CRAZY
10.08. – 12.09. 2021 Summer Festival Program
Constantly reinterpret old masterpieces? Why not Presenting old works anew requires dedication, passion, and entrepreneurial courage. That’s why we support the Lucerne Festival. credit-suisse.com/sponsoring
Copyright © 2021 Credit Suisse Group AG and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.
Main sponsor since 1993
WELCOME!
Michael Haefliger Executive and Artistic Director Lucerne Festival
What would life be without music? During the coronavirus crisis, we painfully learned just how much we lose when we have to forgo live concerts. Even if the pandemic is not yet over, we are looking ahead and have prepared an abundant program for the 2021 Summer Festival – which of course meets all requirements in place to safeguard health. We have used the mandatory interruption of recent months to make creative changes. Going forward, Lucerne Festival will use a new design to present its programming. We have come up with a clearer guide to events by assigning them to one of three categories. “Symphony” is where you will find all performances by internationally acclaimed symphony orchestras and celebrated classical music stars. “Contemporary” is the category name for all concerts that focus heavily on modern music. Many of these concerts will be presented by the new Lucerne Festival Contemporary Orchestra (LFCO), the orchestra of excellence committed to performing contemporary scores. And “Music for Future” gathers events based on our commitment to the generation of tomorrow, both onstage and in the audience. Our preview is now clearer and more spaciously laid out. In addition to the annotated calendar of events, we highlight the “Essentials” that shape the Festival each year: the Lucerne Festival Orchestra, Lucerne Festival Academy, composerin-residence, and “artiste étoile,” as well as the 40min series. And under the “Specials” category we present the thematic focal points of the Festival. The overarching theme in 2021 is “crazy” – a topic that gives us quite a lot to look forward to! We hope that you have made it through these crazy times. And we are delighted to welcome you back in the summer of 2021. Yours,
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THIS IS LUCERNE FESTIVAL
5 7 9 11
Symphony Contemporary Music for Future Boards
12 ESSENTIALS 24 AGENDA 34 SPECIALS 46 CONCERTS 112 SUPPORTERS 120 SERVICE
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THIS IS LUCERNE FESTIVAL
SYMPHONY
Eröffnungskonzert des Sommer-Festivals 2016
Opening Concert of the 2016 Summer Festival
Attracting the very best: at no other festival in the world do so many top international orchestras perform within such a short span of time. In 2021 the following will appear: Bamberg Symphony and Jakub Hrůša Berliner Barock Solisten and Reinhard Goebel Berlin Philharmonic and Kirill Petrenko Budapest Festival Orchestra and Iván Fischer Les Arts Florissants and William Christie Les Musiciens du Prince-Monaco with Cecilia Bartoli and Gianluca Capuano London Symphony Orchestra and Sir Simon Rattle Lucerne Festival Orchestra with Riccardo Chailly and Yannick Nézet-Séguin Lucerne Symphony Orchestra and Michael Sanderling Mahler Chamber Orchestra and Yuja Wang Mariinsky Orchestra and Valery Gergiev Mozarteum Orchestra Salzburg and Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla Royal Concertgebouworkest and Daniel Harding Staatskapelle Berlin and Daniel Barenboim Tonhalle Orchestra Zurich and Paavo Järvi West-Eastern Divan Orchestra with Daniel Barenboim and Lahav Shani Vienna Philharmonic and Herbert Blomstedt
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CONTEM– PORARY We love new sounds – and with the Lucerne Festival Contemporary Orchestra and the Lucerne Festival Academy, we set standards for the performance of contemporary music. Lucerne Festival Academy Composer Seminar with Wolfgang Rihm Conducting Fellowship Masterclass in Conducting Roche Commissions Roche Young Commissions
Stockhausen’s Inori with Peter Eötvös at the 2018 Summer Festival
Lucerne Festival Contemporary Orchestra The orchestra of excellence for new music comprises members of the contemporary network. Composer-in-residence Rebecca Saunders World premieres by Amarouch, Anglí, Brichs, Colţea, Davis, Ding, Finkel, Koshelev, Milenko, Nante, Palomar, Posazhennikov, Saunders, Srnka, Szeghy, Uğurlu, and Vaughan
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MUSIC FOR FUTURE We are entirely committed to the generation of tomorrow. Through debut concerts, performances by youth orchestras, and the awarding of top-class prizes, we support the next generation of musicians. We do grassroots work through school concerts and education projects. And we offer family concerts aimed at winning the audience of the future for music.
