Andrea Marcon: Dreaming of a Bach Cycle

Italian conductor and harpsichordist Andrea Marcon, artistic director of the La Cetra ensemble in Basel since 2010, reflects on the ensemble’s history and its ties to the famous Schola Cantorum Basiliensis. In this portrait, he also shares his dream of presenting a Bach cycle for the Easter period.

An unnamed studen orchestra

Andrea Marcon: The story of La Cetra begins in the late 1990s, when Peter Reidemeister, then director of the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis, wanted to fulfil a long-time dream: to create a professional orchestra within the Schola. I had just been appointed as harpsichord professor there and was already very active with ensembles such as the Sonatori de la Gioiosa Marca and the Venice Baroque Orchestra. Peter asked me whether I could create a programme for a large orchestral project. And so, in 1998, a first concert was held with an ensemble that had no official name but a clear artistic vision: an evening dedicated to works by Locatelli, a composer rarely performed at the time. Giuliano Carmignola was the soloist, I played the harpsichord, and we shared the musical direction. The concert was a great success and laid the foundations for what would soon become La Cetra. The reaction from the audience and our colleagues quickly showed there was an opportunity to be seized: the idea of a professional ensemble emerging from the Schola was born.

From a school project to a musical ensemble with its own identity

In the early years, La Cetra was not a fixed group, but rather an ensemble with flexible configuration made up of Schola teachers and talented students or alumni. Each project was a fresh start. At first, I observed this evolution from afar. It was only in 2009 that I took over the musical direction, with one essential condition: La Cetra could no longer be a “telephone orchestra,” a pickup group of musicians assembled for each project via phone calls. An orchestra needs a solid foundation, a shared musical language, and good cohesion between its players. So we began to build a core of around 25 musicians, from which we would recruit the rest of the ensemble depending on the programme. This model, inspired by team sports, proved effective. Today, La Cetra has a unique sound, the result of this continuity and team effort. These solid foundations allowed us to carry out more ambitious projects, such as opera productions or cycles of complex works, with a sound that has matured and deepened.

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