Davos Festival: fibbing in the spa town

In the Kirchner Museum, the mountains glow in shades of purple, violet and blue, whereas when you look out of the window, they are grass green and rock gray. But it is not for this reason that banners with the word "flunk" cover the streets. In Davos, the Festival Young Artists in Concert in fibbing, cheating, lying and truth-telling. This festival is truly different from most. It is not about a concentration of celebrities who arrive, deliver their program and leave again. Young musicians at the beginning of their careers are invited to Davos. And they are not here to "deliver", but to collect: Performance experience, new playing partners, unfamiliar repertoire, impressions. Festival director Marco Amherd thinks it's important that they can go on a trip, that they can visit each other's concerts, that they can talk to each other. In short: that they have a bit of time on their hands. (Perhaps as a positive echo of all the time that spa guests had to spend here a hundred years ago in a much more joyless way).

Amherd selects the participants carefully. Some have applied to him, others have caught his eye at a competition or on another occasion. He considers whether the concept suits them and whether they could get on with the others. By the time the young people arrive, they have practiced their voices, but they rehearse on site - with the chamber music partners they usually meet there. A moment of truth in a way. According to one participant, the festival gives them an enormous amount of trust, because although Marco Amherd listens to the dress rehearsal, they work out the interpretation among themselves.

This festival recipe solves any programming cramps. Amherd enjoys the freedom: "I usually program everything myself, first the overarching theme, then the individual concerts. Sometimes participants or existing ensembles make suggestions. But I'm often amazed at how uninnovative they are." The 34-year-old remedies this. With regard to the (broadly defined) concept of "fibbing", one evening, for example, revolves around works that were defamed as lies and banned by a totalitarian regime. The Piano Sonata No. 2 "From Old Notebooks" by Aleksandr Mosolow meets the Piano Trio in C major by Bohuslav Martinů and the Clarinet Sonata by Edison Denisow. One afternoon is dedicated to the kind of fibbing that conjures up the most fantastic worlds in children's books: Thierry Escaich's Scènes d'enfant au crépusculeFrancis Poulenc's oboe sonata and Histore de Babar are captured at the end by Thomas Adès' Catch. The Baroque evening is about "lying" authorship and the faked depiction of animals or instruments. On an evening of spooky legends, Camille Saint-Saëns' Danse macabre in a chamber version also the Conte fantastique by André Caplet. He is very much in his place at the concert in the former sanatorium on the Schatzalp, as he suffered gas poisoning in the trenches during the First World War, from which his lungs never fully recovered.

 

The young musicians play the often difficult works with great skill, freshness and enthusiasm, which is transferred to the audience. (However, as with so many events at the moment, the rows are sparser than before Corona). It's always my colleagues who are the most enthusiastic. Perhaps one or two of them will be infected by the discovery virus.

On the baroque evening, I sit next to locals who tell each other what they have already heard this year. Regular Davos summer guests are also among the habitués. In addition to the regular concerts, the festival cultivates its audience with daily, free organ moments in St. Theodul Church, open singing in St. Paul's Church and small pop-up serenades at the train station. This year, there will even be a ballet lesson, as there will be dancing in the final concert. "If there are already two dancers here, everyone should be able to try out what it's like," says Marco Amherd. The annual festival hike, this time called the "Path of Truth", is also a thoroughly physical experience. On the steep climb after the coffee break, the truth about your own fitness really dawns on you. As musical refreshment, there are harp sounds right at the beginning in front of a postcard view, followed by a snack with a brass trio. Before lunch, Onna Stäheli, the leader of the open singers, has the hikers line up in a meadow and, after a short rehearsal, send a chorus through the valley. And at the end in the tiny church in Sertig-Dörfli, tired legs and an aired head are particularly receptive to extraordinary sounds: Maurice Ravel, Kaija Saariaho and Philippe Hersant are able to illuminate the surrounding mountain slopes in purple, violet and blue.