verbier festival gold

The Verbier Festival and Deutsche Grammophon are delighted to announce the launch of Verbier Festival Gold – a joint venture between the two classical music powerhouses. Boasting a vast archive overflowing with precious gems captured in the Festival’s concert halls in the Swiss Alps, this new record label will make the Verbier Festival experience more accessible to audiences around the world and showcase eminent classical artists, many of them with a close affiliation to the Yellow Label, in unusual formations and repertoire. Verbier Festival Gold aims to release a new recording every month.

Gianandrea Noseda’s account of Verdi’s transcendent Requiem from 2013 marks one of the most electrifying moments in Verbier Festival history, and as the first release on Verbier Festival Gold, perfectly exemplifies the legendary calibre of performance that the label seeks to present. Soloists Maria Agresta, Daniela Barcellona, Piotr Beczala, and Ildar Abdrazakov deliver spellbinding performances, as do the singers of the Coro Teatro Regio Torino, and musicians of the Verbier Festival Orchestra. Joining together – from the hushed tones of the ‘Introit’ to the radiant cadence of the ‘Libera me’ – these forces conjure a journey of monumental power under Noseda’s expert direction.

Yuja Wang plays Mendelssohn

Release Date: 22 April 2022

Superstar pianist Yuja Wang excels as a recording artist, yet it is in front of a live audience where she truly comes alive; the second release on Verbier Festival Gold features Wang’s 2009 performance alongside an all-star ensemble of Kirill Troussov, David Aaron Carpenter, Maxim Rysanov, Sol Gabetta, and Leigh Mesh. The release also features Wang’s exhilarating performance of Mendelssohn’s Piano Concerto No. 1, together with Kurt Masur and the Verbier Festial Orchestra.

Bryn Terfel: The Verbier Recital

Release Date: 20 May 2022

Bryn Terfel’s 2011 recital with pianist Llyr Williams marks Verbier Festival Gold’s highly anticipated third release. The charismatic bass-baritone stages a performance that perfectly matches the delicacy and depth of this brilliant, poetry-inspired programme, which pairs Schubert’s magnificent Liebesbotschaft (‘Message of Love’) and Litanei with Schumann’s Liederkreis, a pinnacle of Romantic composition. The Schubert song was based on a poem by Ludwig Rellstab and excerpted from the posthumously published Schwanengesang, the composer’s collection of fourteen Lieder. Himself a writer and music critic, the literary-minded Schumann, in turn, drew inspiration from the poetry of Joseph von Eichendorff. The release is rounded out with Ibert’s ‘Chansons de Don Quichotte’, Roger Quilter’s ‘3 Shakespeare Songs’, and concludes with a handful of charming encores.