Swiss Connections

“Swiss connections” is the motto of the Swiss Orchestra as we guide you into the New Year in 2026 – and to ring it in, we’re taking you on a musical journey from Switzerland, via Paris, to America. Along the way, the supposed boundaries between the profundity of European music and the reputed frivolousness of the New World become thoroughly blurred.

At the turn of the 20th century, the European railway network meant that destinations like Paris suddenly became easily accessible, while ocean liners managed to shrink previously imponderable distances to bring even places like New York closer. This globalisation also left its impact on the music scene. Many a young composer was now able to try his luck in a metropolis, immersing himself in a different language and culture and in new musical styles. Joseph Lauber was born in Ruswil in Canton Lucerne and initially studied in Zurich before being drawn to Paris. He moved to Geneva in the early 20th century and was soon appointed a professor at the Conservatory. Lauber composed his string suite Les Automnales in 1944, depicting life in autumn in four vivid movements. Pierre Maurice and Ernest Bloch were both from French-speaking Switzerland and both also studied in Geneva. Bloch then left for Paris, but soon went much farther still when his success at a guest performance in America enabled him to emigrate there. In 1941, he settled for good on the West Coast of the USA. It was there that he composed his Concerto grosso No. 2, filling its austere, Baroque form with new worlds of sound.

European composers might have felt drawn to the USA, but there was an ample number of Americans who travelled in the opposite direction. The reason was simple – anyone who wanted to become someone in the 1920s simply had to study with Nadia Boulanger in Paris. Aaron Copland, originally from New York, made sure he didn’t omit this step on his educational ladder. Once he was back home, he made a name for himself as a composer of symphonic jazz who, not unlike George Gershwin or Kurt Weill, was able to unite these two seemingly incompatible genres. The multifaceted clarinet, with its propensity for stylistic variability, proved the ideal instrument for mediating between jazz and the classical, so it’s not surprising that Copland wrote a solo concerto for it. The soloist in the Swiss Orchestra’s New Year Concert is the clarinettist Reto Bieri from Canton Zug. His own studies took him to New York, so he’s a perfect embodiment of the Swiss-American connections at the heart of our concert programme.