Cultural Kiosk at UN Geneva & CERN

A masterpiece of efficiency and unequalled charm, Luciano Berio’s Folk Songs offers a free, almost random overview of the riches of traditional music, handed down orally for centuries. We imagine ourselves at the foot of the tree that saw our great-grandparents grow up, heard their lullabies and accompanied generations.

With The Earth Cried Out to the Sky, Charlotte Bray offers Geneva audiences a diptych of melodies specially orchestrated for the OCG: alongside Latifa, Le Vieil arbre mûrier près de Marioupol evokes a fragile, weeping Eastern Europe.

In closing, Little Russia, the 2e Symphony , evoking his beloved Ukraine.

“Christina Daletska, a remarkable Ukrainian mezzo-soprano, is particularly familiar with the work of Charlotte Bray, our composer-in-residence. Holly Choe, whose talent never wanes and whose rise to prominence is luminous, is the pride of the OCG, of which she is associate conductor. Our guests tirelessly sow the music of excellence and the seeds of future peace. – Raphaël Merlin

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When you bring together musicians from the OCG, dancers from the Grand Théâtre de Genève and artists from Post Tenebras Rock and offer them the Rez de l’Usine as a setting, you already know that the result will take the audience off the beaten track, into unexplored artistic lands. The third edition of this colorful gathering promises to be full of sparks – and a few surprises.

“This show magnifies the contrasts between contemporary and classical music, with dance as the unifying and revealing element. These two worlds will sometimes build bridges, sometimes overlap, drift apart, interweave in this alternative space where improvisation will also have its place.” – Frédéric Steinbrüchel

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Too rarely performed in concert, Béla Bartók’s Cantata Profana, his only large-scale composition for choir and orchestra, carries a profound message of universality. Based on a popular Romanian ballad, it exalts, through the metamorphosis of nine hunter’s sons into majestic stags, their belonging to the animal kingdom and the vanity of the human: put to the sword by their father, they don’t want to return to their parents; their wild life is too beautiful, too pure and abundant. A pure summit of beauty with tree-like writing.

“The deer calls for fresh water”, the first part of Mendelssohn’s Psalm 42 , may well have inspired Bartók’s masterpiece, the same animal singing of the treasure of spring water.

Under Pierre Fouchenneret’s incandescent bow, in counterpoint: Bartók’s First Rhapsody and Mendelssohn’s Concerto in E minor. The violin is a wild instrument, and a deep forest one too!

“The face-to-face encounter between two musicians always has special virtues: here’s a single evening to measure the immensity of each universe, as if we were moving from one planet to another. In the forest, Mendelssohn and Bartók each in their own essence. – Raphaël Merlin

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In a world premiere, mezzo-soprano Marina Viotti and tenor John Osborn combine their talents in a performance of Giacomo Meyerbeer’s gargantuan Le Prophète, conducted by Marc Leroy-Calatayud.

The two opera singers, among today’s greatest voices, will not be alone when they take on this work. They will be joined by the Ensemble Vocal de Lausanne, assisted by children from the Conservatoire populaire and singers from the Haute école de musique. Such an abundance of talent will make this a grandiose evening.

” Le Prophète is a generous, flourishing work, but it’s given very little because even in its shortened version, it lasts over three hours. The OCG is proud to bring it to life with Marina Viotti and John Osborn in the international premiere in the title roles, and three days before it is performed at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées in Paris.” – Frédéric Steinbrüchel

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If there’s one place above all others associated with children’s stories, it’s the forest. Schumann and Ravel, excellent musical narrators of these universal stories, are brought together in this concert around fairy tales: those from Ravel’s Ma mère l’Oye and Schumann’s forest paintings(Waldszenen). In this woodland universe, the chirping of birds twirls lightly. A natural addition to this concert are Messiaen’s Oiseaux exotiques and Ravel’s Concerto in G for piano.

“Conceived as a giant piano recital, this concert makes you dizzy: on the one hand, by the instrumental colors, as if from an aviary, invited into the intimacy of works for solo piano(Waldszenen and Ma mère l’Oye were originally written for piano). On the other hand, Bertrand Chamayou’s extraordinary personality, Papageno for an evening, dominating the king-instrument, in a light-hearted dialogue with the OCG”. – Raphaël Merlin

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Participatory concert open to amateur musicians and amateur singers

It’s a universal story that’s been told many times: two lovers who can’t marry because someone’s standing in their way. In Ethel Smyth’s Der Wald, a jealous witch tries to prevent the tenor from marrying the soprano. To thwart their wedding plans, she casts a spell on them… What will become of the protagonists? Will they suffer the same fate as Romeo and Juliet, or Tristan and Yseult?

You’ll find out all about it when you attend this opera featuring the Le Motet choir and additional amateur musicians and singers, set against a backdrop imagined by HEPIA students. A unique participatory evening in Switzerland.

To top it all off, Celia Cano, the second winner of the OCG’s prize for a particularly brilliant graduate, will conduct theOverture to The Wreckers.

“Ethel Smyth, a British composer trained in Leipzig, a great personality, an author-conductor and a feminist activist, wrote the one-act opera Der Wald at the turn of the twentieth century. Never before performed in Switzerland, it is a rare fresco of underestimated scope, in the vein of the great German Romantics.” – Raphaël Merlin

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