69th Gstaad Menuhin Festival & Academy

The Gstaad Chamber Music Festival focuses on top-class personalities (Joshua Bell, Sabine Meyer, Alfred Brendel, Andras Schiff, Hélène Grimaud) who invite their musical friends and partners to Gstaad and "make music together in a relaxed atmosphere" (quote from Yehudi Menuhin).

The symphony orchestra concerts in the Festival Tent Gstaad bring symphonic highlights back to Gstaad, including through close partnerships with orchestras such as the London Symphony Orchestra. The "Today's Music" series enables encounters between the most diverse styles and cultures, which, following Yehudi Menuhin's example, result in surprising and unforeseen musical experiences. With artists such as Bobby McFerrin, Nigel Kennedy and the Swiss jazz legend George Gruntz, this cycle has made a name for itself since the 2002 edition. In addition, the tradition of a children's project has been established, which provides for the annual performance of a work developed pedagogically in the schools of the Saanenland with the participation of 30 to 50 children from the region. Works such as "Pollicino" by Hans-Werner Henze, "Brundibar" by Hans Krasa or "Carnaval des Animaux" by Camille Saint-Saëns remain unforgotten.

A platform has also been created for musical amateurs, which has established itself as the "Gstaad Festival Amateur Orchestra" series: The 2008 edition of the festival was the first to present an orchestra week for amateur musicians, who spent seven days rehearsing an orchestral program together with section leaders from established symphony orchestras and presented it in a concert. Since 2009, this amateur orchestra has been supplemented by a corresponding youth orchestra week with 60-70 participants. In this project, a total of around 130 young people and amateur musicians benefit from the combination of active music-making, concert visits and, in short, taking part in festival life.

Note: This text was translated by machine translation software and not by a human translator. It may contain translation errors.