The Sinfonieorchester Basel is always again demonstrating anew its excellent quality, whether it is in its own concert tiers, in the Theater Basel or in guest concerts at home or abroad. The Sinfonieorchester Basel plays in an acoustically superlative music hall, built in 1876 in the Stadt-Casino Basel, which belongs to the best in the world.
The Orchestra was founded in 1876, in the same year as the construction of the music hall. It holds its present name of ‘Sinfonieorchester Basel’ from 1997. Among the conductors with whom the Sinfonieorchester Basel has been or is closely bound are to be found names such as Mario Venzago, Valery Gergiev or Pierre Boulez, as well as Nello Santi, Otto Klemperer, Horst Stein, Armin Jordan, Walter Weller, Gary Bertini, Antal Dorati, Wilhelm Furtwängler, Gustav Mahler, Felix Weingartner or Johannes Brahms. The Sinfonieorchester Basel has had world premieres for a whole row of the most important works of the Twentieth Century, among others those of Béla Bartók, Arthur Honegger and Bohuslav Martinů. The Sinfonieorchester Basel has in the last years experienced a noticeable rejuvenation and as a result belongs to those professional orchestras in Switzerland with the lowest average age. Around a hundred highly-qualified musicians of international origin belong to the Orchestra. Alongside highest orchestra culture and youthful elan is also stylistic flexibility one of the characteristics of the Orchestra. The repertoire of the Sinfonieorchester Basel is broad-based: it stretches from the Vienna Classics, via the romantic music, to contemporary compositions. To this can be added that new concert forms are sought and genre-overlapping co-productions with jazz, rock and techno-acts are realized, which underline the progressive character of the Sinfonieorchester Basel.
In the 2009/10 season the renowned American conductor and pianist, Dennis Russell Davies, was appointed principal conductor. Under Davies the Orchestra continuously builds up its strengths and repertoire. At the present time the strong points under his leadership are alongside modern classics also works by Swiss and American composers. Davies and the Sinfonieorchester Basel cultivate a close working relationship with the ‘Paul Sacher Stiftung Basel‘.
CD productions with works by Robert Schumann, Maurice Ravel, Klaus Huber, Luigi Nono, Franz Schubert, Anton Bruckner, Othmar Schoeck and Felix Weingartner document the creativity of the Sinfonieorchester Basel. The CDs found international acclaim and were premiered many times over; for example, the productions of all the Schumann symphonies were decorated with the ‘Diapason d’Or‘. But also the first performance of the Weingartner symphonies under Marko Letonja found international acclaim. At the present time the Sinfonieorchester Basel is devoting itself under its principal conductor, Dennis Russell Davies, to the complete recordings of the symphonies of Franz Schubert and Arthur Honegger. In 2010, the Orchestra toured around China and played concerts in five towns. The highlight of the trip were the appearances in the Shanghai Oriental Arts Center, where the Symphony Orchestra was the only Swiss orchestra to appear at Expo 2010, and the Gala Concert in Beijing as part of the celebrations for the 60-year-old Swiss-Sino commercial links. In fall 2012, the Orchestra presented a program of Russian music in two celebrated guest productions in St. Petersburg and Moscow. In spring 2014, the Orchestra will tour through England with festival appearances in London, Cambridge, Basingstoke, Coventry and Cardiff.