Russian National Youth Symphony Orchestra
Appearances by international youth orchestras “Debut” Concert Series Credit Suisse Young Artist Award Prix Credit Suisse Jeunes Solistes Fritz Gerber Award Family Concerts Children’s Concerts School Concerts Debut in the Schoolhouse
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© Priska Ketterer/Lucerne Festival
LAKESIDE SYMPHONY THE OPENING CONCERT FOR EVERYONE
A Festival highlight for young and old: enjoy the Opening Concert live on the big screen at Lucerne's Inseli Park, with an evening view of Lake Lucerne and the magnificent panorama of Rigi, Bürgenstock, etc. Riccardo Chailly and the Lucerne Festival Orchestra perform works by Mozart and Schubert.
Fri 13.08. 18.30 | Inseli | free admission
lucernefestival.ch
Credit Suisse Main Sponsor and Presenting Partner Lakeside Symphony
BOARDS FOUNDATION LUCERNE FESTIVAL
FOUNDATION FRIENDS OF LUCERNE FESTIVAL
Board of Trustees Markus Hongler, Chairman* Otto Wyss, Treasurer* Dr. Christian Casal Dr. Rolf Dörig* Dr. Christoph Franz Andrea Gmür-Schönenberger Dr. Marianne Janik Dr. Ursula Jones-Strebi Walter B. Kielholz* Prof. Dr. Alois Koch Dr. Hariolf Kottmann* Michel M. Liès Urs Rohner Prof. Klaus Schwab Marcel Schwerzmann Anne Schwöbel Isabelle Welton* Beat Züsli
Board of Trustees Markus Hongler, Chairman Otto Wyss, Treasurer Dr. Franz Egle Andrea Gmür-Schönenberger Elisabeth Oltramare EXECUTIVE AND ARTISTIC DIRECTOR Michael Haefliger EXECUTIVE MANAGEMENT Michael Haefliger Danièle Gross Christiane Weber
* committee member
Honorary Chairman Jürg R. Reinshagen
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THIS IS LUCERNE FESTIVAL
12 ESSENTIALS 14 16 18 20 22
Lucerne Festival Orchestra Lucerne Festival Academy & Lucerne Festival Contemporary Orchestra Yuja Wang | artiste étoile Rebecca Saunders | composer-in-residence 40min
24 AGENDA 34 SPECIALS 46 CONCERTS 112 SUPPORTERS 120 SERVICE
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ESSEN− TIALS
LUCERNE FESTIVAL ORCHESTRA The Lucerne Festival Orchestra, founded in 2003 by Claudio Abbado and now led by Riccardo Chailly, is an orchestra like no other. In “normal” life its members either perform as soloists or principals in renowned orchestras, focus on chamber music, or teach at universities; every summer they convene in Lucerne to make music together for the pleasure of it, not out of duty but as intensely as if their lives were at stake. 13.08. | 18.30
15.08. | 19.30
21.08. | 18.30
Opening Lucerne Festival Orchestra 1 KKL Luzern, Concert Hall Lucerne Festival Orchestra | Riccardo Chailly conductor
Lucerne Festival Orchestra 3 KKL Luzern, Concert Hall Soloists of the Lucerne Festival Orchestra Works by Ives, Antheil, Rittler, Paganini, Pärt, Ligeti, Alkan, Gesualdo, and Ustvolskaya
Lucerne Festival Orchestra 5 KKL Luzern, Concert Hall Lucerne Festival Orchestra | Yannick Nézet-Séguin conductor | Yuja Wang piano Debussy Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune | Mozart Piano Concerto in D minor, K. 466 | Ravel Ma mère l’Oye. Ballet version
Mozart Overture to Don Giovanni, K. 527 | Symphony in G minor, K. 550 | Schubert Symphony No. 6 in C major, D 589 14.08. | 18.30
Lucerne Festival Orchestra 2 KKL Luzern, Concert Hall Lucerne Festival Orchestra | Riccardo Chailly conductor | Igor Levit piano Mozart Overture to Don Giovanni, K. 527 | Schumann Piano Concerto in A minor, Op. 54 | Mozart Symphony in G minor, K. 550
18.08. | 19.30
Lucerne Festival Orchestra 4 KKL Luzern, Concert Hall Lucerne Festival Orchestra | Riccardo Chailly conductor Schumann Manfred Overture, Op. 115 | Haydn Symphony in D major, Hob. I:101 The Clock | Beethoven Symphony No. 5 in C minor, Op. 67
24.08. | 19.30
Lucerne Festival Orchestra 6 KKL Luzern, Concert Hall Lucerne Festival Orchestra | Yannick Nézet-Séguin conductor Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de SaintGeorges Symphony No. 2 in D major | Mozart Symphony in D major, K. 504 Prague | Beethoven Symphony No. 7 in A major, Op. 92
We cordially thank our Main Sponsor the Kühne Foundation for its generous support of the Lucerne Festival Orchestra. 14
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LUCERNE FESTIVAL ACADEMY & LUCERNE FESTIVAL CONTEMPORARY ORCHESTRA
Master school, laboratory for the future, and a new orchestra of excellence for the performance of contemporary works: the Lucerne Festival Academy, led by Wolfgang Rihm, sets standards for the music of the 20th and 21st centuries. 16. – 19.08. | 10/12
28.08. | 22.00
01.09. | 16.00
Composer Seminar KKL Luzern, Clubraum 8 with Wolfgang Rihm, Dieter Ammann et al.
