Venue: Gstaad Chapel

Alexander Boldachev gives a highly entertaining exploration of Russian music, by way of a battery of harp effects, several of his own devising.

It’s not common to see a full hour of solo harp music, incorporating music of many types from late Baroque to the 21st century. It has left me far better educated as to the breadth of which this instrument is capable.

Should the performer’s looks and gestures matter, or should purist listeners shut their eyes and use only their ears? In the case of today’s Gstaad chapel piano-four-hands recital by Ani and Nia Sulkhanishvili, there was no question that what you saw formed part of the show.

Question: what’s the connection between South Korea and 19th-century Bohemia? Answer: I have no idea, but there clearly is one, since Korean pianists Jaekyung Yoo and Yoon-Jee Kim play Smetana and Dvořák’s music as if they ingested it with their mothers’ milk.

Sommets Musicaux de Gstaad's opening concert for young musicians featured the Russian duo Getallo and Andreev who showed formidable technique but only came to life in the Rubinstein Piano Sonata.

One always comes to a young musicians' concert with a slight hope that this will be that special day when you hear a performer who you are absolutely sure will be a star of the future. That hope only comes to fruition on a small number of occasions: this concert was one of them. I'm willing to take bets that nineteen year old Parisian cellist Edgar Moreau is going to have a glittering career.

Reviewing concerts by young performers can be a tricky business, particularly when the material is highly varied and the way it is played even more so. Whenever I formed an opinion about the cello playing of Pablo Ferrández in today’s concert in Gstaad Chapel, I found myself contradicting it in the following piece.

One of the more attractive features of the Sommets Musicaux festival is the series of concerts in Gstaad chapel, each given by a young musician who has been spending the week attending classes, with a mentor – in this case, Mario Brunello – and each including a world première written by the festival’s composer in residence – this year, it’s the turn of Nicolas Bacri.