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Verbier Festival —16th July to 1st August 2010
Evgeny Kissin Performance
Downloads - 21st July 2010 & 24th July 2010 Click Here
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In praise of Verbier Festival –
classical music’s Davos
By Michael Church Thursday, 22 July 2010
"Yevgeny Kissin couldn’t
be classed as a Verbier discovery, but he attends faithfully every year, and this week gave a concert in which he was at the
absolute top of his form. I have never heard so subtly-shaded a performance of Schumann’s Fantasiestucke Opus 12, nor
one imbued with such noble tempestuousness. Chopin’s four Ballades emerged with magisterial grandeur: if some sections
of the second were so fast that their shape was slightly blurred, the fourth had transcendental beauty. First encore, an artless
Chopin waltz; second encore, a full scherzo. Yuja Wang may be a stupendously clever pianist, but Kissin is a great one, and
– nota bene, Yuja – the journey between the two things is long and hard."
To read the full article:
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Verbier Festival Newsletter - July 2010
An exceptional programme
The first notes will ring out this evening in the Verbier Festival’s
new concert hall. From 16 July to 1 August, the biggest names in classical music will meet in the heart of the Alps. Renowned
Swiss conductor Charles Dutoit kicks off the celebrations, conducting the Verbier Festival Orchestra in the opening concert.
Tickets can be purchased over the Internet, by calling +41 (0)848 771 882, or in person at the Verbier ticket office
(88, rue de Verbier). Click here to see the full concert programme.
The Salle des Combins is ready to welcome music lovers!
Moving the Festival and opening the new concert hall presented a number of challenges, but they have been overcome one by
one. The Salle des Combins is a semi-permanent structure incorporating considerable acoustic improvements. Never before has
a construction like this been built at such an altitude, and it is unique among the concert halls of summer festivals in Switzerland.
Follow the construction of this ground-breaking venue
in pictures: Click Here
Renowned pianists
To mark the two hundred years since Schumann and Chopin were born, Evgeny Kissin will perform for the first time two recitals
in Verbier. A few tickets are still available for these exceptional concerts, which will take place on 21 and 24 July. Another
outstanding pianist, Elisabeth Leonskaja, will be in Verbier this summer, performing the full cycle of Schubert sonatas over
nine evening recitals.
The finest voices
Some great voices will also be turning up over the seventeen days of the Festival,
including Rolando Villazón, in Verbier for the first time, and Anne Sofie von Otter, Angelika Kirchschlager and Sylvia
Schwartz making welcome return visits. The Festival will end in a blaze of glory with the evening concert on Sunday 1 August,
with some of the greatest names in opera performing Salome, the celebrated opera by Richard Strauss, with Deborah Voigt in
the title role, under the direction of Valery Gergiev.
Free activities
Every day, the Verbier Festival offers around twenty
free activities for young and old alike. Music lovers can go along to the Verbier Festival Academy masterclasses, while families
will have an opportunity to enjoy some fantastic rambles, creative activities for children, or street performances. Talks
and free concerts will also be given daily in Verbier and throughout the Val de Bagnes. Come and join us!
More information : Click Here
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Get to know
the Verbier Festival Orchestras
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Verbier Festival: an Alpine symphony
Monday, 19 July 2010 12:00 Written by
Jasper Rees
An alpine symphony in Verbier: 'When thunder
rumbles among the summits, it sounds like Wagnerian gods shifting furniture'
It becomes increasingly
hard for a music festival to stick out from the crowd these days. But high culture, high summer and high altitude create a
rousing major chord each July in Verbier, which can genuinely claim to be the only festival you reach by cable car. When you
get up there you are greeted by an alpine symphony of glaciers slithering off peaks and pastures clanging with cowbells. Streams
descant and trill along gutters between chalets. No wonder stellar musicians drop their fee to return, both to play and listen.
Egos are left at the bottom of the mountain.
'It’s kind of a utopian artistic musical
society that is all here in one very small place'But location is only part of the allure.
For musicians, the rarefied atmosphere acts as a sort of honey trap. Classical music’s aristocracy come in their droves
to the Swiss resort, and for days and days they never leave. Where the majority of festivals sprinkle stellar names among
rising hopefuls, in Verbier it is possible to see the world’s greatest performers, night and after night. For this year’s
fortnight, the cast list includes festival director Charles Dutoit, with conductors Semyon Bychkov, Rafael Frühbeck de
Burgos, Daniel Harding and on the final night’s performance of Salome, Valery Gergiev. Among the soloists are Evgeny Kissin, Elisabeth Leonskaja, Martha Argerich, Joshua Bell, Leonidas Kavakos, Gidon Kremer and Hélène Grimaud.
