With seasonal concerts, special events, and major tours abroad, the Orchestra della Svizzera italiana continues to enjoy continued success with audiences and critics alike, both in its home region and around the world. Many of its special events are held in December, mostly around the holidays: the 7th Christmas concert at the PalaCinema in Locarno, the 10th-11th screening of the film at the LAC Psycho with live music from the OSI, the 19th, 20th and 21st the ballet Nutcracker at the LAC and finally on the 31st the highly anticipated New Year's Eve Concert, again at the LAC, with Robert Treviño and a sparkling program inspired by Viennese tradition.
The season starts again in January-February "OSI in the Auditorium", with four events every Thursday at the RSI Stelio Molo Auditorium in Lugano-Besso: it is the last season organised in the Auditorium for a few years, as in February the large construction site of the City of Music will get into full swing and the works will keep the building closed for some time.
Like the whole season OSI started in September and continues now in 2026, entitled “With folklore”The Auditorium's program also explores the influence of folk music on classical masterpieces: "Often," explains OSI Artistic Director Barbara Widmer, "composers' intent was to express a national identity or enrich their musical language with new sounds." Thus, until early February, renowned soloists such as Baiba Skride (violin) and Antoine Tamestit (viola) will be featured alongside imaginative musicians such as Georgian Giorgi Gigashvili, Russian-Hungarian Sergey Malov, and Greek conductor Constantinos Carydis, for excursions into even more unusual musical traditions, such as Greek or Georgian.
The main season will resume from mid-February "OSI at LAC", with six evenings of great repertoire until April 23, with the most famous conductors and soloists on the international scene including Martha Argerich, Charles Dutoit, Benjamin Grosvenor, Veronika Eberle and of course Principal Guest Conductor Krzysztof Urbański.
There will also be space for the musicians of the OSI: in particular, the Konzertmeister Robert Kowalski will perform in the concert OSI at LAC of March 26 (preceded by a Lunch with OSI, on March 25th, again at the LAC) together with “his” Karol Szymanowski Quartet.
The third season, OSI at Pentecost (this year May 23-24), intends to consolidate a series of concert events over the Pentecost weekend, both for residents and for tourists and the international public who flock to Italian-speaking Switzerland during that period. The second edition of OSI at Pentecost will see the conductor Charles Dutoit as the main protagonist, who will move between famous and much-loved pieces such as Scheherazade by Rimsky-Korsakov or the Concerto for Violin and Orchestra by Jean Sibelius, with Frank Peter Zimmermann.
The very close collaboration with the great Swiss conductor is one of the characteristics of this season: Dutoit, already at the head of the OSI in September at the Ascona Music Weeks, is now the protagonist – as well as of OSI at Pentecost – of various appointments for OSI at LAC, as well as a major tour in Spain in March with legendary pianist Martha Argerich: "It will be a true 'journey with Dutoit' that we want to offer the public," explains Barbara Widmer, "a special project that highlights the excellent understanding between the Orchestra della Svizzera italiana and the Maestro, in the spirit of an increasingly close and continuous collaboration."
Dutoit will lead the OSI in Spain from March 16 to 20, on a prestigious concert tour with Martha Argerich between Barcelona, Zaragoza, Madrid and Alicante.
Also in March, this time with conductor and violinist Julian Rachlin, the Orchestra will make its grand return to the famed Golden Hall of the Vienna Musikverein (March 2), followed the next day by a stop in Nuremberg. In Switzerland, on February 6, the OSI will perform for the first time at the futuristic Konzerthalle in Andermatt, with Tamestit as solo viola.
