What do Met Orchestra players do on their summer vacations? For many, the off-season means heading to the Verbier Festival in the Swiss Alps, for a singular combination of music coaching, performances—and mountain-biking.
“Verbier is a ski town in the winter, and in the summer they have rock-climbing, scooters that go up and down the mountain, and lots of other activities,” says associate concertmaster Nancy Wu, a 20-year veteran of the Met orchestra who has been to Verbier the past nine years. “But it’s definitely a lot of work.”
The work part comes primarily in the form of coaching, with Met players training young musicians who audition in cities around the world to join the Verbier Festival Orchestra each summer. Although there is no official connection between the Met and Verbier, Met Music Director James Levine and festival founder and Executive Director Martin Engstroem collaborated on the conception of the program, created in 2000 as a way to immerse musicians under 30 in the experience of playing in a full orchestra.
Wu, whose husband, Leigh Mesh, plays double bass in the Met Orchestra and who also coaches at Verbier, was first invited to the festival by Levine, and she says she tries to impart the style of the Met Orchestra to her young violin charges. “The Met Orchestra plays in a very vibrant, dynamic style,” she says. “Because we play opera, there’s a large emotional range that we cover. I think when you’re coming from school to playing in a full orchestra, there’s a kind of mindset you have to acquire and learn. You have to get used to the orchestra dynamic, to work with everyone else and be stylistically homogenous. That’s something I value very much at the Met and that Jimmy, because he’s been here so many years, has had a tremendous impact on.” (As Music Director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Maestro Levine spends his summers at Tanglewood nowadays, but he remains Verbier’s Conductor Laureate.)
Some young musicians pick up the Met style so completely, they end up making the transition from Verbier student to Met Orchestra member to coach. “In 2000, I was in the Verbier orchestra benefiting from the guidance of the Met musicians,” says oboist Nathan Hughes. “Little did I know that, seven years later, after finishing my first season with the Met, I would be returning to Verbier in a mentoring role.”
Hughes and Wu agree that—gorgeous scenery notwithstanding—watching the young players develop into an integrated ensemble is the most gratifying part of their annual mountain sojourn. “It’s exciting and challenging to get these talented young musicians to sound good as a section,” Wu says. “And when you do, you can feel their pride and their satisfaction. We know what that feels like, when you feel like your section sounds really good, and helping to bring them to that point is very rewarding.”
The 2009 Verbier Festival opens on July 17 with the Festival Orchestra playing a program of Brahms and Strauss under the baton of Charles Dutoit. Nearly a dozen Met musicians will be participating in the festival, which will also present works by Mendelssohn, Messiaen, Schumann, and Shostakovich, non-operatic repertoire that can challenge the Met coaches as well. “Conducting a woodwind sectional rehearsal gives me the opportunity to study a composition from a slightly broader perspective,” Hughes says. “And it gives me time to work on my handling of the baton.”
“The enthusiasm of these young musicians is addictive to be around, but it’s a lot of work to prepare, to coach a significant amount of symphonic repertoire, to train and conduct,” Wu says. “Of course, this year they’re also doing Don Giovanni, which we know very well!” —Matt Dobkin