An Alpine Idyll

National Review, Sept 15, 2003 by Stuart Isacoff

On a recent gray July morning in the Alpine village of Verbier, Switzerland, pianist Emanuel Ax and violinist Christian Tetzlaff were sounding the final notes of a recital encore -- the scherzo from Brahms's Sonata in D minor -- when they were joined by the soft murmur of distant thunder. It rumbled through the performance space, a church referred to (simply) as L'Eglise, at exactly the right instant, creating the impression that a gentle timpani roll had been intended all along for the ending of this piece, and everyone, audience members and artists alike, broke into broad smiles.

The communion of nature and art is one of the selling points of the Verbier Festival. Certainly, it's hard to imagine a more beautiful place than this pristine ski resort, nestled, even in summer, in the lap of magnificent ice-capped mountains. It can be artistically exquisite as well. The recital by Tetzlaff and Ax, featuring Mozart, Debussy, and Grieg, was music-making of the very highest order. And if some of the other offerings didn't quite reach that level, there were compensations.

For example, the gala concert celebrating the festival's tenth anniversary was the kind of star-studded affair that makes for an unforgettable evening, regardless of artistic outcome. Here were some of the world's top pianists, including Ax, Leif Ove Andsnes, Martha Argerich, Evgeny Kissin, Lang Lang, James Levine, and Mikhail Pletnev, among others, playing together on one stage -- up to eight pianos at a time -- along with a string orchestra featuring such renowned soloists as Sarah Chang, Gidon Kremer, Vadim Repin, Dmitri Sitkovetsky, Nikolaj Znaider, Yuri Bashmet, and Mischa Maisky. Watching rehearsals, one feared the worst. Sometimes as things went awry, many of the usually disciplined pianists would giddily succumb to the urge to bang away in a musical free-for-all. One afternoon on the stage of the large tent used for evening concerts, Ax, usually a beacon of calm, could be heard pleading for order as Levine searched for the missing bars in his part. Entropy waited eagerly in the wings.

Nevertheless, in the end, things went relatively well. The performances ranged from a graceful, glowing Mozart Sonata for four hands played by Argerich and Kissin, to workmanlike ensemble playing, to a train-wreck of a Scott Joplin rag in which eight great classical artists proved that they can't swing. But what a happening!

Martin Engstroem, the founder and executive director of the Verbier Festival, has always managed to attract big-name talent, even without a large budget. Years ago he confessed that he had enticed Isaac Stern and Evgeny Kissin to Verbier by telling each that the other had requested an opportunity to play with him. One wonders how he convinced all these stars to join in what Leif Ove Andsnes called "that crazy concert." "It's so funny," Engstroem says, "because so many of them asked me the same question: 'How did you get us to do this?' I have a personal relationship with most of these people, developed over many years. I think many of them performed because it was not only the birthday of the festival but also my own birthday. I told those who were a bit hesitant, 'You are doing this for me.'

"But I believe the primary reason they come has to be artistic. That it's nice and joyful here is 'added value.' I always ask artists to perform a piece they've never played before, or to play with people they've never worked with before. Some artists, like Martha Argerich, I try to inspire with new repertoire. She recently learned the Brahms G minor Piano Quartet. When I first asked her to play this, she said, 'I'm not friends with Brahms.' But I told her that the piece was really for her. She started working on it and said, 'Perhaps you're right.' Gidon Kremer had never played it. I put the two of them together with Bashmet and Maisky. And it resulted in our Deutsche Grammophon recording, which is coming out in January. Therefore, I feel like a partner in whom they trust. And this confidence is the key element of the relationships."

Two less visible partners in the success of the festival are no less impressive. One, Ulrich Gerhartz, is the Steinway technician who personally selected (based on his knowledge of the playing style of each soloist) and tuned all eight pianos for the gala concert. Gerhartz, who runs the technical-services department of Steinway Hall in London, began his tuning regimen at 3 a.m., and achieved incredible results despite the odds (Mikhail Pletnev, surveying the situation, had asked him, "Why bother?").

The other is a banker named Georges Gagnebin, and therein lies a tale. Gagnebin is chairman of UBS Wealth Management & Business Banking in Zurich, and it was his decision to link the corporate image of the biggest asset manager in the world to an orchestra of young musicians. "In 1995, I gave a group of young people the task of coming up with ten ideas about how we could communicate our values to clients," he remembers. "One of these was to build a youth orchestra. The reaction within UBS was: 'Are you crazy? We are bankers, not artists.' But I thought about the nature of an orchestra. You cannot have a better image of different kinds of people coming together, building a unity, a team, and delivering a common message. That's what we do at the bank." Gagnebin, who is clearly passionate about this project, could not be dissuaded -- not even by Martin Engstroem, who at first blush rejected the idea.