Classical music
André de Ribaupierre
André de Ribaupierre (1893-1955), a violinist, belonged to a family that did a great deal for the musical renown of Montreux. His father, a horticulturist in Clarens and the creator of rose and chrysanthemum varieties, was also one of the founders of the Jardin alpin de Naye in 1896; of his six children, five made their mark in the arts. André and his brother Emile were violinists, François a painter. To the family we owe the founding of the Institut de Ribaupierre, in Vevey and Montreux, and a decisive contribution to the creation of the region’s conservatories; Emile founded and directed the Orchestre de Ribaupierre. From 1928 to 1950, André’s summer courses drew young musicians to the Riviera from all over Europe and America.
The de Ribaupierre family: a violin, a paintbrush and gardens
Noticed by Paderewski, a quartet with Carlo Boller
Noticed by Ignace Paderewski and trained by the violinist Gorski, André de Ribaupierre debuted as a soloist at sixteen, in London, before playing with the greatest orchestras. At twenty-one, he was already teaching virtuosity at the Lausanne Conservatory. With his brother Emile, the cellist Jean Décosterd and the violist Carlo Boller, the future founder of La Chanson de Montreux, he founded the Quatuor de Ribaupierre. In 1919 came recognition and a wrench: the celebrated Belgian violinist Eugène Ysaÿe called him to Cincinnati to succeed him as professor and soloist.
André was also a keen mountaineer. He wanted to be counted a member of the village of Les Haudères and lodged in a mazot dated 1509; at festivals, he wore traditional dress, as did his wife. He always carried his violin with him, and could thus treat the choughs of the Matterhorn to Bach’s Chaconne.
François de Ribaupierre and the frescoes of Les Haudères
François, the painter of the family, loved the mountains, and the Val d’Hérens in particular. In 1927 he painted the frescoes of the new chapel at Les Haudères, a gesture that earned him the right, rare for someone not from the village, to buy property there; he restored them himself at the age of eighty, refusing any payment. It was also François de Ribaupierre who signed, in 1937, the “angelic” frescoes of the Clarens temple.
The mountain bug also caught his sister and brothers. All three in turn spent the summer in the village’s mazots and organised, from 1928 to 1950, summer courses on the Alp attended by young musicians who flocked from Europe and America; the tradition, kept up by Mathilde and Emile until 1956, was then carried on by the pianists Pierre Régamey and Pierre Souvairan and the violinist Jean Jacquerod. The village elders remember that period, when students, each in their own corner of meadow, rehearsed their scores; but despite the musicians’ efforts, the villagers long remained distant towards the Montreux visitors, their music and their concerts.
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