opening concert with the swiss orchestra

The inaugural concert of the 2022 concert season under Lena-Lisa Wüstendörfer – the new Intendant of ANDERMATT MUSIC – will be the first symphony concert of the Swiss Orchestra, with which Andermatt’s new orchestra in residence will move into its new home. The Swiss Orchestra’s philosophy is to bring new life to the varied Swiss symphonic repertoire of the Classical and Romantic eras, and to present unknown works by Swiss composers alongside masterpieces of the concert repertoire.

The concert will open with the Overture in c minor by the Lucerne composer Franz Xaver Schnyder von Wartensee. This effervescent early work was written in 1818 during the composer’s first years in Frankfurt. Schnyder von Wartensee came from a patrician family in Lucerne and is regarded as the most important Swiss composer from the transitional period when the Classical gave way to the Romantic – though his works are rarely performed today. He was an enterprising figure, with an international network of contacts, and was one of the most important supporters of the “Allgemeine Schweizerische Musikgesellschaft” – the “General Swiss Music Society” – that was founded in 1808. The festivals organised by this Society helped to establish classical music in Swiss life. Alongside works by Swiss contemporary composers, these festivals featured Swiss premières of oratorios and orchestral works by important international composers, especially Handel, Haydn, Beethoven and Mendelssohn, often involving hundreds of participants.

Schnyder von Wartensee by no means needs to shy away from comparison with the great names of his time. We here place his Overture in c minor alongside Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Violin Concerto No. 5 and Ludwig van Beethoven’s 7^th Symphony – whose fame is founded not least on its having featured in innumerable films. We do not necessarily have to agree with Richard Wagner’s near-notorious description of this work as “the apotheosis of dance” to realise that the defining feature of this symphony is rhythm. Mozart’s 5^th Violin Concerto, by contrast, is regarded as one of his melodically most memorable compositions, and the violinist Alina Pogostkina offers an interpretation of it that is both warm and cogent.