From 6 November to 4 December: a month of BACH in Lausanne

From 6 November to 4 December 2026, the Lausanne Bach Festival will celebrate its 28th edition under the playfully questioning title “Do you like Bach…?”. Ten concerts will bring together some of today’s leading Baroque performers at several of Lausanne’s emblematic venues.

Marc Minkowski and Les Musiciens du Louvre will open the festival at Saint-François Church with all four Orchestral Suites. Two days later, Solomon’s Knot, directed by Jonathan Sells, will perform the six Motets. Another eagerly awaited complete cycle follows on 13 November at the Casino de Montbenon, when Concentus Musicus Wien and Stefan Gottfried perform the Brandenburg Concertos.

Major vocal works will take centre stage: Lars Ulrik Mortensen and Concerto Copenhagen will pair the Easter and Ascension Oratorios with the final two cantatas of the Christmas Oratorio, before Ton Koopman and the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra perform its first four cantatas at the cathedral on 20 November. Soprano Miriam Feuersinger, meanwhile, joins Capricornus Consort Basel for a programme of cantatas, a sonata and concertos.

The festival also offers more intimate encounters: Alejandro Marías and Jordan Fumadó in the three Sonatas for viola da gamba and harpsichord, followed by Kenneth Weiss in the complete six Partitas. And, exceptionally, Bach will give way to Handel on 25 November at the Opéra de Lausanne, with Agrippina, featuring Magdalena Kožená, Les Accents and Thibault Noally.

To close this month of Bach, the Baroque quintet Les Récréations will tackle one of the Cantor’s most enigmatic monuments, The Art of Fugue, on 4 December at Saint-Laurent. From orchestra to harpsichord, motet to oratorio, viola da gamba to Handelian opera, Lausanne offers a genuine journey to the heart of Johann Sebastian Bach’s musical world.

Official website: www.festivalbach.ch