Founded in 1994, the Verbier Festival’s orchestral training program has become well-known throughout Europe, and it also inspires many Asian, North and South American musicians to spend a few weeks each summer in the Swiss Alps. Applications are accepted from the age of 15. Young musicians first join the festival’s youth orchestra, where internationally acclaimed conductors and instrumental soloists work with sixty students each year. The next step is the Verbier Festival Orchestra (VFO), in which music academy students and young professionals under 28 perform alongside their mentors and invited soloists. This ensemble already performs regularly—primarily during the festival. The third “level” is the Verbier Festival Chamber Orchestra (VFCO), where the most outstanding young musicians play together with older colleagues who also participated in the festival’s orchestral training program in earlier years. Thus, the VFCO operates as a kind of alumni ensemble.
Established in 2005 under the leadership of violinist-conductor Gábor Takács-Nagy, the VFCO is regarded as one of the world’s finest chamber orchestras. According to a critic from Musik und Theater, the VFCO “preserves, even as an orchestra, the refinement and filigree transparency of string quartet playing.” A review in the Spanish magazine Scherzo highlighted concepts such as “trust, freedom, dialogue, communication, and discovery.” The orchestra’s members hold full-time positions in leading symphonic ensembles around the world, from the Vienna, Berlin, and Israel Philharmonics to Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw Orchestra and Zurich’s Tonhalle Orchestra. For them, chamber music represents the best kind of recreation—a liberating opportunity to immerse themselves in the joy of making music together.
As the resident chamber orchestra of the Verbier Festival, the VFCO performs six concerts each summer, conducted by music director Gábor Takács-Nagy and other distinguished conductors including Antonio Pappano, Michael Tilson Thomas, and Daniel Harding. The ensemble often collaborates with renowned pianists (Martha Argerich, András Schiff, Yuja Wang, Daniil Trifonov), violinists (Leonidas Kavakos, Joshua Bell, Pinchas Zukerman), and cellist Gautier Capuçon. As an ambassador of the Verbier Festival, the orchestra regularly tours Europe and North America. Their first recording was a 2006 Mozart album made with violinist-conductor Maxim Vengerov, presented on a 22-concert tour. Of equal significance is The Symphonies – A Beethoven Journey, released in 2023 by the prestigious Deutsche Grammophon label. The album comprises concert recordings of Beethoven’s nine symphonies made between 2009 and 2022 under the baton of Gábor Takács-Nagy. As Hungarian critic Máté Csabai writes, “Reviewers speak of the kind of reverence usually reserved for the old maestros when discussing the former quartet leader turned conductor—yet Takács-Nagy’s temperament and energy bear no resemblance to Karajan or Solti… The conductor approaches the monumental Ninth Symphony more from the world of Haydn than from the later wild Romanticism, and he finds its soul in the slow, God-seeking third movement. This is not an ‘ideal’ Beethoven cycle—but we do not need ideals; we need music.”
The Hungarian concerts in December will also feature a Beethoven symphony—the Seventh—accompanied by an overture (Coriolan) and a concerto (the Piano Concerto in G major). The Beethoven journey of the VFCO and Gábor Takács-Nagy continues in Pécs, Szeged, Debrecen, and Budapest.