To read the full Article Click Here
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FESTIVAL DIARY
CONVERSATIONS
FROM VERBIER (2006)
By Patricia Boccadoro : Click Here
"Thus it was that Russian pianist Evgeny Kissin gave an extraordinary poetry 'reading'
session one night in the little Protestant temple, lit by candles for the occasion . . . ."
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In praise of Verbier Festival – classical music’s Davos By
Michael Church Arts Thursday, 22 July 2010
‘First
it rained, then it poured,’ says Martin Engstroem, of the time when the festival he’d created ran into such daunting
financial problems that its future suddenly looked in doubt. But he might also have been talking about this year’s opening
night
As Charles
Dutoit raised his baton to give the down-beat for Yuja Wang and the Verbier Festival Orchestra to launch into Prokofiev’s
second piano concerto, the heavens opened with a thunderous crash. This was the inauguration of the festival’s new £2m
tent-auditorium, replacing the one which had had to make way for a hotel development, and as the downpour hammered on the
high-tension roof, the music became inaudible; when the percussion reached its crescendo, the thunder went one better. After
soldiering on through the first movement and half of the second, Dutoit put down his baton, and Engstroem rose to speak. At
which point the lights went out in a power cut: since Engstroem’s mike didn’t work, he too was inaudible. The
next hour was a panicky blur, after which – with the aid of emergency lighting, and in Yuja Wang’s case a stiffening
cigarette or two – the work was restarted from scratch. Given the circumstances, it went notably well, as did the Mahler
symphony which followed.
This
evening was also marking the start of Rolex’s tenure as ‘presenting sponsor’, but any worries Engstroem
may have had about that company’s view of the situation were quickly dispelled: its execs found the whole thing a wonderful
diversion from their normal, smoothly-oiled life.
But the economic downpour which the festival has had to survive has been more complicated.
It all began in 2007 when UBS abruptly – and very unprofessionally – pulled the plug on their £3m annual
sponsorship of the festival’s youth orchestra, and followed that with an announcement that they would not renew their
contract with the festival as a whole. The orchestra had visited 33 countries in its eight years of existence, and UBS had
capitalised shamelessly on it, using it as a marketing tool to garner masses of eco-friendly publicity (the bank that cares
and shares etc). Luckily for Engstroem, the international press picked up on this dereliction, and the wind of opinion blew
in his favour. He decided to split his funding requirements four ways, soliciting equal sums from the commune, the canton,
big foundations, and private donors – and he miraculously got it all, with long-term commitments, just before the global
crash knocked everyone sideways. It seems the politicians in this part of the Valais were particularly keen to keep the orchestra,
regarding it as a hot property, and a great ambassador for the region. And Rolex needed no persuading to step up to the plate.
Meanwhile the re-siting of the festival’s main auditorium was a challenge in itself: Engstroem had to fight off a blizzard
of planning objections from local residents before getting the present site agreed. And since this resort is a haunt of the
super-rich, local residents have clout.
The orchestra’s players are drawn from all over the world, and notably from places (including Central
Asia and the Middle East) where young classical musicians have a hard row to hoe. Their begetter and first musical director
James Levine instituted a tutorial system which still operates today, with principal players from the Met rehearsing them
during their three-week run-up to the festival proper; a larger pool of aspirant talent is brought in through the Verbier
Academy, which trains alongside them. There is also the Verbier Chamber Orchestra, being a slightly older elite drawn from
the main orchestra (whose age limit is 29); most of these go on to top orchestral jobs. ‘It’s always been my hobby
and my passion to identify talent,’ says Engstroem. That’s what drove him, he says, when he was vice-president
of Deutsche Grammophon, and as an agent before that. ‘Hence the record-company talent-spotters who come here each year.
I’m trying to create a musical Davos, where you can spread the word about new discoveries.’
And Yuja Wang – whose picture
Rolex have plastered all over town – has indeed proved a discovery since he took a punt on her and gave her a platform
three years ago. Before her recital this week, this 23-year-old Chinese pianist spent eight hours studying her programme with
Radu Lupu – whose interest speaks volumes – and the results were in many ways remarkable. Under her humming-bird
hands, Liszt’s arrangements of three Schubert songs had enormous charm, while Prokofiev’s sixth sonata had blazing
authority: only in Schumann’s Etudes Symphoniques did her virtuosity obscure the poetry. After two exquisite encores
(Chopin and Gluck) she metaphorically brought the tent down with a breathtaking Volodos showpiece which that egregious showman
himself could not have bettered.