Lucerne Festival Academy 1 KKL Luzern, Lucerne Hall Ensemble of the Lucerne Festival Contemporary Orchestra | Johanna Malangré conductor | Juliet Fraser soprano Iannis Xenakis Syrmos | Illés Post Torso | Saunders Nether
Masterclass in Conducting KKL Luzern, Lucerne Hall with Ilan Volkov
21.08. | 11.00
Portrait Rebecca Saunders 1 KKL Luzern, Lucerne Hall Marco Blaauw trumpet | Arditti Quartet | Trio Accanto Saunders shadow | Fletch | blaauw | That Time 28.08. | 14.30
Composer Seminar – Closing Concert Hochschule Luzern – Musik Ensemble of the Lucerne Festival Contemporary Orchestra | Wolfgang Rihm Boulez Initiale for seven brass players | Composer Seminar Showcase
29.08. | 16.00
Lucerne Festival Academy 2 KKL Luzern, Lucerne Hall Lucerne Festival Contemporary Orchestra | Lin Liao, Johanna Malangré and Heinz Holliger conductors | Felix Renggli flute Milenko Traho (world premiere) | Vaughan Logos (world premiere) | Mozart Masonic Funeral Music in C minor, K. 477 (479a) | Holliger Ostinato funebre | Turm-Musik
We cordially thank our Main Sponsor Roche for its generous support of the Lucerne Festival Academy. 16
03.09. | 21.30
Lucerne Festival Academy 3 Südpol Ensemble of the Lucerne Festival Contemporary Orchestra | Lin Liao conductor Boulez Polyphonie X | Colţea Orbitor (world premiere) | Amarouch new work (world premiere) 04.09. | 18.30
Lucerne Festival Academy 4 KKL Luzern, Concert Hall Lucerne Festival Contemporary Orchestra | Ilan Volkov conductor | soloists Saunders void and to an utterance (world premiere) | Webern Variations, Op. 30 and Symphony, Op. 21 | Stravinsky Movements
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YUJA WANG ARTISTE ÉTOILE
Her virtuosity has no limits: what Chinese pianist Yuja Wang can accomplish on the 88 keys of the grand piano is sheer wizardry. But as an “artiste étoile,” Yuja Wang will not limit herself to the warhorses of the keyboard repertoire. In addition to Rachmaninoff and Liszt, she will also focus on Mozart, Bach, and Janáček. Not only technically, but also interpretatively, she belongs in a class of her own. 21.08. | 18.30
28. 08. | 18.30
Lucerne Festival Orchestra 5 KKL Luzern, Concert Hall Lucerne Festival Orchestra | Yannick Nézet-Séguin conductor | Yuja Wang piano Debussy Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune | Mozart Piano Concerto in D minor, K. 466 | Ravel Ma mère l’Oye. Ballet version
Mariinsky Orchestra 1 KKL Luzern, Concert Hall Mariinsky Orchestra | Valery Gergiev conductor | Yuja Wang piano Prokofiev Four pieces from Romeo and Juliet, Op. 64 | Rachmaninoff Concerto No. 4 in G minor, Op. 40 | Stravinsky Petrushka
26.08. | 19.30
Budapest Festival Orchestra 1 KKL Luzern, Concert Hall Budapest Festival Orchestra | Iván Fischer conductor | Yuja Wang piano Liszt Piano Concerto No. 1 in E-flat major, S 124 | A Faust Symphony, S 108
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© Peter Fischli/Lucerne Festival
Mahler Chamber Orchestra KKL Luzern, Concert Hall Mahler Chamber Orchestra | Yuja Wang piano | Roberto GonzálezMonjas concertmaster Rebel Chaos from Les élémens | J. S. Bach Piano Concerto in F minor, BWV 1056 | Stravinsky Octet for wind instruments | Janáček Capriccio for piano (left hand) and wind instruments | Haydn Symphony in f Minor, Hob. I:49 La passione
11.09. | 19.30
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REBECCA SAUNDERS COMPOSER-IN-RESIDENCE The ders a Saun c c e b “Re ” e Packag e t on thre iscoun d g % n ri 20 tu a s fe concert aunders aS Rebecc . 124 see p
A journey inside the interior of sound itself: British composer Rebecca Saunders is a tireless sonic researcher whose music offers an education in perception. In Lucerne, Saunders will be represented by her recent works, including her latest composition. 14.08. | 16.00
04.09. | 11.00
