Music | 01 August 2004

Switzerland's annual Verbier Festival has become one of the premier international musical celebrations, attracting a who's who of world-renowned artists to the Swiss countryside for more than two weeks of classical music performances. In celebration of the 10th anniversary of the festival, the world's greatest pianists gathered to play arrangements of classical favorites for four to 16 hands on one to eight pianos. Pianists Leif Ove Andsnes, Nicholas Angelich, Martha Argerich, Emanuel Ax, Claude Frank, Evgeny Kissin, Lang Lang, James Levine, Mikhail Pletnev, and Staffan Scheja perform works by Mozart, Wagner, Rimsky-Korsakov, Smetana, Sousa, and Gottschalk. Also featured is Bach's "Concerto in A Minor," performed with the Verbier Birthday Festival Orchestra: Renaud Capuçon, Sarah Chang, Ilya Gringolts, Gidon Kremer, Vadim Repin, Dmitri Sitkovetsky, Christian Tetzlaff, Nikolaj Znaider, Yuri Bashmet, Nobuko Imai, Mischa Maisky, Boris Pergamenschikow, and Patrick de Los Santos.