Verbier Festival 2023: 30ª edición

The Verbier Festival & Academy is founded, supported by The Friends of the Verbier Festival as well as a number of public and private entities. This new association is the brainchild of Martin T:son Engstroem who, during a family vacation two years earlier, had the wild idea to transform a peaceful village in the Swiss Alps, known chiefly for its ski slopes, into one of the most coveted venues in the international classical music world.

The Verbier Festival’s inaugural evening welcomes 1,400 spectators to the Salle Médran, an enormous tent prepared specially for the occasion, to watch maestro Zubin Mehta and violinist David Garrett (just 13 years old at the time!). The festival’s first edition is a resounding artistic success, bringing together illustrious artists like Evgeny Kissin, Barbara Hendricks, Mischa Maisky, and Isabelle Huppert.

The Verbier Festival Academy counts Isaac Stern among its roster of teachers and Renaud Capuçon among its lineup of talented students. This new educational program welcomes sixty promising musicians, aged 13 to 30, to learn each year from the most prestigious instructors like Kiri Te Kanawa, Alfred Brendel, and Thomas Hampson… Alumni of the Academy include Vilde Frang, Edgar Moreau, and Daniel Lozakovich.

Pop stars and jazz artists join the festivities as Icelandic singer Björk performs Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire, and Bobby McFerrin leads the festival’s orchestra in three concerts.

Martha Argerich makes her grand return to the Verbier Festival, performing a memorable rendition of Shostakovich’s Trio No. 2 in E Minor with her good friends Gidon Kremer on the violin and Mischa Maisky on the cello.

Free events are held all over the festival grounds with the launch of Fest’Off, which offers the public jazz concerts, open mics, theatre shows, and culture-oriented hikes for nature lovers.

A resident of nearby Bursins and a regular attendee at the festival, writer and Academy Award-winning actor Peter Ustinov regales festivalgoers with a fascinating account of his life and legendary artistic endeavors.

Encouraged by renowned conductors like Kent Nagano, the entity that will become the Verbier Festival Orchestra is born. The ensemble receives more than 900 applications from young musicians across 60 countries, with 108 making the final roster. Over the years, master conductors like Wolfgang Sawallisch, Kurt Masur, Yuri Temirkanov, Paavo Järvi, Michael Tilson Thomas, and Gustavo Dudamel are invited to lead the orchestra with spectacular results.

Piano virtuoso Lang Lang makes his festival debut at a solo recital from the Verbier Church, where he interprets works by Haydn, Brahms, Rachmaninov, and Balakirev.

Cellist Gautier Capuçon makes his first appearance on the Verbier stage alongside his brother Renaud, who has been a regular since his time in the Verbier Festival Academy in 1995. Violinist Joshua Bell is also among the first-time performers at this exciting edition!

For the festival’s 10th anniversary, artists like Evgeny Kissin, Emanuel Ax, Staffan Scheja, Mikhail Pletnev, Lang Lang, Leif Ove Andsnes, and Nicholas Angelich participate in a magnificent gala concert that includes a show-stopping eight-piano arrangement of Rimsky-Korsakov’s Flight of the Bumblebee.

Evgeny Kissin devotes an entire program to the “poet of the piano,” French-Polish composer Frédéric Chopin—a rapturously received exploit that Kissin will pull off again five years later to mark the 160th anniversary of the composer’s passing.

Creation of the Verbier Festival Chamber Orchestra (VFCO), made up of former Verbier Festival Orchestra musicians, which performs across the world all year long. The orchestra’s inaugural tour takes them to Carnegie Hall, the Vienna Musikverein, and the Amsterdam Concertgebouw with Renée Fleming and Maxim Vengerov. Gábor Takács-Nagy is named music director, a post he still occupies today!

Release of the first recording by the Verbier Festival Chamber Orchestra (VFCO) with violinist and conductor Maxim Vengerov. Together they perform the full cycle of Mozart’s violin concertos, which they then share with the world in 22 concerts across North America and Europe.