Quatuor Diotima Hochschule Luzern – Musik Quatuor Diotima Saunders Unbreathed
Portrait Rebecca Saunders 2 Hochschule Luzern – Musik Students of the Hochschule Luzern – Musik | Clemens Heil conductor | Daniela Argentino and Juliet Fraser soprano | Charlotte Lorenz cello | Alexis Baskind/ IRCAM computer music design Saunders Solitude for solo cello | The Mouth for soprano and tape | Sole. Trio in F-sharp for mobile accordion, percussion, and piano | Skin for soprano and 13 instruments
21.08. | 11.00
Portrait Rebecca Saunders 1 KKL Luzern, Lucerne Hall Marco Blaauw trumpet | Trio Accanto | Arditti Quartet Saunders shadow. Study for piano | Fletch for string quartet | blaauw for double-bell trumpet | That Time. Trio for saxophone, percussion, and piano 28.08. | 22.00
Lucerne Festival Academy 1 KKL Luzern, Lucerne Hall Ensemble of the Lucerne Festival Contemporary Orchestra | Johanna Malangré conductor | Juliet Fraser soprano Saunders Nether for soprano and ensemble
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04.09. | 18.30
Lucerne Festival Academy 4 KKL Luzern, Concert Hall Lucerne Festival Contemporary Orchestra | Ilan Volkov conductor | Nicolas Hodges piano | Christian Dierstein and Dirk Rothbrust percussion Saunders void for percussion duo and orchestra | to an utterance for piano and orchestra (world premiere)
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40MIN SHORT CONCERTS, FREE ADMISSION
No dress code, no need to have lessons in advance: the 40min series offers host-led programs for beginners, connoisseurs and explorers in the early evening, all with free admission. Here you can meet the stars in rehearsal, get to know unusual repertoire, and have a look behind the scenes at how the Festival operates. Unconventional and varied.
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We kindly ask you to check our website lucernefestival.ch before the Festival starts for information on the ordering and registration process for the 40min series. Due to the current situation and contact tracing requirements, we have not yet finalized the ordering process.
17.08. | 18.20
26.08. | 18.20
KKL Luzern, Lucerne Hall “Inside the Lucerne Festival Orchestra” Soloists of the Lucerne Festival Orchestra
KKL Luzern, Lucerne Hall “How New Things Are Created: The ‘2021 Roche Young Commissions’” Lucerne Festival Contemporary Orchestra | Lin Liao and Johanna Malangré conductors
KKL Luzern, Lucerne Hall “The Art of Conducting” Lucerne Festival Contemporary Orchestra | Ilan Volkov host | Conducting Fellowship Participants
27.08. | 18.20
KKL Luzern, Lucerne Hall “Crossover: Between Classical Music and Jazz” Students of the Hochschule Luzern – Musik
20.08. | 18.20
KKL Luzern, Lucerne Hall “Story Hour with Ravel: Ma mère l’Oye” Lucerne Festival Orchestra | Yannick Nézet-Séguin conductor 25.08. | 18.20
KKL Luzern, Lucerne Hall “Crazy for Piano” Yuja Wang piano | Mahler Chamber Orchestra
KKL Luzern, Lucerne Hall “Classical Music Composed Today” Ensemble of the Lucerne Festival Contemporary Orchestra | Composer Seminar Participants | Wolfgang Rihm host 31.08. | 18.20
KKL Luzern, Lucerne Hall “Spotlight on: Rebecca Saunders” Lucerne Festival Contemporary Orchestra | Ilan Volkov conductor | Nicolas Hodges piano
01.09. | 18.20
07.09. | 18.20
08.09. | 18.20
KKL Luzern, Lucerne Hall “Hommage à Philip Jones” Connaught Brass
We cordially thank our Main Sponsor Zurich for its generous support of the 40min series. 22
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THIS IS LUCERNE FESTIVAL
12 ESSENTIALS 24 AGENDA 26 Health Protection Plan 28 Agenda
34 SPECIALS 46 CONCERTS 112 SUPPORTERS 120 SERVICE
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AGENDA
KEEPING YOU SAFE! We are doing everything possible to ensure that you can enjoy live music free of worry, even in the era of Corona.
