The Tonhalle Orchestra makes its debut at the Festspielhaus

 

 

Neue Zürcher Zeitung

Performance showcase with Mahler: The Tonhalle Orchestra makes its debut at the Festspielhaus Baden-Baden

04.12.2025 Christian Wildhagen, Baden-Baden

The Zurich musicians open their new autumn residency at the elite German concert hall with a very large line-up. Is it worth the effort for the Tonhalle financially? The Tonhalle Orchestra Zurich confidently sees itself as Switzerland's cultural ambassador. However, there are places where the musical message has not yet reached. Until last weekend, this surprisingly included the city of Baden-Baden. This is surprising because the 2,500-seat Festspielhaus there is not just the largest opera and concert venue in Germany - it is also one of the top addresses in the international music scene. When top European orchestras ask where they should perform on tour in southern Germany, the spa town in the Black Forest easily beats a much larger city like Stuttgart. This curious circumstance is due to the fact that the Festspielhaus, which was founded in 1998 and has been privately financed ever since, has focussed on excellence from the very beginning - and can continue to do so thanks to the reliable, bubbling income from sponsorship. This enables a programme that bears a certain resemblance to the orchestral roundelay at the Lucerne Summer Festival. The Vienna and Berlin Philharmonic Orchestras, the Amsterdam Concertgebouw and the London Symphony Orchestra compete with each other here, often in residencies lasting several days. For an initial three years, the Tonhalle Orchestra will now also belong to this elite circle and will hold its own residency at the Festspielhaus each autumn.

Fully counter-financed

This is an accolade for the traditional Zurich orchestra. It shows that the musical fine-tuning that Music Director Paavo Järvi has given the orchestra in recent years is now also being recognised beyond the region. That the Tonhalle Orchestra has what it takes to be one of the best five orchestras in the world, as Järvi stated as a whimsical working hypothesis shortly after taking up his post in 2019 - this sentence suddenly no longer sounds so whimsical and certainly not utopian. Accordingly, the debut at the Festspielhaus is a powerful one: Two large-scale Mahler symphonies, including the "Resurrection Symphony" with choral finale, for which the excellent Zürcher Sing-Akademie is travelling with the orchestra, and Dvořák's Cello Concerto are in the bag. Will this also pay off financially for the Tonhalle - over and above the image gain? Given the number of performers, one might have doubts. But Ilona Schmiel, Director of the Tonhalle Society, remains calm about the question. She emphasises that such guest performances, which would enhance the orchestra's reputation and make it known throughout the world, are fundamentally part of its cultural mandate and are also covered by the subsidy agreement with the city. But despite the considerable costs, especially for such a large programme, there is no need for a subsidy from the budget for such a trip. The Tonhalle Society's regulations stipulate that guest performances, including all personnel and travelling expenses, must be fully funded. In practice, this means that in addition to the logistical expenses, every service of an orchestra member and the support team as well as the fees for the soloists are included in an overall calculation. This is then used in negotiations with the organiser, explains Schmiel. If there is still a funding gap, a sponsor must be found - as in this case - to at least make up the shortfall. The process is again reminiscent of the Lucerne Festival, which is a purely private-sector organisation and financed the major Asian tours of its festival orchestra in 2017 and 2018 with the help of a strong sponsor, for example.

Schmiel's performance in Baden-Baden, which was followed by two more concerts in the philharmonic halls of Cologne and Paris, is linked to another goal: she wants to put the ambitious Mahler cycle, Järvi's defining project in Zurich, in the international spotlight. The reasoning behind this is that the works of this composer in particular demonstrate the level of interpretation achieved in a unique way. The Tonhalle Orchestra will therefore present at least one of the eleven Mahler symphonies in Baden-Baden in each of the coming years. And the Eighth, with its three choirs and eight soloists, could even be recorded here, Schmiel hints.

New sound experience

Unlike the Tonhalle and even the KKL in Lucerne, the huge hall of the Festspielhaus would indeed have sufficient volume to still transparently reproduce the hundreds of instruments used in the "Symphony of a Thousand". The performance of the "Resurrection Symphony", which has a somewhat smaller orchestra but is similarly heaven-shattering, already gives an idea of this. At the same time, you can experience here what Paavo Järvi considers to be the central artistic experience of such guest appearances: The orchestra sounds - and hears itself - differently in the foreign hall than in its home venue. In the Festspielhaus, for example, the individual instrumental groups blend less strongly than in the typically Romantic mixed sound of the Zurich hall. On the other hand, the playing and sound culture achieved by the woodwinds and horn section, for example, is all the more evident; the strings sound richer in overtones, with an almost silky lustre. You can also recognise from the concise shaping of many details that the orchestra has just been in the recording studio with the work after the Zurich performances of the Second in November. You can also hear the precision of the rehearsals in the First Symphony, the recording of which has just been released; however, Järvi loosens the reins somewhat and gives the poetry plenty of space. In this way, he creates a harmonious arc from the Bohemian world of the Dvořák concerto, which Gautier Capuçon plays with a decidedly sensuous sound, to the refined ambiguity of the early Mahler. Both concerts were very well received by the pleasingly large audience and ended with ovations. The Zurich musicians have obviously won new fans in Baden-Baden.