A top year in the Musikdorf Ernen

The 50 events in the 51st concert season this year were organised under the motto "Fire and Flame". With 7'600 concert admissions (as of 8 September), it is already clear that a new audience record will be set in the 2024 season. And this despite bad weather at the start of the festival. While the Gaspard trio led by star violinist Jonian Ilias Kadesha performed passionate piano trios by Smetana and Shostakovich at the end of June, devastating storms swept across the Upper Valais, preventing many music lovers from attending the concerts.

The mood was slow to recover and guests slowly began to move back into the mountain villages of Goms. But the musicians and the enthusiastic audience were not deterred. 
From the powerful keyboard storms in the piano music by Charles-Valentin Alkan, interpreted by Schaghajegh Nosrati, to the playful colouratura in Handel's Icarus cantata "Tra le fiamme", sung by Carine Tinney (cover picture) - this year's discovery in the Erner Baroque Weeks: Already in July, one highlight followed another in the church of St George in Ernen.

The classical music stars who have fallen in love with idyllic Ernen and keep returning to the music village have contributed significantly to its success. For example, the Upper Valais soprano Rachel Harnisch, who has performed in Ernen even after officially ending her career and has promised to do so again in summer 2025. 
Or Sir András Schiff, who delighted piano lovers travelling from all over the world with six concerts in four days. This included a world premiere - the master pianist played a concert on a baroque clavichord for the very first time.

However, the programme in the Musikdorf Ernen is also supported by the numerous young musicians who, thanks to their enthusiasm and amazing skills, perform music evening after evening, some of which is off the beaten track: Works by female composers, by little-known composers of the 20th century and also contemporary music. 
For example, the works of this year's Composer in Residence, Christian Mason, who, in addition to a keen sense for fascinating sounds, also thinks about the spatial and scenic - for example in the procession with cow, goat and sheep bells that formed the framework for the world premiere of Figures in a landscape (awaiting eternity) - the work commissioned by the festival.

The musical line has not yet been drawn in Ernen: On 20 October, students from the Sion University of Music will perform a concert that includes a work by the Composer in Residence 2024/25. The English composer Cheryl Frances-Hoad will be in Ernen in September and October to work on her new string quartet, which will be premiered at the beginning of August 2025. And as usual, the association's year in the music village of Ernen will end with a jazz concert by Charl du Plessis on the eve of New Year's Eve. One thing is already certain: The highly successful 51st concert season in 2024 under the motto "Fire and Flame" will continue to glow for a long time to come.