• All of the events take place without intermission. • Each ticket is personalized. • Masks are mandatory at the venues. • Safe distance is ensured. • Concerts are booked with reduced seating capacity. • We provide a detailed protection plan.
We are constantly adapting our protection plan to the latest developments. The most up-to-date information, including answers to frequently asked questions (FAQ), can be found on our website. as of April 2021 27
AUG Time | Venue
Page
Tue 10.08.
19.30 | KS
Russian National Youth Russian National Youth Symphony Orchestra | Symphony Orchestra Valentin Uryupin | Sergei Dogadin
Wed 11.08.
19.30 | KS
Swiss Youth Symphony Orchestra
Swiss Youth Symphony Orchestra | Kai Bumann | Oliver Schnyder
49
Thu 12.08.
12.15 | LK
Award Winners Concert
Winners of the Swiss Youth Music Competition
50
Fri 13.08.
18.30 | KS
Opening Lucerne Festival Orchestra 1
Lucerne Festival Orchestra | Riccardo Chailly
51
18.30 | I
Lakeside Symphony
Live projection of the Opening Concert
51
14.00 | A
NZZ Podium
“Crazy: Human Beings and Their Ecstasies” with Melitta Breznik, Heinz Holliger, Gerald Hüther, and Martin Meyer (in German)
52
16.00 | HL
Quatuor Diotima
Quatuor Diotima
53
17.30 | A
Introduction
with Susanne Stähr (in German)
54
18.30 | KS
Lucerne Festival Orchestra 2
Lucerne Festival Orchestra | Riccardo Chailly | Igor Levit
54
14.30 | KS
Afternoon Concert
Festival Strings Lucerne | Daniel Dodds | Johanna Dömötör
55
16.00 | S
Crazy 1
Reto Bieri | Patricia Kopatchinskaja | Anthony Romaniuk | Annekatrin Klein | Men’s chorus
56
19.30 | KS
Lucerne Festival Orchestra 3
Soloists of the Lucerne Festival Orchestra
57
10/12 | CR
Composer Seminar
with Wolfgang Rihm, Dieter Ammann et al.
58
18.30 | A
Introduction
with Susanne Stähr (in German)
59
19.30 | KS
West-Eastern Divan Orchestra 1
West-Eastern Divan Orchestra | Lahav Shani | Daniel Barenboim
59
10/12 | CR
Composer Seminar
with Wolfgang Rihm, Dieter Ammann et al.
58
12.15 | LK
Debut Prix Credit Suisse Jeunes Solistes
Lea Sobbe | Halldór Bjarki Arnarson
60
Sat 14.08.
Sun 15.08.
Mon 16.08.
Tue 17.08.
28
FREE
48
“Inside the Lucerne Festival Orchestra”
22
West-Eastern Divan Orchestra 2
West-Eastern Divan Orchestra | Daniel Barenboim | Michael Barenboim | Kian Soltani
61
10/12 | CR
Composer Seminar
with Wolfgang Rihm, Dieter Ammann et al.
58
18.30 | A
Introduction
with Susanne Stähr (in German)
62
19.30 | KS
Lucerne Festival Orchestra 4
Lucerne Festival Orchestra | Riccardo Chailly
62
10/12 | CR
Composer Seminar
with Wolfgang Rihm, Dieter Ammann et al.
58
12.15 | LK
Debut Dmitry Smirnov
Dmitry Smirnov
63
19.30 | KS
Recital Igor Levit 1
Igor Levit
64
18.20 | LS
40min
“Story Hour with Ravel: Ma mère l’Oye”
22
19.30 | KS
Berliner Barock Solisten
Berliner Barock Solisten | Reinhard Goebel
65
11.00 | LS
Portrait Rebecca Saunders 1
Marco Blaauw | Arditti Quartet | Trio Accanto
66
17.30 | A
Introduction
with Susanne Stähr (in German)
67
18.30 | KS
Lucerne Festival Orchestra 5
Lucerne Festival Orchestra | Yannick Nézet-Séguin | Yuja Wang
67
14.30 | KS
Concert Cecilia Bartoli
Cecilia Bartoli | Carlo Vistoli | Les Musiciens du Prince-Monaco | Gianluca Capuano
68
19.30 | KS
Schumann Cycle 1
Lucerne Symphony Orchestra | Michael Sanderling | Steven Isserlis
69
Mon 23.08.
19.30 | KS
Recital Igor Levit 2
Igor Levit
70
Tue 24.08.
