Hôtel des Crêtes

An 1865 hotel, the work of Vevey architects

The Hôtel des Crêtes was built in 1865 for Charles Fatio, then rebuilt in 1874: this second building is said to be the first work of the Vevey architects Ernest Burnat and Charles Nicati. Set against the heights of Clarens and its two castles, the Châtelard and the Crêtes, it was one of those comfortable guesthouses that, at the turn of the century, drew to the Riviera a clientele of artists and travellers (MyMontreux ↗).

Spring 1913: Ravel, Stravinsky and Diaghilev

From mid-March to mid-April 1913, Maurice Ravel stayed at the Hôtel des Crêtes. There he composed the first two of his “Trois poèmes de Stéphane Mallarmé” and joined Igor Stravinsky, lodged close by at the Hôtel du Châtelard.

Together, at Serge Diaghilev’s request, the two composers orchestrated fragments of Modest Mussorgsky’s “Khovanshchina” for the Ballets Russes. At the same moment, in the village, Stravinsky was putting the finishing touches to “The Rite of Spring”, whose Paris premiere a few weeks later would cause the famous scandal. For the span of a spring, Clarens was thus the workshop of two of the scores that would reopen the musical twentieth century.

From palace to post office

The hotel did not survive as such. The building was raised and then converted into flats, and it now houses the Clarens post office, on the Rue du Collège, behind the station. Nothing there marks the guests of 1913 any longer, but the address remains one of the few points on the Riviera where one can say that “The Rite of Spring” and the “Khovanshchina” orchestrated by Ravel and Stravinsky shared the same spring.