For the first time, the Verbier Festival reaches a worldwide audience on medici.tv, a platform created specially for the occasion by Hervé Boissière. From an improvised control center inside an RV, world-class concerts are streamed to 167 countries and watched by more than 760,000 music fans—a number that will reach 1,000,000 in 2013 and only continue to grow.

A 21-year-old piano virtuoso named Yuja Wang makes her Verbier Festival debut—an instant star-making recital, featuring a performance of György Cziffra’s transcription of Rimsky-Korsakov’s Flight of the Bumblebee that appears to defy the limits of human ability.

A legendary Don Giovanni is staged for the festival by Marthe Keller, conducted by Manfred Honeck and starring a cast of legends: Bryn Terfel in the title role along with René Pape, Thomas Quasthoff, Anna Samui, Annette Dasch…

The main stage moves out of the Salle Médran and into the Salle des Combins, constructed just for the event: 1,700 seats, an unbeatable view of the Mont Blanc massif, and improved visibility and acoustics (especially in the case of inclement weather). Each year, it takes 60 people working six weeks to reconstruct the Salle des Combins!

The festival enjoys a memorable performance of the Carmen Suite by Rodion Shchedrin, Verbier’s composer-in-residence since 1997—a masterpiece inspired by Bizet and composed for Shchedrin’s wife, legendary étoile dancer Maya Plisetskaya.

Pianist Daniil Trifonov, First Prize and Grand Prize winner at the 2011 International Tchaikovsky Competition, joins the Verbier family, performing classic repertoire as well as new original work. Audiences are astounded by the talent of the young virtuoso, who becomes a festival favorite in the coming years.

The Verbier Festival Junior Orchestra (VFJO), made up of musicians aged 15 to 18, makes its debut under the baton of Daniel Harding. The young ensemble is so polished that Roberto González-Monjas—former VFO concertmaster and now a renowned violinist and conductor himself—exclaims, “it’s almost scary how good they are!”

In addition to the regular high-altitude excellence always on display in Verbier, this year’s edition puts a particular emphasis on education with a number of prestigious master classes. Outside the main stages, festivalgoers also enjoy exhilarating cultural excursions, public rehearsals, improvisational workshops, and other “musical apéritifs,” all of which meet with great success.

In the relaxed atmosphere of the Crock No Name Bar, superstar American soprano Joyce DiDonato participates in a jam session.

During an edition of the festival with a special focus on jazz and world music, the Gipsy Kings light up the stage of the Salle des Combins—joined by legendary American jazz singer Dianne Reeves.

Pianist Lucas Debargue, prizewinner at the most recent International Tchaikovsky Competition, makes his first Verbier appearance in a thrilling solo recital of Liszt and Schubert, then continues to appear alongside the likes of Janine Jansen, Martin Fröst, and Mischa Maisky in superb chamber music concerts.

The Verbier Festival’s 25th anniversary edition features the first appearance by UNLTD, a creative lab devoted to artistic experimentation—the fusion and natural evolution of Fest’OFF and Festivalino, created two decades earlier.

Countertenor Jakub Józef Orlinski delights the Verbier Festival in his debut appearance with a soulful program of Baroque songs and arias. In a lighthearted interview with medici.tv, he shows his bright personality and even gives a brief demonstration of his dancing talents…

Amid the global health crisis, the in-person festival is canceled and the Virtual Verbier Festival is created: 17 special evenings with never-before-seen recordings and breathtaking archival footage are broadcast on medici.tv, tracing the festival’s history and allowing artists to keep in contact with fans all over the world.

In-person attendees are overjoyed to return in great numbers to Verbier, relishing a full slate of programming—which includes Mao Fujita’s first appearance on the main stage!

Georgian pianist Tsotne Zedginidze, just 13 years old and a protégé of Daniel Barenboim and Lisa Batiashvili, becomes the talk of the festival after a masterful recital at the Verbier Church and stars in a widely watched documentary series on medici.tv. Another star is born at the Verbier Festival!

Bravo, you’re on your way to becoming an expert in the history of this beloved Alpine festival! It’s time to kick back and enjoy the 30th anniversary edition of this one-of-a-kind event: discover this year’s full program, and relive the greatest moments from previous years, below.