12.15 | LK
Debut Daniel Ciobanu
Daniel Ciobanu
71
17.30 | E
In the Streets – Opening
Music groups from around the world
44
18.30 | A
Introduction
with Susanne Stähr (in German)
72
19.00 | AS
In the Streets
Music groups from around the world
44
19.30 | KS
Lucerne Festival Orchestra 6
Lucerne Festival Orchestra | Yannick Nézet-Séguin
72
12.15 | LK
Crazy 2
Michael Engelhardt | Stefan Wirth
73
18.00 | AS
In the Streets
Music groups from around the world
44
18.20 | LS
40min
“Crazy for Piano”
22
19.30 | KS
Schumann Cycle 2
Tonhalle Orchestra Zurich | Paavo Järvi | Christian Tetzlaff
74
Wed 18.08.
Thu 19.08.
Fri 20.08.
Sat 21.08.
Sun 22.08.
18.20 | LS
40min
19.30 | KS
FREE
FREE
FREE
Wed 25.08.
FREE
FREE
FREE
29
Thu 26.08.
Fri 27.08.
Sat 28.08.
Sun 29.08.
12.15 | LK
Debut Timothy Ridout
Timothy Ridout | Frank Dupree
75
18.00 | AS
In the Streets
Music groups from around the world
44
18.20 | LS
40min
“How New Things Are Created: the ‘2021 Roche Young Commissions’”
22
19.30 | KS
Mahler Chamber Orchestra
Mahler Chamber Orchestra | Yuja Wang | Roberto González-Monjas
76
18.00 | AS
In the Streets
Music groups from around the world
44
18.20 | LS
40min
“Classical Music Composed Today”
22
19.30 | KS
Staatskapelle Berlin
Staatskapelle Berlin | Daniel Barenboim
77
10.00 | SP
In the Streets
Music groups from around the world
44
11.00 | M
Children’s Concert 1
“Mona Violina”
78
14.00 | M
Children’s Concert 2
“Mona Violina”
78
14.30 | HL
Composer Seminar – Closing Concert
Ensemble of the Lucerne Festival Contemporary Orchestra | Wolfgang Rihm
79
17.30 | A
Introduction
with Malte Lohmann (in German)
80
18.00 | AS
In the Streets
Music groups from around the world
44
18.30 | KS
Mariinsky Orchestra 1
Mariinsky Orchestra | Valery Gergiev | Yuja Wang
80
22.00 | LS
Lucerne Festival Academy 1
Ensemble of the Lucerne Festival Contemporary Orchestra | Johanna Malangré | Juliet Fraser
81
Music groups from around the world
44
30
FREE
FREE
FREE
FREE
FREE
FREE
FREE
12.00 | E
In the Streets
15.00 | LS
Introduction
with Kirsten Milenko, Alex Vaughan, Heinz Holliger, and Mark Sattler (in English and German)
82
16.00 | LS
Lucerne Festival Academy 2
Lucerne Festival Contemporary Orchestra | Lin Liao | Johanna Malangré | Heinz Holliger | Felix Renggli
82
16.00 | E
In the Streets – Closing Concert
Music groups from around the world
44
Soloists, vocal ensemble, and orchestra from the Collegium Musicum Luzern | Pascal Mayer | Suzanne Z’Graggen
83
17.00 | JK
Mon 30.08.
FREE
FREE
FREE
FREE
FREE
Church Festival Worship Service
FREE
17.30 | A
Introduction
with Susanne Stähr (in German)
83
18.30 | KS
Mariinsky Orchestra 2
Mariinsky Orchestra | Valery Gergiev
83
18.30 | A
Introduction
with Susanne Stähr (in German)
84
19.30 | KS
Royal Concertgebouworkest
Royal Concertgebouworkest | Daniel Harding | Yefim Bronfman
84
Tue 31.08.
12.15 | LK
Debut Zee Zee
Zee Zee
85
18.20 | LS
40min
“Spotlight on: Rebecca Saunders”
22
19.30 | KS
The 12 Cellists
The 12 Cellists of the Berlin Philharmonic
86
FREE
SEPT Time | Venue
Wed 01.09.
Thu 02.09.
Fri 03.09.
Sat 04.09.
