Verbier Festival Chamber Orchestra
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.

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.