In praise of Verbier Festival – classical music’s Davos

‘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.

The festival continues until August 1. Picture courtesy of tbe Verbier Facebook page.

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