Page
12.15 | LK
Crazy 3
Kit Armstrong
87
16.00 | LS
Masterclass in Conducting
with Ilan Volkov
88
18.20 | LS
40min
“The Art of Conducting”
22
19.30 | KS
Berlin Philharmonic 1
Berlin Philharmonic | Kirill Petrenko
89
12.15 | LK
Debut Salomo Schweizer
Salomo Schweizer | Petya Mihneva
90
18.30 | A
Introduction
with Susanne Stähr (in German)
91
19.30 | KS
Berlin Philharmonic 2
Berlin Philharmonic | Kirill Petrenko | Anna Vinnitskaya
91
16.30 | A
Lecture and Interview
with Martin Zenck, Angela de Benedictis, Wolfgang Rihm, and Mark Sattler (in German)
93
18.30 | A
Introduction
with Susanne Stähr (in German)
92
19.30 | KS
Opera Partenope
Les Arts Florissants | William Christie | Sophie Daneman | Soloists of the Jardin des Voix 2021
92
21.30 | S
Lucerne Festival Academy 3
Ensemble of the Lucerne Festival Contemporary Orchestra | Lin Liao
93
11.00 | HL
Portrait Rebecca Saunders 2
Soloists of the Hochschule Luzern – Musik | Clemens Heil | Daniela Argentino | Juliet Fraser | Charlotte Lorenz | Alexis Baskind/IRCAM
94
16.00 | LS
Bye-Bye Beethoven
Lucerne Festival Contemporary Orchestra | Patricia Kopatchinskaja | Lani Tran-Duc et al.
95
FREE
FREE
31
Sun 05.09.
Mon 06.09.
Tue 07.09.
Wed 08.09.
Thu 09.09.
32
17.30 | A
Introduction
with Rebecca Saunders and Mark Sattler (in German)
96
18.30 | KS
Lucerne Festival Academy 4
Lucerne Festival Contemporary Orchestra | Ilan Volkov | Nicolas Hodges | Christian Dierstein | Dirk Rothbrust
96
11.00 | KS
Recital Juan Diego Flórez
Juan Diego Flórez | Vincenzo Scalera
97
14.30 | LS
Family Concert – Die Schurken 1
“Inspector Flunke and Die Schurken” (in German)
98
16.00 | LS
Family Concert – Die Schurken 2
“Inspector Flunke and Die Schurken” (in German)
98
16.00 | LT
Staatstheater
Luzerner Theater Ensemble | Ensemble of the Lucerne Festival Contemporary Orchestra | Lydia Steier
99
18.30 | KS
Schumann Cycle 3
Mozarteum Orchestra Salzburg | Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla
100
18.30 | A
Introduction
with Iris Szeghy, Miroslav Srnka, and Mark Sattler (in German)
101
19.30 | KS
räsonanz – Donor Concert
Bamberg Symphony | Jakub Hrůša | Juliane Banse | Ilya Gringolts
101
12.15 | LK
Debut Connaught Brass
Connaught Brass
102
18.20 | LS
40min
“Crossover: Between Classical Music and Jazz”
19.30 | KS
Recital Anne-Sophie Mutter
Anne-Sophie Mutter | Lambert Orkis
103
12.15 | LK
Crazy 4
Luca Pianca
104
18.20 | LS
40min
“Hommage à Philip Jones”
19.30 | KS
London Symphony Orchestra
London Symphony Orchestra | Sir Simon Rattle | Magdalena Kožená
19.30 | LT
Staatstheater
Luzerner Theater Ensemble | Ensemble of the Lucerne Festival Contemporary Orchestra | Lydia Steier
12.15 | LK
Debut Marmen Quartet Marmen Quartet
18.30 | A
Introduction
with Susanne Stähr (in German)
107
19.30 | KS
Vienna Philharmonic 1
Vienna Philharmonic | Herbert Blomstedt
107
19.30 | LT
Staatstheater
Luzerner Theater Ensemble | Ensemble of the Lucerne Festival Contemporary Orchestra | Lydia Steier
FREE
FREE
22
22 105 99
106
99
Fri 10.09.
Sat 11.09.
Sun 12.09.
