The small village of Verbier, located in Switzerland’s southwestern Valais canton, is a famous resort and steep-sloped ski area where some regions are snow-covered all year round. The village lies on a plateau facing the Grand Combin mountain range; while it has roughly three thousand permanent residents, its population can surge to 35,000 during the winter peak season. Besides the Swiss, Austrians, Germans, Britons and Scandinavians also visit regularly throughout the year. It was here that the Verbier Festival was founded in 1994—not merely a series of classical music concerts, but an educational platform that attracts the most talented young musicians from across the globe.
“We want to be an incubator of talent: the entire process of learning, rehearsing and performing is designed to help rising young soloists, chamber musicians, orchestral players, singers and conductors prepare for their chosen profession under ideal conditions and in the immediate vicinity of world-class artists,” says Martin Engström, the festival’s founder and artistic director. “Every summer, audiences can witness musicians from sixty to seventy countries in action across more than a hundred masterclasses, rehearsals and concerts. An important pillar of our festival is the creative laboratory known as UNLTD (Unlimited), where imaginative workshops, concerts and educational lectures help us transcend geographical, historical, stylistic and genre boundaries.” Engström’s personality and career are a guarantee of the highest artistic quality. The 72-year-old Swedish expert was, early in his career, Herbert von Karajan’s impresario, and later held leading positions at EMI, the Paris Opera and Deutsche Grammophon. At the latter label he oversaw recordings by Anne-Sophie Mutter, Claudio Abbado, Pierre Boulez and Maurizio Pollini, and signed the first contracts with Anna Netrebko, Lang Lang, Hilary Hahn and Esa-Pekka Salonen.
The central element of the Verbier Festival is its orchestral training programme, structured around three different ensembles. The festival’s youth orchestra (VFJO) welcomes the youngest musicians, aged 15–18, where around sixty students are mentored by renowned conductors, soloists and principal orchestral players. The Verbier Festival Orchestra (VFO) offers performance opportunities to early-career artists aged 18–28: no longer a student orchestra, but not yet a fully established professional ensemble, it performs most of its concerts “at home,” during the festival, following an intensive three-week training period. Many former members of the VFO now play in the world’s leading symphony orchestras (the Berlin Philharmonic, the Metropolitan Opera, the Israel Philharmonic, the Concertgebouw, the New York Philharmonic, Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich, the Vienna Philharmonic). The Verbier Festival Chamber Orchestra (VFCO) is the festival’s internationally recognized ambassador, directed by music director Gábor Takács-Nagy, though they also collaborate regularly with other renowned conductors and soloists. These collaborations and their outstanding artistic projects will be the focus of our second article.
