With state funding comes a responsibility to offer more by way of local access, education and so forth. Nothing wrong with that. Why should culture be reserved for summer visitors alone? France's model has always been different: Consonances de Saint-Nazaire, like many French festivals, relies on state support, hence exists to benefit its local community. If Verbier can indeed move forward by spreading cultural life through its region's community all year round, it could be a worthy example for others to follow.

If festivals are to survive, they need to attract both sponsorship money and ticket sales. If they receive state funding, they have to prove their worth to those who might not be predisposed to understand it. So they must adapt and innovate. Those that don't thrive on real creativity, concentrate on ticking politically-correct boxes or are ego trips for their directors may have to rethink, because — as I saw in Verbier — it is living creativity, such as the encounters of great musicians with the young and gifted, that produces the most excitement. This rubs off on the observers and keeps them flocking in. And there are countless ways for festivals to extend their remit. Verbier webcasts its concerts on Medici TV. Nearer to home, Glyndebourne has sent its festival operas to big-screen events at Somerset House, enabling welcome wider access.

Unfortunately it may not always be the right ones that pull through. Some are bound to go to the wall, and not necessarily through any fault of their own. Dartington International Summer School of Music (Diss), my own most vital formative influence, is currently facing the threat of a redevelopment of its host college's gorgeous site into a luxury leisure what-have-you. Diss has functioned for decades as festival, masterclass hub and seething hot-house of hungry talent. But I hear that one residential block is apparently to be turned into a retirement home, while the studios are handed over to some small businesses that are being shunted out of that building. And you can't have a summer school without teaching rooms. 

It was at Dartington that, as a sort of teenage sponge, I soaked up the lectures of the music (and football) critic Hans Keller and the wisdom of the great pianist Vlado Perlemuter, who had known Fauré and Ravel; I played dubiously in piano masterclasses with András Schiff and Imogen Cooper, and sang atrociously in choral works by Haydn, Mozart and Messiaen. Dartington was an oasis in which every participant — hundreds of them — shared the same passion for music. Lifelong friendships were forged, and energy gathered enabling you to face the rest of the year, bolstered with the faith and hope that only the sharing of great art can provide. Without all that, I wouldn't be writing here now. It will be tragic if the place is forced to fold.

Verbier had to adapt, fast, when the site of its former concert tent was sold to a developer; rapid relocation has changed the event's focus, but proved its will to live. The verve of the finest festivals shows how much we need them as soul food. But they will have to be ready for change. Extending plans towards year-round culture and access for all has to be at least the start of a way forward.