70 concerts in 7 weeks

After seven weeks, nearly 70 concerts and some 25,000 visitors, the Gstaad Menuhin Festival & Academy brings this year’s edition to a triumphant close, and as in the last three peak summers once again with record crowds in the church in Saanen. The 61^st edition of the festival with the motto “Pomp in Music” offered its last emotional moments with a moving performance on Friday of a concert version of “Aïda” (with soloists who more than lived up to their names, such as Erwin Schrott and Francesco Melli) and with the long-awaited concert in the Festival Tent on Saturday with the London Symphony Orchestra and Gianandrea Noseda performing Tchaikovsky’s Fourth Symphony and Rachmaninov’s Second Piano Concerto with soloist Khatia Buniatishvili as well as (what a coincidence!) Edward Elgar’s “Pomp and Circumstance” March.