OPENING CEREMONY

Khatia Buniatishvili is the diva of the piano. She returns to Verbier for the third summer running with a generous programme devoted to moonlight (Beethoven, Debussy), romantic passion (Schumann, Brahms) and the waltz (Chopin, Ravel).

Take note, a landmark event! Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 is a work of superlatives. Over an hour of music, a finale that alone lasts as long as the German composer’s ‘smaller’ symphonies, and the revolutionary use of the voice in an Ode to Joy, now a symbol of European fraternity. A musical apotheosis led by the great Italian conductor Daniele Gatti.

Gábor Takács-Nagy and Martin Fröst take us on a thrilling musical journey. After Brahms’s irresistible Hungarian Dances, the clarinet reveals its full emotional power (Mozart’s Concerto) and its astonishing rhythmic agility (Nomadic Dances by the Fröst brothers). To close, we finally reach safe harbour in the northern mists of Mendelssohn’s Symphony No. 3 ‘Scottish’. Happy the traveller who, like the Verbier Festival Chamber Orchestra, has made a fine voyage…