Twenty years ago, a bold vision took shape: to create a professional chamber orchestra formed entirely of Verbier Festival Orchestra alumni. Today, the Verbier Festival Chamber Orchestra (VFCO) has become one of the world’s finest ensembles, carrying the Verbier spirit across concert halls on every continent.
To mark this anniversary year, this special series gives voice to the people who bring this extraordinary orchestra to life.
This week we sat down with Blythe Teh Engstroem, who celebrates her birthday today, a fitting moment to look back on twenty years alongside the VFCO.
BLYTHE TEH ENGSTROEM
ARTISTIC CO-DIRECTOR OF THE VERBIER FESTIVAL
“I came and I never left”
For twenty-five years, Blythe Teh Engstroem’s life has been closely tied to Verbier. She helped found the VFCO in 2006, where she is today the principal viola. For the past three years, she has also co-directed the Festival’s artistic vision alongside her husband, Martin Engstroem.
“Path-changing, life-altering”
It all began with an audition. Blythe Teh Engstroem joined the UBS Verbier Festival Youth Orchestra with no idea what lay ahead: ” I had no idea what I was winning entry to, I came and never left. ” What she found there went beyond anything she’d expected: ” I was addicted to the whole atmosphere of the Festival – the relationships I formed there, the inspiration I felt there, the overwhelming beauty of the place, simply path-changing, life-altering. And so much fun! “
For her, music is above all a matter of emotion: “It’s where I feel the strongest and deepest emotions.” Even as a child, she couldn’t put a name to what she felt, but she always “more and more.”
Her role models? “Mostly dead ones”, she smiles, listing a handful of legends — Kreisler, Heifetz, Rubinstein, Carlos Kleiber, Casals — along with teachers, Yuval Yaron, György Sebők, János Starker, Josef Gingold.
In Verbier, the list grows longer still: Joshua Bell, “something of a hero” since her childhood in Bloomington; Steven Isserlis, whose recording of Bloch’s Prayer she listened to on repeat; Mischa Maisky, “who can’t play one note without his whole heart and soul behind it”. And of course Gábor Takács-Nagy, mentioned at every turn.
“The artists who come to Verbier are here because they touch us and deeply inspire us.”
The genesis of the VFCO
In 2006, together with a handful of accomplices from the UBS Verbier Festival Orchestra, Blythe Teh Engstroem co-founded the VFCO. The idea grew out of a gap: “we had a limited amount of time to play together in the big orchestra, and we didn’t want it to stop.” Martin Engstroem’s mother, Inge, also had a great deal to do with it: she was always jotting down programme ideas and pieces of music she loved, and felt Verbier needed a chamber orchestra to take on that repertoire. The original dream? “A very dynamic and excellent ensemble who would share a lot of joy together.”
“I feel incredibly fortunate when I realise that more than half of my life has been connected to the Verbier Festival”
Twenty years later, her definition of the VFCO reads almost like a manifesto: “a group of talented individuals who love music and have dedicated their lives to their craft, and who have found a home together.”
Blythe Teh Engstroem reflects on what makes this orchestra so distinctive in her eyes: “most of my orchestral life has been spent with the Verbier Festival Chamber Orchestra and Gábor Takács-Nagy.”
Making music, she says, has almost never become routine, or a duty: “I have had the privilege to be involved with projects and partners with whom I could collaborate with respect, trust and joy.” And it is precisely this alchemy that, in her view, gives the VFCO its distinctive voice : “the meeting of experience and idealism, of tradition and renewal.”
20 Years of Music
What binds together this group of itinerants, drawn from the world’s greatest orchestras, is a rare kind of intimacy. “Making music together is a very intimate activity, we sit near one another, play individual parts that create a greater whole, in sync, moving the same way, singing the same way. We feel deeply and all go on a journey together, physically and spiritually.”
That intimacy has been nourished by twenty years of touring the world together, discoveries along the way, not least culinary ones, and the ever-renewed pleasure of feeling different audiences come alive.
For the next twenty years, her wish comes down to one sentence: “My dream is to continue to strengthen the VFCO from the inside and the outside, continuing to discover and explore the repertoire, and to bring the “Verbier spirit” of music-making and sharing with as many audiences as we can..”
A word of advice for young musicians?
“Don’t forget what is behind all the notes! Work hard, but don’t get stuck only on getting the correctness, believe in yourself, use your imagination, don’t be motivated by personal glory, and look around yourself and help your fellow humans be better…”