Menuhin Festival Gstaad

A Platform for Developing Innovative Ideas

For two months every summer the Menuhin Festival Gstaad provides a beautiful setting for artistic development and creativity, a setting that inspired Lord Menuhin and his contemporaries to initiate something extraordinary in Gstaad. In 1957 he founded the
Menuhin Festival, established the International Menuhin Music Academy (IMMA) during the 70’s and nurtured and expanded the festival into one of Switzerland’s leading music festivals until his retirement from the event in 1996.

During the past eight years the Menuhin Festival Gstaad has continued to grow and develop in the spirit of its founding father Lord Menuhin; an open and creative programming strategy has led to new and trendsetting projects and the cultivation of enduring artistic structures. The Gstaad Chamber Music Festival focuses on outstanding artists (Joshua Bell, Sabine Meyer, Alfred Brendel, Andras Schiff, Hélène Grimaud), who invite their musical friends and partners to Gstaad “to make music in a relaxed atmosphere”. (citation from Yehudi Menuhin)

The Symphony Orchestra Concerts in the Festival Tent have brought symphonic brilliance back to Gstaad, including through close partnerships with orchestras such as the London Symphony Orchestra. The series “Today’s Music” promotes encounters between various music styles and cultures in the spirit of Yehudi Menuhin’s pivotal musical experiences, often surprising and unexpected. This cycle has earned widespread recognition with artists such as Bobby McFerrin, Nigel Kennedy or Swiss jazz legend George Gruntz since the 2002 edition. Moreover, a Musical Project for Children has become a tradition with the performance every year of a work that is taught and prepared in the schools in Saanenland and performed by some 30 to 50 children from the region. Works such as “Pollicino” by Hans-Werner Henze, “Brundibar” by Hans Krasa or “Carnival of the Animals” by Camille Saint-Saëns remain memorable.

A musical platform was also created for amateur musicians: the “Play Along” series. The 2008 edition of the Festival presented for the first time an Orchestra Week for Amateur Musicians who for seven days could study, rehearse and perform in concert an orchestra programme with leading musicians from the London Symphony Orchestra. In 2009 this amateur orchestra was supplemented with a corresponding Youth Orchestra Week with 60 to 70 musicians. The some 130 amateur and youth musicians profit in this project from the combination of active music making and concert attendance – in short, they participate in the festival life.

The 2009 edition of the Festival included the founding of the “Gstaad Academy”. Celebrated mezzo-soprano Cecilia Bartoli and her sole voice teacher, her mother Silvana Bazzoni-Bartoli, offered an intensive master class to some 10 students; the class was marked by a special atmosphere of teaching and personal exchange and will be continued in 2010. The Gstaad Academy will be expanded in small steps to include an instrumental division. A “Piano Academy” with pianist Andras Schiff is planned for 2010.

In 2007 the Festival once again attained attendance numbers comparable with Menuhin’s last years, and in 2009 the Festival exceeded the attendance mark of 20,000 for the first time.