25 years of great music

Who would have believed back in 1994 that a classical music festival held in Verbier at the height of summer would be able to attract the world’s leading virtuosos and ever larger audiences? In July and August 2017, more than 50,000 people flocked to the event, attending around 60 concerts given by a galaxy of eminent grand masters and new talents from around the world. The next edition, which will celebrate the 25th anniversary of the event, should attract music lovers in even greater numbers.
In addition to the first-rate programme, one of the event’s main attractions is the ambience of its venues. The Verbier Festival is, first and foremost, a place for meeting and talking to people, a place where great minds come together. Conducting the intricacies of that delicate alchemy to perfection is Martin T:son Engstroem, the founder and executive director of the Verbier Festival. Ahead of the silver anniversary of an event that puts the accent on excellence, we fired a few questions at him.

You grew up in Stockholm, lived and worked in Paris and then moved to Switzerland. Why did you choose Verbier as the venue for your festival?
Verbier was a case of love at first sight, It was purely emotional. I knew the resort because I’d skied there with my family a few times. Then we rented a chalet for a year. In the summer of 1991 I spent three weeks in Verbier with my children. I discovered just how intense nature can be and how magical the place was at that time of year. I then started to ponder the idea of organising a classical music festival in the village, which already had a pretty good infrastructure, with concert halls and big hotels. That was 25 years ago and though there were already plenty of things to do in Verbier in the summertime, places were pretty much deserted, aside from hikers and a few people paragliding. I mentioned it to the head of the tourist office at the time and the idea appealed to him straightaway.

Did you think the festival would become as big as it has?
This festival is my baby and when you have a child, you just can’t imagine what it will look like when it reaches 25. Obviously, you have to think long-term and have an idea of the direction you want to go in, but you have to build things up bit by bit. My initial idea was to come up with a big festival with a summer academy and a youth orchestra. Everything’s based on youth, education and the passing-on of knowledge.

What do the Verbier Festival’s educational projects involve?
We’ve set up the Verbier Festival Academy, which welcomes 60 young soloists to the resort for three to five weeks every summer. We’ve also founded the Verbier Festival Orchestra, a youth orchestra conducted by Charles Dutoit and which every year attracts applications from between 1,000 and 1,500 young musicians from all over the world. Verbier’s strong point is the level of education it offers. In terms of quality, it’s out on its own. It’s the most prestigious summer camp in the world, the first place that a young musician will want to come to. Over the years, we’ve spotted a great many talents at the summer academy. That’s why Verbier is recognised as the very best breeding ground for the great performers of tomorrow. We also have people from the industry coming here year after year to unearth future virtuosos. Lang Lang, Yuja Wang and Renaud Capuçon all took their first steps at Verbier, to name but three.

What surprises do you have in store for us at the festival’s 25th anniversary?
We’ve always celebrated our anniversaries in style and we’ve always enjoyed throwing a party, and we’re continuing in that vein by putting together a magnificent season, with the help of the chairman of the Foundation’s board of trustees, Peter Brabeck-Letmathe, and our teams and artists. In keeping with the last 25 years, the programme is going to be very exclusive. We’re going to have the pleasure of welcoming great artists such as Martha Argerich, Radu Lupu, Evgueni Kissine and Valery Guerguiev, the Verbier Festival Orchestra’s new music director. And on 25 July, we’ll have around 50 soloists performing on stage at the same time. I hope this 25th anniversary will give us the opportunity to become even bigger and to attract even more people to Verbier. We never rest on our laurels; we’re always chasing bigger dreams.