Yevgeny
Kissin couldn’t be classed as a Verbier discovery, but he attends faithfully every year, and this week gave a concert
in which he was at the absolute top of his form. I have never heard so subtly-shaded a performance of Schumann’s Fantasiestucke
Opus 12, nor one imbued with such noble tempestuousness. Chopin’s four Ballades emerged with magisterial grandeur: if
some sections of the second were so fast that their shape was slightly blurred, the fourth had transcendental beauty. First
encore, an artless Chopin waltz; second encore, a full scherzo. Yuja Wang may be a stupendously clever pianist, but Kissin
is a great one, and – nota bene, Yuja – the journey between the two things is long and hard.
Engstroem likes to describe this festival as a workshop,
in contrast to those festivals where people play a programme they’ve already done 20 times. ‘Here artists learn
new repertoire,’ he says. ‘They play with people they’ve not even met before. It’s all about encounters
and uncertainty – just like the tent.’ You can say that again: there are times when these collaborations work
brilliantly, and times when they bomb. In one clunker of a concert this week, where two pianists essayed four-hand Schubert,
one had the feeling that (a) they had indeed never met before and (b) they were playing different instruments. Then on came
four singers to deliver Brahms’s Liebeslieder, and that too sounded like a meeting of strangers, with Anne Sofie von
Otter struggling to find her high notes.
On the other hand, these first few days have been replete with magic, thanks to individual performances: to Angelika Kirchschlager,
the brothers Capucon, Martin Frost simultaneously blowing and conducting, Christoph Pregardien singing Britten and Brahms,
David Guerrier dazzling first with the horn and then with the trumpet, and to that by any standards extraordinary young British
pianist-mathematician Kit Armstrong, whose Bach and Mozart were genuinely revelatory. And it’s a rare privilege to hear
pianist Elisabeth Leonskaja delivering her complete Schubert in nine concerts in as many days: the only pity being that, until
she protested, she was condemned to do so on a beaten-up old Steinway in a cavernous cinema with no acoustic of any kind.
(How that insulting situation was allowed to happen, I can’t imagine.) From tonight – day five – she will
be heard on a new Steinway in the main auditorium, which will let her Soviet-golden-age pianism be savoured as it deserves.
And it’s great to see and hear Martha Argerich, Verbier’s reigning queen, in such fine fettle, and heading her
wonderful gang of Russians – Maisky, Kremer, et al.
It’s often said – by those who see no further
than the expensive glitz of the main events – that this festival is the exclusive preserve of the rich, but actually
nothing could be further from the truth. There are 25 events each day, of which only three or four require payment: 25,000
people attend this festival each year simply for the free events. And when these include orchestral rehearsals, talks by musicologist
Roderick Swanston, and master-classes by Alfred Brendel, Menachem Pressler, plus a long string of other international luminaries,
the free fare is very impressive. Engstroem is successfully resisting pressure from the board to charge these audiences for
a general pass: more power to his arm for doing so. He’s also continuing the admirable tradition of the amateur chamber
music week, in which – as at Dartington in Devon – all-comers get the chance to play with, and learn from, the
stars. The fact that many festival events are now being streamed live on iPhone by Medici Arts is an additional democratisation.
‘I was always looking
for another name for the festival, because that word is so misused,’ says Engstroem. ‘Something that implied a
happening, an atmosphere – and something that implied the pilgrimage you have to make to get here, because it’s
not a through-town – it’s at end of the road, and it takes a big effort to get here. But once you arrive, you
really are in a different world.’ And that’s exactly how it feels, here on the top of the mountain.
Source
Verbier's Summer Music Festival
Gabriella Le Breton feared
the Swiss resort would be soulless in summer. How wrong could she be?
By Gabriella Le
Breton
Published: 11:38AM BST 14 Jun 2010
The Swiss resort
has plenty to offer outside the ski season Photo: ALAMY
I adore classical music and try to go to as many concerts as possible but my knowledge
remains superficial. I am, however, a ski and mountain nut, so when I heard that Verbier, the vibrant Swiss ski resort, hosts
an annual music festival, I thought it would be the ideal way to indulge several passions – and get to know more about
music.
Arriving in mid-July last
year, it took me a while to adjust to a town I'd only known buried under several feet of snow, but which was now verdant
and bursting with geraniums and wild flowers.
