Orpheus Competition

The 2025 competition took place in Zurich on 22–23 November.
We congratulate the winners!

About the competition

Since 1974, the ORPHEUS Swiss Chamber Music Competition has been honouring outstanding chamber music ensembles every year. Around 800 prize-winners have been supported so far – many of them belong nowadays to the Swiss, European and worldwide elite. Pro Helvetia plays an important and the musical genre concerning expanding role, enabling the three first prize winners to commission a composition. In recent years, around thirty new works have been created that way. Since 2011, the prize-winners concerts have taken place at the Swiss Chamber Music Festival Adelboden founded specifically for this purpose. Since 2018, the Musikdorf Ernen has also included selected ensembles in its “Newcomers” series. Further organizers are constantly including ORPHEUS prize-winning ensembles in their concert series: at the Zunftkonzerte Zurich, Piano Trio Fest Bern, at the Zimmermannhaus Brugg series and the Society for Music and Literature Kreuzlingen. The legal seat of the ORPHEUS association is in Zurich.

Ensembles

It is important to us to follow and make public the further development of the prizewinner ensembles. We need for this the cooperation of the ensembles and the public. You find a link to the successful ensembles and news from their careers below.

Composers

Thanks to the continuous cooperation with the Swiss Cultural Foundation Pro Helvetia, a number of young composers with appreciation for chamber music is growing along with the ensembles. We are happy to follow and show also their further developments.