The Berner Symphonie-Orchester (German

German language

German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....

; ; Bern Symphony Orchestra) is one of Switzerland

Switzerland

Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....

's major orchestras and consists of about 100 musicians. It was founded in 1877 in the capital Bern.

Reaching beyond Switzerland

Switzerland

Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....

 from the 1930s, the fame of the orchestra later attracted guest conductors

Conducting

Conducting is the art of directing a musical performance by way of visible gestures. The primary duties of the conductor are to unify performers, set the tempo, execute clear preparations and beats, and to listen critically and shape the sound of the ensemble...

 including Bruno Walter

Bruno Walter

Bruno Walter was a German-born conductor. He is considered one of the best known conductors of the 20th century. Walter was born in Berlin, but is known to have lived in several countries between 1933 and 1939, before finally settling in the United States in 1939...

, Wilhelm Furtwängler

Wilhelm Furtwängler

Wilhelm Furtwängler was a German conductor and composer. He is widely considered to have been one of the greatest symphonic and operatic conductors of the 20th century. By the 1930s he had built a reputation as one of the leading conductors in Europe, and he was the leading conductor who remained...

, Ernest Ansermet

Ernest Ansermet

Ernest Alexandre Ansermet was a Swiss conductor.- Biography :Ansermet was born in Vevey, Switzerland. Although he was a contemporary of Wilhelm Furtwängler and Otto Klemperer, Ansermet represents in most ways a very different tradition and approach from those two musicians. Originally he was a...

, Hans Knappertsbusch

Hans Knappertsbusch

Hans Knappertsbusch was a German conductor, best known for his performances of the music of Richard Wagner, Anton Bruckner and Richard Strauss....

, Ferenc Fricsay

Ferenc Fricsay

Ferenc Fricsay was a Hungarian conductor. From 1960 until his death, he was an Austrian citizen.Fricsay was born in Budapest in 1914 and studied music under Béla Bartók, Zoltán Kodály, Ernst von Dohnányi, and Leo Weiner. Fricsay had a meteoric rise to fame, making his first appearance as a...

, Rafael Kubelík

Rafael Kubelík

Rafael Jeroným Kubelík was a Czech conductor and composer.-Early life:Kubelík was born in Býchory, Bohemia, Austria-Hungary, today's Czech Republic. He was the sixth child of the Bohemian violinist Jan Kubelík, whom the younger Kubelík described as "a kind of god to me." His mother was a Hungarian...

, Günter Wand

Günter Wand

Günter Wand was a German orchestra conductor and composer. Wand studied in Wuppertal, Allenstein and Detmold. At the Cologne conservatory, he was a composition student with Philipp Jarnach and a piano student with Paul Baumgartner...

, Kurt Sanderling

Kurt Sanderling

Kurt Sanderling, CBE was a German conductor.-Biography:Kurt Sanderling was born in Arys, Kingdom of Prussia, German Empire to Jewish parents. After early work at the Deutsche Oper Berlin, he left for the Soviet Union in 1936, where he worked with the Moscow Radio Symphony Orchestra...

, Horst Stein

Horst Stein

Horst Walter Stein was a German conductor.- Biography :...

, Yuri Ahronovitch and Eliahu Inbal

Eliahu Inbal

Eliahu Inbal is an Israeli conductor.Inbal studied violin at the Israeli Academy of Music and took composition lessons with Paul Ben-Haim...

. From 1990 to 2004, its principal conductor was Russian Dmitri Kitajenko

Dmitri Kitajenko

Dmitri Georgievich Kitayenko is a Russian conductor.He was born in Leningrad and studied at the Glinka Conservatory and those of Leningrad and Moscow. He was a prizewinner in the first Herbert von Karajan competition in 1969....

 from St. Petersburg. Previous music directors include Charles Dutoit

Charles Dutoit

Charles Édouard Dutoit, is a Swiss conductor, particularly noted for his interpretations of French and Russian 20th century music...

, Gustav Kuhn, Paul Kletzki

Paul Kletzki

Paul Kletzki was a Polish conductor and composer.Born Paweł Klecki in Łódź, Poland, he later adopted the German spelling Paul Kletzki. He joined its Philharmonic Orchestra at the age of fifteen. After serving in the First World War, he studied philosophy at the University of Warsaw before moving...

 and Peter Maag

Peter Maag

-Life:He was born on 10 May 1919 in St. Gallen, Switzerland and died on 16 April 2001 in Verona, Italy.His father, Otto, was a Lutheran minister and his mother, Nelly, a violinist who performed in the Capet Quartet as second violinist. His great uncles were conductors Emil and Fritz Steinbach. ...

. Another young Russian, Andrey Boreyko

Andrey Boreyko

Andrey Boreyko is a Russian conductor. At the Rimsky-Korsakov Conservatory in Saint Petersburg, he studied conducting , graduating summa cum laude...

, has taken over as principal conductor from 2005/2006.

The Bern Symphony Orchestra gives around 40 symphony concerts each season. It also acts as the opera orchestra for the City Theatre of Berne.