Focus on the next generation

This year's Arosa Music Festival is all about innovation and yet remains true to its core. The most striking change is certainly the division of the festival into one week each in January, February and March. The stylistic division of the concerts into the different weeks is also new. What has remained the same is the idea of promotion, which runs like a red thread through the festival. Young, mostly highly talented musicians are involved in almost all of the concerts.

Photo: Tomasz Trzebiatowski

Sebastian Bohren

academy concerts 27.1. - 3.2.

As the name suggests, participants of the arosa music academy are invited to Arosa for a concert at the newly conceived academy concerts at the end of January and beginning of February. This year, the violinist Sebastian Bohren, the American saxophonist Jeffrey Siegfried and the two German singers Johanna Knaut and Kathleen Louisa Brandhofer were selected. Jeffrey Siegfried and the casalQuartett will open the festival as a saxophone quintet with works by Daniel Schnyder, Joseph Haydn and Adolf Busch. The impressive violin concerto Concerto funebre by Karl Amadeus Hartmann is at the heart of the second concert with Sebastian Bohren and the Georgian Chamber Orchestra Ingolstadt. It is one of the most expressive works in the entire violin repertoire. Kathleen Louisa Brandhofer and Johanna Knaut present romantic songs and duets on the theme of "The messengers of love".

Photo: Marco Borggreve

Oliver Schnyder

classic concerts 23.2. - 26.2.

 The classic concerts at the end of February also focus on promoting young musicians. Thanks to the collaboration with the Orpheum Foundation for the Promotion of Young Soloists, the Orpheum Young Soloists on Stage concert has been organized. The well-known Swiss pianist Oliver Schnyder, once an Orpheum soloist himself, will accompany the two young Orpheum soloists Christoph Croisé, cello, and Meta Fajdiga, piano, on this evening. They will perform works by Franz Schubert and Sergei Rachmaninoff. The winners of the Swiss Youth Music Competition are still at the very beginning of their musical careers. Arosa Kultur has invited two chamber music formations and a guitarist to Arosa for a joint concert. Grisons flutist Riccarda Caflisch and singer Irina Ungureanu present rarely heard gems of contemporary music for flute and soprano in the atmospherically intimate Bergkirchli. Unfortunately, the Modern music concert with the Bergensemble Arosa and Sofiia Suldina cannot take place, as the work for the planned premiere by the composer Blaise Ubaldini was not completed due to the composer's health. The project has therefore been postponed by a year. Instead, the still young Fathom String Trio will give a concert in Arosa. The trio consists of the unusual combination of viola, cello and double bass and moves between composed music, open concepts and improvisation. They will perform works by J. S. Bach, Mauricio Kagel, David Sontòn Caflisch, Rolf Riehm, Wolfgang Rihm and Leopold Mozart.

jazz&rock concerts 14.3. - 18.3.

 The jazz&rock concerts take place at the end of the season in March. The Graubünden jazz scene is prominently represented and presents a wide range of different jazz styles with three very different concerts. The first concert is dedicated to Art Blakey & The Jazz Messengers, played by a jazz quintet led by Grisons drummer Rolf Caflisch. In the Bergkirchli, Andi Schnoz and Rees Coray will present Miles Davis' legendary studio album Kind of Blue in their own way. There will be an evening with Martina Hug and Andi Schnoz at the Waldhotel National, combined with a 4-course menu. The up-and-coming Bernese dialect rock band Halunke will perform in the Kursaal in Arosa as the grand finale, at least in terms of volume.