Gstaad Menuhin Festival focuses on Migration in its 2025 programme

The 69^th edition of the Gstaad Menuhin Festival and Academy will take place from 18^th July to 6^th September 2025 with the theme ‘Change III – Migration.’ The programme will feature some 60 concerts in the beautiful Alpine region of Gstaad in the Bernese Oberland and Vaudois Alps. The great violinist and humanist Yehudi Menuhin, relaxing with his family among the area’s mountains, lakes and historic villages, first founded the festival in 1957 – together with his close friends, pianist and composer Benjamin Britten, tenor Peter Pears, and cellist Maurice Gendron in the 15^th century St Maurice Church (Mauritiuskirche) in the adjoining village of Saanen.

Following Menuhin’s death in 1999, the cellist Christoph Müller was appointed as artistic director in 2002 and the festival has blossomed since then, nearly doubling audience numbers. Following Menuhin’s ‘vision’, chamber concerts take place in the historic churches around Gstaad, such as Lauenen, Rougement, Gsteig, Vers l’Eglise, Zweisimmen, Boltigen and Château d’Œx, with larger orchestral and staged operatic concerts in the festival tent seating some 2,000 people. As well as the ‘big names’ – The 2025 programme features performances Fazil Say (artist in residence), Khatia Buniatishvili, Avi Avital, Daniil Trifonov, Vikingur Ólafsson, Gabriela Montero, Cecilia Bartoli, András Schiff, Sol Gabetta, Patricia Kopatchinskaja, Sonya Yoncheva, Elina Garanča, Jonathan Tetelman, Mirga Gražintyé-Tyla, Jaap Van Zweden, Paavo Järvi, the King’s Singers, Gstaad Festival Orchestra and Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich – many young and aspiring musicians from Switzerland and around the world are also given concert opportunities.

The festival was originally launched in the adjoining village of Saanen ©Adobe Stock

Along with Menuhin’s ‘vision’ the Gstaad Academy was founded by Müller in 2008 and offers coaching for young musicians from ‘star’ professors – in 2025 guidance will be offered for emerging talent in conducting (van Zweden, Gražintyé-Tyla), piano (Schiff), vocal (Tézier, Berthon), strings (Schmidt, Causa, Monighetti) and baroque (Steger).

Over the years, each edition of the festival was centred around a theme – previous themes include Fire and Sun, the Alps, Paris, Vienna and London – with musical choices reflecting the glories and traditions of each theme.

However, some three years ago Christoph Müller and the Festival team, including board president Aldo Kropf and executive director Lukas Wittermann, took note of how much the world had changed in recent years; climate change, which was causing the glaciers around Gstaad to melt, social unrest around the world and growing economic international challenges. Already since 2022 the festival had embarked on ‘Mission Menuhin’ to reduce the CO2 emissions from all the festival’s activities. The team decided that the next festival themes should reflect these changes, while of course maintaining Menuhin’s vision and artistic excellence.

Accordingly, in 2023 a three-year cycle, entitled ‘Change’ was established. The 2023 theme was ‘Change I – Humility’, focussing on the humility of human great musicians, such as J S Bach and many others, towards transcendental elements. The 2024 theme was ‘Change II – Transformation’, focussing on the extraordinary evolutions and movements of musicians and musical values in recent times. (Details of the 2023 and 2024 festivals, ‘Change I’ and ‘Change II’, are fully expounded and discussed in the Classical Music Magazine issues of December 2022 and December 2023).

To complete the three-year cycle, the theme of the 2025 Gstaad Menuhin Festival will be ‘Change III – Migration’. One of the most pressing challenges facing the world today, along with climate change, is migration. According to the Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs and the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), some 79 million people are currently being displaced. In recent years hundreds of millions live in countries far from their birthplace, often being forced to flee because of violence or other dangers. However, although these individuals have endured harsh sufferings through their displacements, they often find strength through their cultural roots, while adjusting to new realities. Music is one of the most potent art forms to capture this tension between suffering and hope. Musicians who have fled their homelands can foster intercultural exchanges, as a bridge between past and present cultures.

