Mumbai: High up on the Swiss Alps, there’s a sacred mountain where budding musicians gather every summer to receive wisdom from the Western classical world’s oracles. As heady as that may sound, the Verbier Festival is an enterprise with its feet firmly planted in its snowy ground.
Founded in 1994 at the famous ski resort that lends its name to it, the Festival began as an experimental exchange between the greats and young artistes from all over the world. Zubin Mehta, Domingo, Yo-Yo Ma, Martha Argerich, Valery Gergiev… they have all groomed talent at Verbier. But even as the Festival carries on with one of the world’s oldest traditions, it has the energy and vision of a Silicon Valley startup incubator.
“In many ways we function as a startup in that we must be very agile to adapt to the particularities of each unique market,” says double bassist Michael Fuller, who is also head of international touring of the Verbier Festival Chamber Orchestra (VFCO), which is about to make its debut in India. The VFCO comprises alumni of the Verbier Festival Orchestra (VFO) after they establish themselves as professionals in some of the world’s great ensembles, including the Vienna and Berlin Philharmonics. The VFO, in turn, is a youth orchestra that serves as a training ground under eminent conductors, such as Mehta and Gergiev.
The VFCO — the Festival’s “global ambassador” — will be in Mumbai on March 20 with the much sought-after German-French cellist and conductor Nicolas Altstaedt. In a concert presented by the Mehli Mehta Music Foundation, the VFCO will play Tchaikovsky’s Rococo Variations, Haydn’s Symphony No. 49, Hungarian-Swiss composer Veress’s Four Transylvanian Dances and Haydn’s Cello Concerto No. 1. Much loved as these energetic pieces are, it is the March 21 Pune recital, to be presented by the Poona Music Society, that the cognoscenti are eagerly awaiting. For in this the newly created VFCO spinoff, the Verbier Festival Chamber Players (which includes Indian-origin violinist Vivek Jayaraman), will perform an intimate string quartet programme comprising the Mozart F major divertimento, the Beethoven No. 4 quartet and the Dvorak No. 12 quartet — pieces that are rarely heard live, if ever, by the Arabian Sea. But as Fuller says, “The culture of the Verbier Festival is to think beyond conventions to find solutions.”