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11 August 2014

At the Verbier Festival, a lot of music is packed into a small town

From Brahms’s chamber music to Mozart opera, the little Swiss ski-village provides a musical feast.

By Alexandra Coghlan

Talk about a room with a view. Step out of the main concert hall at the Verbier Festival and you’re confronted with mountainscapes on all sides. Sometimes the Alps are muffled in clouds, sometimes clear up to their still-white peaks, but either way it’s a vista that cannot but colour and shape all you hear inside.

Looking at the busy streets and restaurants, it’s hard to imagine that until Martin Engstroem founded the festival back in 1994 this exquisite little Swiss ski-village was a ghost town in summer. But that’s all changed, and for over two weeks each year Verbier becomes a playground for some of classical music’s biggest names. Everyone has been: Martha Argerich is a regular, as are Evgeny Kissin, Mischa Maisky and Mikhail Pletnev. Of the younger generation you’re usually likely to see Yuja Wang, the Capuçon brothers, Leonidas Kavakos and pianist-du-jour Daniil Trifonov.

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