The 2025 Gstaad Menuhin Festival will explore migration across four concert series; ‘Origin’ – music rooted in one’s homeland; ‘Escape to Exile’ – music born by the experience of exile; ‘Inner Emigration’ – music turning inwards towards self-liberation; ‘Nostalgia’ – yearning for the homeland left behind, and the ache of homesickness.

The ‘Origin’ series offer a diverse programme combining traditional and folk music. Fazil Say’s ‘Bosphorus Fantasies’, the King’s Singers with ‘New World’ Spanish and Portuguese treasures from the Americas, Avi Avital’s ‘Mediterranean journey’ calling on the traditional music of Apulia – all highlight the powerful inspiration of one’s musical heritage. The ‘Escape to Exile’ series will be highlighted by Händel’s powerful oratorio ‘Israel in Egypt’ capturing the suffering of oppressed people and their exodus. Another programme will focus on the perilous ‘Western Balkan Route’, following the migration journey across Greece, North Macedonia, Serbia and Hungary, with regional performers playing global sounds on traditional instruments. The series will also explore the expressions of loss in the music of exiled composers such as Schulhoff, Jacobi, Hindemith and Rachmaninov with his Second Symphony with dark beauty and solace in exile. In Bellini’s ‘Norma’ Adalgisa’s and Pollione’s ‘flight to Rome’ expresses love and duty.

The ‘Inner Emigration’ series will include music by Shostakovich, who was forced to navigate his art within an oppressive political regime, while struggling to maintain his human dignity and inner strength. Beethoven in his final three piano sonatas, Op. 109-111, when nearly deaf, created unparalleled richness through his ‘inner ear’. Finally, the ‘Nostalgia’ series evokes the longings for places far away, including music by Russian and Polish composers such as Tchaikovsky and Wieniawski. Dvořák, tormented by homesickness when in the USA channelled his longing into works such as the ‘American’ Quartet and the ‘New World’ Symphony, and Bizet’s ‘L’Arlésienne’ suites were inspired by the nostalgia of his experiences in Provence. Contemporary works by Gabriela Montero and Fazil Say will also draw on deep folk emotions, blending nostalgia and hope for the future.

Patricia Kopatchinskaja brings her ‘Music for the Planet’ project to Gstaad in 2025 

In what will be the third edition of ‘Music for the Planet’, Patricia Kopatchinskaja, who herself left her Moldovan homeland, will explore emotional roots and the accelerating challenges of climate change with, alongside the Shostakovich Cello Sonata, his powerful Second Piano Trio composed near the end of the Second World War, drawing on themes from Jewish folk music, evoking an intense sense of pain. The life of Polish composer Andrzej Panufnik, a close friend of Yehudi Menuhin, was deeply marked by exile, and found fascination in nature – such as his piece Arbor Cosmica, with its symbols of beauty, resilience of our current delicate world.

Some of the musicians performing in the 2025 Gstaad Menuhin Festival have personally experienced fleeing oppression, and starting anew in exile. This will add a tangible sense of authenticity and immediacy to their performances, and their perspectives on music and migration.

The complete 2025 programme and list of artists will be available on the Gstaad Menuhin Festival website on 20 December 2024. Bookings for concerts in the festival tent can then be made online, and for concerts in other locations in February 2025

Finally – after twenty-four inspirational and successful years, the artistic director Christoph Müller will move on to other challenges following the Gstaad Menuhin Festival 2025, leaving behind a rich musical legacy. He will be succeeded by the distinguished violinist and musician, Daniel Hope, currently Director of the Zurich Chamber Orchestra, President of the Beethoven-Haus in Bonn, and with close personal and musical links since his childhood with Yehudi Menuhin (see later article).

Desmond Cecil, the Gstaad Menuhin Festival International Representative, was a Swiss professional violinist before becoming a British diplomat in embassies around the world. He does much pro bono work with arts organisations around Europe, and his memoir The Wandering Civil Servant of Stradivarius was published by Quartet Books in 2021, with all royalties donated to charities helping young musicians.