the Queen of Sheba”, despite its biblical subject matter the oratorio is especially associated with the royals of Great Britain – judged at the time to be an allegory for George II.
Handelians should also watch out for Martin Fröst and the Swedish Chamber Orchestra’s appearance shortly after, who present works by Handel alongside his great contemporaries Bach and Rameau, with Fröst leading from the clarinet. These classics are presented together with Beethoven’s apotheosis of the dance, the Seventh Symphony. As with most of the Culture Percentage Classics, the programme is given airings in different places across the country, with Fröst and the Swedes appearing in Zurich, Bern, Geneva, and in the new concert space Noda in the small Rhône valley town of Sion.
As if to balance out the Handelianism, a period instrument band from the other side of la Manche appear in January: Les Musiciens du Louvre, conducted by Marc Minkowski, perform a variety of selections from Offenbach, including Orphée au enfers and Le Voyage dans la Lune. Despite their differences of style, Offenbach and Handel both were highly public, cosmopolitan composers, tailoring stage works to the tastes of their bourgeois and aristocratic audiences. Just as with Handel’s oratorios, Offenbach’s wry operettas have maintained much of their popularity ever since.
Wryness and comic timing will also be on display in autumn appearances by Igudesman & Joo and The Limitless Orchestra, newly founded by Aleksey Igudesman. Delving into well-known repertoire with aplomb – in this case, Dvořák’s New World Symphony – Igudesmann & Joo’s programmes aim for playfulness, and not a little satire on occasion, sometimes needed in the concert hall.
In the new year, the Iceland Symphony Orchestra and conductor Eva Ollikainen make several appearances across Switzerland in March, in Geneva, Bern and Zurich. They present a suitably Northern programme: Sibelius’ Second Symphony, paired with music by leading Icelandic composer Anna Thorvaldsdottir, architect of exquisitely judged orchestral sonic landscapes. Kian Soltani also joins to perform Elgar’s Cello Concerto, which, while located a little further south, gestures at contemplative Romanticism akin to that of his great Finnish contemporary Sibelius.
Restraint and contemplation are not necessarily words associated with Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana. The Cologne-based Gürzenich Orchestra present this quintessential piece of German neo-medievalism, together with the Cologne Bürgerchor and Kammerchor, under the baton of Andrés Orozco-Estrada, the new Generalmusikdirektor of the city of Cologne. Popular ever since its inception in the 1930s, Carmina Burana is about as bombastic as German concert music gets.
John Adams is likewise no stranger to bombast, and shortly after in April, the UK-based Aurora Orchestra present his Short Ride in a Fast Machine juxtaposed with another piece of classic Americana, Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue with Japanese piano phenomenon Hayato Sumino. Gershwin’s Rhapsody was set to Al Hirshfeld-inspired animation in Disney’s Fantasia 2000, and in 1940 Disney also famously animated the last item on Aurora’s programme, Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring. Presented in Zurich, Bern and Geneva, it is a perfect programme for children and young people.
Stravinsky’s orchestra in the Rite is notably enormous, building on the precedent set by the orchestral embiggenings of his predecessor, Gustav Mahler, whose First Symphony “Titan” is presented in May by Teodor Currentzis’ orchestra Utopia. Gathering members from 30 countries, the orchestra made its first appearance in 2022. Greek and Russian conductor Currentzis, a talented but sometimes unruly figure in performance, is not without critics – in particular given his manoeuvres over the past few years to successfully maintain careers both within and outside of Russia. This clearly hasn’t stopped him from gathering a high calibre of the world’s musicians to his baton – and this programme also boasts leading Norwegian violinist Vilde Frang to perform Berg’s singularly expressive Violin Concerto “To the Memory of an Angel”. They perform from late May through to June, in Zurich, Geneva and Bern.