Langenthal

Langenthal set the Swiss table and carpeted the Swiss floor. The porcelain manufactory founded here in 1906 made the town's name a household word — Langenthal plates carried the national railways' coffee and half the country's Sunday roasts — while Ruckstuhl has woven carpets of international design pedigree since 1881, and the textile firm Création Baumann keeps the town on the world's specification sheets. This is the Oberaargau's market capital: a prosperous line of arcaded streets between the Bernese Mittelland's farms, with a market tradition running back to medieval fairs and an unshowy conviction that quality is a form of virtue.

The town's cultural jewel is the Stadttheater — the venue documented in the concert record — a little Jugendstil-era house of 1916--17 whose gilt and plush would flatter a city ten times the size, and whose season of theatre, opera and concerts gives Langenthal a metropolitan evening in a market-town setting. Around it, choirs, the town's music school and visiting ensembles keep the calendar the record describes; the design tradition adds its own festivals and open studios.

Porcelain for the table, wool for the floor, velvet for the evening: Langenthal is Swiss industry's polite face — a town that made useful things beautifully, and built itself a theatre with the proceeds.