★ Verbier Festival

01Pourquoi c'est important

Verbier is the youngest of the major European summer festivals and, in our reading, the most consequential as a training institution. Its Academy alumni now hold chairs and solo careers across the international circuit, and the festival's practice of putting a nineteen-year-old in a chamber group beside a soloist of forty years' standing produces performances that are audibly different from the standard summer festival product. For a visitor, the practical significance is different again: this is the only festival in this calendar at which the world's leading pianists can be heard in a mountain village of eight thousand people, with the masterclasses open and much of the peripheral programme free.

02La semaine environnante

Mid-July to early August is the Valais summer at its best and Verbier's second season. The resort that fills with skiers and freeriders in winter is, in July, a hiking and mountain-biking base: the Mont Fort cable car runs, the trails across the Val de Bagnes and up toward the Grand Combin are open, and the village is busy but not crowded. The festival threads concerts through the afternoons and evenings and leaves the mornings free, which is precisely how most visitors use it. Its free programming is what changes the character of the village - open rehearsals, masterclasses, outdoor performances and the UNLTD strand mean that music is audible in public spaces rather than confined to halls. Verbier's own summer calendar adds mountain-bike events and the Val de Bagnes' village festivals. Nothing about the fortnight is formal; audiences arrive from walks and come in what they were wearing.

03Quand arriver

The festival is long enough that a four- or five-night stay anywhere in the run works. Choose by programme rather than by date - the orchestral concerts cluster in the second half, the chamber and recital programme runs throughout. Arrive the day before your first concert to get a walk in, and leave a morning free for a masterclass, which is the part visitors consistently say they wish they had planned for.

04Où séjourner

Verbier village itself, on the plateau around the Place Centrale, puts every venue within a walk and is where the festival's own life happens; the resort's hotel stock is modest and the chalet rental market is large. Le Chable, at the bottom of the valley on the railway and connected by cable car, is the value option and ten minutes away. Villages further down the Val de Bagnes - Bruson, Versegeres, Champsec - are quieter, cheaper and need a car. Martigny and Sion, both on the main Valais rail line, are thirty to fifty minutes away and are what visitors combining the festival with the rest of the canton use.

05Accès et hospitalité

Tickets are sold by the festival through its own ticketing site, concert by concert, with the orchestral evenings and star recitals the first to close. A substantial part of the programme - the UNLTD strand, masterclasses and various outdoor and family events - is free or low-cost, which the festival treats as central rather than incidental. There is no festival pass structure published, no invitation-only tier and no hospitality product of the kind the sporting fixtures in this calendar carry.

06Où se déroule l'activité sociale

The Place Centrale and the terraces around it, the bars and restaurants along the Rue de Medran, and the concert venues' foyers before and after performances. In the daytime, the mountain restaurants above the village and the trails toward Les Ruinettes and Mont Fort. The festival's audience is not a separate population from the summer walking crowd, and the two mix visibly on the terraces between an afternoon masterclass and an evening concert.

07Comment s'y rendre

08Informations pratiques

09Historique

Martin T:son Engstrom, a Swedish artist manager and record producer, began planning a festival in Verbier in 1991 and staged the first edition in 1994, choosing a resort with no classical tradition and no concert hall over the established Swiss festival towns. The Academy followed and became the institution's centre of gravity; the Prix Yves Paternot recognizes its outstanding participant each year. The festival orchestra was created to give the Academy an ensemble of its own and has since toured internationally. The programme's public strand, launched as Fest'Off and now UNLTD, was built to keep the festival connected to the village rather than confined to its ticket holders.

10Qui s'y trouve

Classical audiences from Switzerland, France, Britain, Germany and further, many of whom return every year; the Academy's participants, teachers and their families; artist management, record and broadcast professionals; Verbier's own chalet-owning community, which has a strong British and Scandinavian element; and summer walkers and cyclists who take in concerts around their days on the mountain.