It was also bursting with people – 40,000 visitors come to the town for the annual
Verbier Festival, now in its 17th year. So much for my fears that the resort would be empty and soulless when the ski slopes
closed.
During
the three-week festival, Verbier is transformed into a who's who of the world's greatest musicians. I quickly grew
accustomed to seeing Lang Lang striding purposefully across the Place Centrale, Mischa Maisky buying croissants in the Confiserie
de la Poste, Vadim Repin chatting animatedly outside the Fer à Cheval and Evgeny Kissin enjoying
a late lunch with his family on the terrace of Au Vieux Verbier.
Not only is it unique to see such a constellation of musical stars
in one place, it is rare to see them so relaxed. Kissin, who has attended all but two Verbier Festivals, can't leave the
house in his native Russia without bodyguards to fend off overzealous fans, yet clearly feels comfortable here, bringing his
family for the duration of the festival.
The tranquil, informal atmosphere that prevails can largely be attributed to the event's
founder, Martin Engstroem. The unflappable Swede started the festival as a musical workshop and forum for young musicians
to learn from their peers, and he strives to maintains that spirit. "Everyone is a student here and everyone's a
teacher. We all learn from each other," he says.
Sure enough, when Martha Argerich played Beethoven's
Piano Concerto No 2, Kissin, Lang Lang and Emanual Ax were among the spellbound audience. And when I
met the elfin 23-year-old Yuja Wang, the "superhuman" pianist taking the music world by storm, she talked about
the honour of being at the festival and playing with "people you can't believe are real".
The combination of music and mountains is magical.
I shall long cherish the memory of sipping champagne in the fresh mountain air during an intermission, basking in the afterglow
of Bryn Terfel's exuberant performance of Don Giovanni and watching the sun set over snow-clad peaks of the Combin massif.
In addition
to evening concerts, twice-daily recitals are held in the local church, lit by the dappled yellow, red and blue of the stained-glass
windows, along with masterclasses, seminars and various Fest'Off events that include outdoor jazz and guided "cultural
rambles" in the mountains.
Rambling is greatly facilitated by several chairlifts that provide quick access to 250 miles of gentle trails high in the
mountains, as well as more demanding hiking. One day I took the cable car up Mont Fort (10,925ft) for panoramic views across
glacial lakes to Mont Blanc, the Matterhorn and Les Diablerets. The views were even more mesmerising in full colour than in
the muted winter palette I'm accustomed to.
I also sprent many idyllic hours walking through lush Alpine meadows
carpeted with wild flowers, alongside bisses (glacier-fed streams) lined with azaleas, lupins and columbines.
I joined Rosie and Penney from Chilali, a company
that provides physiotherapy, massage, Pilates and yoga instruction. In the summer, Rosie and Penney take their yoga studio
outside and it was thus that I found myself practising yoga in a clearing far above Verbier. Feeling the sun on my back during
the poses, I realised I was humming Danny Boy as my mind strayed to the previous night's concert, when Lang Lang performed
Rachmaninov's Trio élégiaque and Tchaikovsky's Piano Trio in A Minor before accompanying a rowdy rendition
of Broadway classics from Bryn Terfel, René Pape and Thomas Quasthoff.
The delight with which the music world's great and emerging stars take
part in the Verbier Festival is what makes it so unique. With a stellar line-up of soloists, including
Kissin, Wang, Elisabeth Leonskaja, Joshua Bell and Deborah Voigt, performing with the Verbier Festival Orchestra and
Verbier Festival Chamber Orchestra, this year's event is not to be missed by anyone with a penchant for good music and
Alpine scenery.
Getting there:
Fly to Geneva with SWISS (www.swiss.com) and transfer to Verbier by train (www.stc.co.uk).
Staying there:
The chic and central Nevaï (27 775 4000; www.nevai.ch) offers doubles with breakfast from £168. The
three-star Hôtel Les Chamois (771 6402; www.hotel-chamois.ch) is in the heart of Verbier and offers good-sized
doubles and breakfast from £145.
For a treat, The Lodge (0800 716919; www.thelodge.virgin.com) is the last word in luxury in Verbier: prices
start from £530 per person per night, including breakfast, lunch, afternoon tea, dinner and all drinks, use of the lodge’s
hot tubs, swimming pool and gym, and 24-hour in-resort chauffeur service.
Further information:
The
17th Verbier Festival takes place from July 16 to August 1. For more information and to book tickets, visit www.verbierfestival.com or call 0041 848 771882.
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