The home viewer of this Rheingold-length gala enjoys certain advantages over the blinged-up patrons who packed the plastic hothouse of Verbier’s lean-to concert hall on a sweltering evening last July. Comfort, for one. Choice would be another. Once really was enough for 10 minutes of Happy Birthday mocked up à la manière de Brahms, Haydn, tango and the rest. A glutinous Ave verum and well-upholstered ‘Hallelujah’ chorus, accompanied by an organist who appears to have forgotten his suit, need not detain you long, however ageless and spirited the direction of Gábor Takács-Nagy.

All the same, a Third Brandenburg Concerto led off by a first-violin line of Zukerman, Vengerov, Repin and Kavakos can be guaranteed a certain level of inbuilt class. The vibe of collegial showing-off carries a bespoke arrangement of Sarasate’s Navarra for 13 violins over the line, even if, as with voices, six virtuosos do not make for happy unisons. The challenge with such gala evenings is that everyone has to be given something to do. This birthday orchestra of soloists returns at the end to fill out the back desks of the festival’s regular chamber orchestra for a Fledermaus Overture in circumstances that bring out the best in its conductor, Valery Gergiev.

The gala’s hour-long central piano section also features distinguished music-making on the fly. Daniil Trifonov does his best to follow Mikhail Pletnev slowing to half speed for the chorale tune in his duet arrangement of Bach’s Jesu, joy of man’s desiring. Yuja Wang and Denis Kozhukhin nearly come off the rails in the Paganini Variations of Lutosławski, though they bring down the house in the process.

Among the most touching moments of the event is a six-hands Romance by Rachmaninov (whose opening became famous when the composer reused it in the slow movement of the Second Piano Concerto), in which Kissin and Trifonov are joined on the lowest part by the composer Rodion Shchedrin, now 85 but still possessed of a luminous touch and apparently effortless legato. Another elder statesman of the piano runs him close: Richard Goode, teaching Seong-Jin Cho a thing or two about playing Brahms in three Souvenirs de la Russie. They’re all upstaged, however, by Thomas Quasthoff’s uncredited insert to a Fledermaus medley, taking Cole Porter on a winter journey. For once, you didn’t have to be there. It’s just as good at home.