Arts Global

Advisory Board member Robert Bovet (right)

For the second time, the Swiss Global Artistic Foundation has teamed up with three eminent members of the Swiss medical and educational professions, all talented amateur musicians, to organise and present a successful recital and reception in aid of a worthy charity for underprivileged African children.

The event, held in the iconic L'Hermitage Art Foundation, in Lausanne, Switzerland, drew an enthusiastic public, and enabled a substantial sum to be given to the charity fund, which aids needy children in Burkina-Faso.

The "Trio Atypique" (Atypical Trio) which takes its name from its unusual combination of instruments (flute, violin and cello) but also in its programming, playing mainly little known or nowadays often overlooked composers, is made up of Professor Jean-Blaise Wasserfallen flute, Medical Director of the Lausanne Cantonal (State) Hospital, Professor François Spertini violin, Professor at the Faculty of Medicine and Biology of Lausanne and Director of the Clinical Allergy and Immunology Department of the State Hospital and Professor Jean-Paul Dépraz cello, Vice Rector of the University of Lausanne. All passionate musicians since their childhood, they normally only play together privately in the few spare moments available from their crowded professional lives, but were persuaded by the SGAF to perform publicly for the first time two years ago for the same charity, and agreed to repeat the operation again this year.

A warmly appreciative audience containing many well-known local personalities from various fields appreciated their sensitive performances of trios by Haydn, Gyrowetz, Pleyel, Danzi and Aeschbacher and sustained applause brought them back to the platform for a Mozart encore.

Michael Green, Foundation Consultant to the SGAF, compered the event, and gave a short talk on the amazingly varied life and career of one of the composers featured on the programme, the Austrian-born, subsequently French nationalised Ignace Pleyel, who after a successful beginning as a composer, subsequently founded a renowned music publishing firm, and France's leading piano making company and whose name lives on today in the Salle Pleyel, the best known concert hall in Paris.