Leaders must have as many technical and interpersonal skills as possible. But more than ever, they must also be creative, capable of finding solutions beyond the limits that confine so many otherwise intelligent and active people.
The Paul & Henri Carnal Hall is intended to meet this challenge. Under a vast steel dome, its unique design brings together three tools which are the basis of creation: culture, the arts and communication.
Culture here means the large concert hall and performance space with between 900 and 1000 seats, able to and host conferences, plays, musicals, concerts and anything else that feeds the cultural appetite of Rosey students. And Le Rosey has taken great pride in welcoming some of the world’s the most prestigious musical ensembles: the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, the Saint-Petersburg Philharmonic, the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande and renowned soloists such as Hélène Grimaud, Maxim Vengerov, and Paul Meyer.
The arts are brought together in the Carnal Hall where students develop and exercise their talents: for music it has the large orchestra and choir room, sixteen studios and work rooms, four rooms reserved for percussion, rock and jazz; for the visual arts, there are five drawing workshops; there are facilities for sculpture, photography, glass work, earthenware and textiles, and 3-D printing; for drama there is a large Black Box theatre; and for gastronomy, there is a teaching restaurant and kitchen.
At the heart of Carnal Hall, the Learning Centre offers Rosey students a space for work outside the four walls of traditional classrooms and where they can combine personal research and teamwork as well as meetings with teachers from various disciplines who are all brought together in the same place.
A new form of pedagogy is coming; it makes full use of IT resources for research purposes and the human resources required to operate technology efficiently. Interaction at the Learning Centre brings a subject to life, making it relevant and linking it with other subjects, thereby creating a fascinating intellectual overview.
Le Rosey’s Resident Orchestra: The International Menuhin Music Academy (IMMA)
In 1977, Yehudi Menuhin, later Lord Menuhin, a musician of genius, a humanist, a defender of peace and harmony across the world, created the International Menuhin Music Academy (IMMA) so as to ensure that the great heritage of violin playing of the highest order should be passed from one generation to the next. His last and perhaps — as he himself often said — his greatest project.
So it is that for more than forty years, the Academy has attracted virtuosi violinists, viola, cello and double bass players from all over the world. Following on from Yehudi Menuhin and Alberto Lysy, the ensemble is now led by the violin soloist Oleg Kaskiv under the musical direction of Maxim Vengerov. The teaching and overall programme of IMMA are demanding, requiring personal discipline and dedication. IMMA has thus become one of the world’s most prestigious musical academies, and its alumni are ambassadors of its tradition of excellence and musicianship. IMMA performs across the world as well as at numerous prestigious Swiss festivals.
Since September 2015, IMMA has been in residence at Le Rosey where Maxim Vengerov is particularly fond of giving his master classes. The renowned Swiss school, which has recently inaugurated the Paul and Henri Carnal Hall, a remarkable arts centre housing a 900-seat concert hall with exceptional acoustics, is delighted by IMMA’s residency and to see regular performances in the Rosey Concert Hall. At the same time, it enlivens the school’s musical life and encourages the school’s students to strive for excellence through the Camerata, which brings together IMMA soloists and several Rosey students at the heart of an ensemble that is an inspiration to the most gifted students.
IMMA travels widely across the world, an ambassador for Switzerland and internationalism with a musical tradition drawn from the richest sources. It gives concerts whose excellence is recognized by both the general public and specialist press.
