20 years Forum Valais and program 2026
The Festival for New Music is celebrating its 20th anniversary. This year it will be held with a varied program over several weekends in Goms.
In the twenty years of its work, the Forum Wallis has brought hundreds of works of contemporary music to the Swiss mountain canton. In addition to its major development work, it has made a name for itself with the legendary production of Stockhausen's Helicopter string quartet Proven international level in 2015.
Unusual lengths
This year's festival runs from June 4 to July 4, 2026 and presents chamber music, experimental and acousmatic formats from Valais, Switzerland and around the world. A common thread runs through the performances: Excessive length and deceleration. Giving time, taking time - that is the focus.
For the 11th time, the acousmatic series Ars Electronica Forum Valais Selection Concerts on MEbU (Münster Earport) takes place. Simone Conforti will present 32 works by 35 composers in four concerts. These include 3 world premieres and 29 Swiss premieres.
The Minguet Quartet plays Morton Feldmans 2nd string quartet . With a duration of four and a half hours, it is the longest in music history. Voutchkova/Strahl/Mengis/Pfammatter and the Erb/Mayas/Läng Trio, two sophisticated constellations of contemporary jazz, are organizing two evenings of improvisation. UMS'nJIP and Luis Tabuenca set the entire volume of poetry In the close-up we run wild by Rolf Hermann in an eight-hour premiere marathon in music.
For the first time in Switzerland, the Proyecto Piano Joven from Seville. The ensemble presents works for piano and live electronics that Spanish composers especially for children and young people have written. And finally, the Upper Valais Folk Song Choir through the villages of the Upper Valais. He brings old and new arrangements of local folk songs - reflected in traditional music from Bolivia.
The Forum Wallis is currently run by Javier Hagen, Ulrike Mayer-Spohn, Manuel Mengis and Hans-Peter Pfammatter (IGNM-VS).
Looking back on 20 years of Forum Valais
It emerged from the association Kleine Konzertreihe Oberwallis, which pioneered concert life in Valais from the 1980s onwards. From 2006, the festival offered the contemporary music scene a platform for the first time to showcase works and reflect the international scene. In 2011, the IGNM-VS was founded - the Valais local section of the International Society for New Music - and thus structurally anchored the festival internationally.
The track record is impressive. By 2025, the Forum Valais will have co-produced over 350 world premieres, performed works by more than 500 composers and provided a stage for over 100 local artists and more than 200 ensembles and musicians.
Today's challenges
The festival works on a voluntary basis in order to pass on funding directly to the musicians. The bureaucratic effort is increasing, the support is decreasing. Although local organizers today also program contemporary music, they prefer formats that appeal to the public. The Forum Wallis fills the gap: with sophisticated, advanced productions. This brings small audiences and funding difficulties - but also appreciation from artists, audiences, the media and politicians. This is because the Forum Valais is still on a par with the quality standards of the major international festivals.
Highlights of the festival history
The festival has seen many impressive performances in 20 years. Here are just a few to mention. Jean-Pierre Pellets Forest solitude with the Mondrian Ensemble on the opening evening of the very first festival in Brig in 2006. Valentin Carron's Cicero graffiti in the cellar of the Stockalper Castle in Brig. Mela Meierhans’ music theater Aunt Hänsi, which brought Valais yodel choirs to the Berlin Festival. St. Mary's glass by Beat Gysin, a sensual-claustrophobic audio theater on The castle by Franz Kafka. Les Musiciens de Brème, a children's opera by Wen Deqing together with the NEC. Cod.Acts Pendulum Choir on Pentecost Sunday 2016 in the Leuker Stefanskirche.
Continue the program track Integration, which has brought together ensembles and musicians as diverse as Klangforum Wien, recherche, UMS'nJIP, Ensemble Modern, zafraan, dissonArt, Taller Sonoro, Wolfgang Mitterer, Fabian Panisello and many more to make music and improvise together. Or for more than 10 years the Ars Electronica Forum Wallis Selection Concerts with new acousmatic music from all over the world. Nor should the subtle performances by Richard Jean and Lukas Huber or the boomingly loud performances by Steamboat Switzerland and Frachter be missed.
Under Jan Dobrzelewski, there were children's and school projects throughout Valais with the HEMU symphony orchestra for several years. In 2020 and 2021, Forum Wallis was one of the few festivals for new music in Europe to continue live during the pandemic. Ironically, the break came in 2022 after the pandemic, when an inflationary number of events were rescheduled and there was simply no more room for new music.
Outstanding: the «Helicopter String Quartet»
In 2015, the Forum Wallis presented Stockhausen's Helicopter string quartet his journeyman's piece. From 2006, the Valais Forum set processes in motion in Valais that had been established elsewhere in Switzerland almost 100 years earlier. Shortly after the IGNM/ISCM was founded in 1922, the first ISCM World New Music Days in Switzerland under Hermann Scherchen and Volkmar Andreae in Zurich. Then in Geneva in 1929 under Ernest Ansermet. Cultural policy, the media and even the scene are only too happy to overlook this lack of development. In its early years, the festival was regularly criticized for not putting on enough advanced programmes because it deliberately gave local forces a lot of space and a springboard.
This is why the IGNM-VS decided in 2015 to produce the most remarkable performance of the most difficult piece imaginable in record time: Stockhausen's Helicopter string quartet. And in record time and with the best in their field: the Arditti Quartet and André Richard. The Arditti Quartet initiated and premiered the work. André Richard had assisted Stockhausen several times on this piece and conducted the piece at the Salzburg Festival and the Biennale Musica Venezia.
They were joined by the four chief pilots from Air Glaciers, the legendary helicopter rescue airline from Sion, and the technicians from Swiss Television (TPC), who are very familiar with helicopter broadcasts for ski and bike races, among other things, and have been partners of Air Glaciers for many years. In fact, all it took was a handful of calls and a five-month run-up. According to Arditti and Richard, this resulted in the smoothest performance of this work to date, both technically and musically. And not in one of the major music capitals, but in Leuk. Since then there has been peace and quiet and the festival has turned its attention back to building up.
