VFCO - Verbier Festival

The Verbier Festival Chamber Orchestra is the Verbier Festival’s global ambassador. The orchestra’s open-minded and generous approach to music-making aims to uplift listeners around the world. Its DNA mirrors that of a string quartet, embracing a shared spirit of communication, discovery, freedom and trust.

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biography

Founded in 2005 and considered one of the top chamber orchestras in the world, the Verbier Festival Chamber Orchestra is made up of alumni of the Verbier Festival Orchestra training programme and who now hold positions in leading international ensembles. The extensive list of orchestras is impressive, and includes, among others, the Vienna, Berlin, and Israel Philharmonics, and the Metropolitan Opera, Royal Concertgebouw, Tonhalle, and London Symphony Orchestras. The VFCO is the resident chamber orchestra of the Verbier Festival, and the six concerts it performs at each summer’s Festival are led by both its acclaimed Music Director, Gábor Takács-Nagy, as well as other illustrious conductors such as Antonio Pappano, Michael Tilson Thomas, and Daniel Harding. The orchestra is often joined by soloists such as András Schiff, Leonidas Kavakos, Joshua Bell, Pinchas Zukerman, Martha Argerich, Yuja Wang, Daniil Trifonov and Gautier Capuçon. As an ambassador of the Verbier Festival, the orchestra’s celebrated tours have brought its electrifying energy to audiences at many of the world’s great concert halls and festivals. Its first recording was in 2006 with the violinist/conductor Maxim Vengerov, and was followed by a 22-concert tour in North America and Europe. Since then, the orchestra has toured regularly throughout the world and, since 2008, has taken up residence for a week each autumn at Schloss Elmau in Bavaria.

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music director

Gábor Takács-Nagy

Hungarian conductor Gábor Takács-Nagy was appointed Music Director of the Verbier Festival Chamber Orchestra in 2007. A founding member and principal violin (1975 to 1992) of the Takács Quartet, he performed with Sir Yehudi Menuhin, Isaac Stern, Mstislav Rostropovitch, András Schiff, Mikhail Pletnev, Joshua Bell and Gidon Kremer. He founded the Takács Piano Trio in 1996 and the Mikrokosmos Quartet in 1998 (Excellencia Prize for the complete cycle of Bartók’s quartets). Since 2002 he has devoted himself entirely to orchestral conducting, when he founded the Camerata Bellerive. In 2011, he was appointed Music Director of the Manchester Camerata and, in 2012, Principal Guest Conductor of the Budapest Festival Orchestra. Takács became Principal Artistic Partner of the Irish Chamber Orchestra in 2013. He coaches string quartets at the Haute Ecole de Musique, Geneva, and is an Honorary Member of the Royal Academy of Music (2012) and Artistic Advisor for the Verbier Festival Academy’s Chamber Music offerings.

musicians

The following musicians are regular collaborators. The VFCO family includes many more.

Violin

Rimma Bergeron-Langlois
Daniel Cho
Petr Chonkushev
Teodora Dimitrova
Jeff Dyrda
Filip Fenrych
Lulu Fuller
Emma Gibout
Elizaveta Goldenberg
Roberto González Monjas
Giovanni Guzzo
Laura Ha
Lelia Iancovici
Guillaume Jacot
Vivek Jayaraman
Christoph Koncz
Marta Krechkovsky
Ji Min Lee
Mariami Machaidze
Asaf Maoz
Genevieve Martineau
Aya Muraki
Simon Riverin
Alexandros Sakarellos
Clare Semes
Yoonshin Song
Viktor Stenhjem
Sayaka Takeuchi

Viola

Carolyn Blackwell
Arabella Bozic
Blythe Engstroem
Karolina Errera
Natanael Ferreira
Joshua Newburger
Janka Szomor-Mekis
Amanda Verner
Sharon Wei
Elizaveta Zolotova