Yehudi Menuhin founded the festival in 1957 in the church at Saanen, which remains its most atmospheric venue — a fifteenth-century village church with frescoes and a few hundred seats. Larger concerts are given in a tent at Gstaad, and the programme spreads across the Saanenland villages through the summer.
No attendance figure is collected in this pass.
Its character is Menuhin's: an academy attached, a conducting programme, and an emphasis on chamber playing over orchestral spectacle.
The venues are scattered across a valley with limited public transport after a concert ends, which is the practical problem; the festival runs buses for the main evenings. Gstaad in summer is expensive but far less so than in February.
PlanningA long summer window of individual concerts across several villages — book by date and by venue.