At the turn of the century, Montreux, at the southeast end of Lac Leman, was the most fashionable resort in Switzerland. Kings and princelings, dukes and barons, accompanied by their children and attendants and wives and other toys, patronized its rambling, elegant hotels.

They are all long since gone, though you get the feeling now and then that their shades wander still through the wide endless corridors, sunk in nostalgia for faded laughter, vanished loves, and the champagne of other times. There's a Russian princess who haunts one of the hotels, but she's alive, actually. And a French countess inhabits another hotel: she throws rolls out the dining room window when they displease her. This is called class. And don't we all wish we had the arrogance to do the same?

Vladimir Nabokov, the novelist, lives in a suite of the gorgeous old Montreux Palace hotel. It is doubtful whether he sees any Lolitas among the American schoolgirls who come to acquire a little instant French in the summer, wearing their tacky clothes, self-consciously smoking their filter cigarettes, and vigorously demonstrating their bad manners.

At nearby Vevey live Charles Chaplin and James Mason, as well as novelist Georges Simenon. A lot of writers and actors live in the vicinity, for Montreux is a quiet, cultivated place, suitable for hiding. Quiet? It has been dead since World War I. Now it is coming back to life. Three kinds of people go there: wealthy older people; wealthy younger people; and not-so-wealthy younger people. A good many of them are attracted by one or both of the two great local attractions: scenery and music.

The scenery is the shimmering waters of Lac Leman, with Grammont and the French Alps rising out of its waters seven kilometers across the way; the jagged blue-and-white peaks of the Dents du Midi; the wonderful medieval Chateau de Chillon has been there for quite a while, as a matter of fact. The music is a later addition. The classical music festival, which occurs in the early autumn, has been held for about twenty years. The Jazz Festival, at the start of the summer, began in 1967. Only eight Swissair hours from New York, and set amid such scenery, it seemed certain to succeed from the beginning. And it did.

Bill Evans appeared as a special guest during the second year of the festival, which is devoted primarily to European jazz; he was, as they say, a smash, for reasons that are immediately apparent when you listen to this album. He knocked the audience out. But then, they knocked him out. Audiences tend to get the performances they deserve, and this is particularly true in Bill's case.

Everything in the atmosphere was conducive to fine performance. Bill arrived ahead of time and took it easy for a while. ( I'd been there three weeks and I was practically asleep by then. One day Bill and I went through the Chateau de Chillon, made famous by Lord Byron in that poem so many of us had to memorize ( at least in part in school. I bashed my knee on a cannon the minute we were inside and fell groaning to the floor. "That really hurts," Bill said, in what struck me in my agony as being a paradigm of understatement. I swore a little and limped on. We examined the dungeon where Bonivard had been held prisoner, chained to a pillar for four years. Bill and I decided that the acoustics made the place unsuitable for concerts; it was probably ex cellent in its day for screaming. We puttered through ancient chambers and examined a secret passage or two and a few beds wherein many a noble affair undoubtedly was consummated. We discovered a third floor room which had a bench against the wall, wherein were cut two holes. "What's that?" I said, as Bill and I peered down the holes to the rocks and Lac Leman far, far below. Suddenly we started to laugh. Bill said, "Man, that has to be the world's highest latrine!" We came across a sign that confirmed this insight. It was authentic. Antique. Sixteenth Century, or some such. Life goes on.

The next day, Eddie Gomez, Helen Keane (Bill's manager and producer) and I went for a ride on the cog railway to the top of Rochers de Naye, about seven thousand feet up. Bill copped out of that trip, which turned out to be shrewd: the train kept going in and out of clouds. When occasionally the grey mist cleared, and I looked down, I got a slight case of the queasles. But thanks to all that fog, I got an insight into Eddie's phenomenal bass playing. There being little else to do but talk, we did. "It's a question of conception, more than technique, I believe," Eddie said. "I think of the instrument as if it were a horn."

At last it came time for the trio to play. The festival was held in the nightclub (as big as a concert hall) of the Montreux Casino, an old time pleasure palace. The sound system was excellent, and there was a closed-circuit television set-up that made it possible for anyone, any where in the room, to see close-ups of Bill's or Eddie's hands during performance. I have never seen more intelligent audience attention. Yet it was not the I'm-cool-baby-I-don't-get-excited brand of quiet that became a minor curse to jazz a few years ago. On the contrary, at the end of each number the audience exploded in applause so stormy and extended that it had to be heavily edited in the mastering of this recording.

Bill's performance was one of the best I've ever heard from him. He and Eddie played with more aggressive drive than ever before; with more exuberance, more happiness. The brooding, introspective side of Bill's music is well represented on records. The bright side has been too little heard; but it's here in this album.

While they were working, Helen Keane was in an improvised control room downstairs with Pierre Grandjean, a sensitive young engineer from Radio Suisse Romande, getting it on tape. Everything the trio played in the concert, excepting one number omitted because the album would have run too long, is here. It's heard in the same order as it was in the concert.

The voice you hear introducing the trio is that of Ceo Voumard, who is in charge of jazz for Radio Suisse Romande and acted as musical co-ordinator of the festival. Ceo, a former pianist ( and a very good one said afterwards, "Tonight I am taking up the piano again."

I suppose that was the best compliment Bill got at the festival.