KKL Luzern KS Concert Hall LS Lucerne Hall A Auditorium CR Clubraum 8 E Europaplatz
18.30 | A
Introduction
with Susanne Stähr (in German)
108
19.30 | KS
Vienna Philharmonic 2
Vienna Philharmonic | Herbert Blomstedt
108
19.30 | LT
Staatstheater
Luzerner Theater Ensemble | Ensemble of the Lucerne Festival Contemporary Orchestra | Lydia Steier
11.00 | LS
Family Concert – Opera 1 “Hans and Greta” (in German)
109
14.00 | LS
Family Concert – Opera 2 “Hans and Greta” (in German)
109
18.30 | A
Introduction
with Susanne Stähr (in German)
110
19.30 | KS
Budapest Festival Orchestra 1
Budapest Festival Orchestra | Iván Fischer | Yuja Wang
110
19.30 | LT
Staatstheater
Luzerner Theater Ensemble | Ensemble of the Lucerne Festival Contemporary Orchestra | Lydia Steier
10.00 | MK
Liturgical Service
17.00 | KS
Budapest Festival Orchestra 2
FREE
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“Faith Crazy” with Eva Brandin, Andreas Rosar, Stephen Smith, and the Ensemble Corund (in German) Budapest Festival Orchestra | Iván Fischer | soloists
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Additional venues AS Old City HL Hochschule Luzern – Musik I Inseli JK Jesuitenkirche LK Lukaskirche LT Luzerner Theater M Maskenliebhabersaal MK Matthäuskirche S Südpol SP Lake Promenade
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THIS IS LUCERNE FESTIVAL
12 ESSENTIALS 24 AGENDA 34 SPECIALS 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44
Crazy: The 2021 Summer Theme Schumann Cycle Beethoven Symphonies Amour fou Devils and Demons Simply Different Crazy In the Streets
46 CONCERTS 112 SUPPORTERS 120 SERVICE
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SPE− CIALS
CRAZY
THE 2021 SUMMER THEME What makes something “crazy”? Anything that pushes beyond the confines of normality. For example, people who are odd and eccentric, who behave strangely and develop off-the-wall ideas, who lose themselves in fantasy worlds and tend toward extremes. Or those who are regarded as nervous and insane. Of course, you can also find such people in the music scene in numbers that are not exactly scarce – so much so that you almost wonder whether a certain amount of craziness might be the prerequisite for creativity. We will explore this question at the 2021 Summer Festival. For example, we will encounter Robert Schumann, who was committed to an asylum as “mentally deranged” after a suicide attempt. We will meet all sorts of devils, evil spirits, and goblins. We will marvel at revolutionary feats such as four groundbreaking Beethoven symphonies; Stravinsky’s bold Petrushka; the music of Claude Debussy, who abandoned traditional motivic development to explore fluctuating waves of sound; and the Second Viennese School, which exploded the centuries-old rulebook of major-minor tonality, in the process suspending musical grammar. The theme of “amour fou” is naturally also on the agenda; and there will also be concerts that creatively experiment with space and content, providing a vehicle to subvert every routine – as for example the series “Verrückt” (“Crazy”), which incorporates experimental arrangements ranging from Dadaist to the maniacal. What all these works share is that they have simultaneously upended aesthetic standard. For that is the double entendre of the Geman word “ver-rückt”: crazy/topsy-turvy. In the following pages, we introduce the most important focal points of our theme.
We cordially thank our Theme Sponsor Clariant Foundation for its generous support. 37
SCHUMANN CYCLE
Robert Schumann died in a mental hospital when he was only 46, having spent the last 29 months of his life there. But was he really “mentally deranged” and as crazy as his peers believed? With performances of all four symphonies and the three great solo concertos, we explore this question in music and follow Schumann on his tragic journey through life.
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14.08. | 18.30
25.08. | 19.30
Lucerne Festival Orchestra 2 KKL Luzern, Concert Hall Lucerne Festival Orchestra | Riccardo Chailly conductor | Igor Levit piano
Schumann Cycle 2 KKL Luzern, Concert Hall Tonhalle Orchestra Zurich | Paavo Järvi conductor | Christian Tetzlaff violin Schumann Overture to Genoveva, Op. 81 | Violin Concerto in D minor, WoO1 | Symphony No. 3 in E-flat major, Op. 97 Rhenish
Mozart Overture to Don Giovanni, K. 527 | Schumann Piano Concerto in A minor, Op. 54 | Mozart Symphony in G minor, K. 550 22.08. | 19.30
05.09. | 18.30
Schumann Cycle 1 KKL Luzern, Concert Hall Lucerne Symphony Orchestra | Michael Sanderling conductor | Steven Isserlis cello Weber Overture to Der Freischütz, Op. 77 | Schumann Cello Concerto in A minor, Op. 129 | Symphony No. 4 in D minor, Op. 120
Schumann Cycle 3 KKL Luzern, Concert Hall Mozarteum Orchestra Salzburg | Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla conductor Weinberg Adagio from the Symphony No. 2, Op. 30 | Schumann Symphony No. 1 in B-flat major, Op. 38 Spring Symphony | Symphony No. 2 in C major, Op. 61
Ludwig van Beethoven took the symphonic genre in brand-new directions. In the process, he did not limit himself to a single solution but tried out a number of very different paths. His First Symphony opened the door to the 19th century and a new musical age. With the Eroica, he introduced the prototype of the heroic symphony while with the Fifth he invented the paradigm “through darkness to light.” The Pastoral combines a nature idyll with philosophy, and the Seventh is an explosion of sheer mania.
11.08. | 19.30
24.08. | 19.30
Swiss Youth Symphony Orchestra KKL Luzern, Concert Hall Swiss Youth Symphony Orchestra | Kai Bumann conductor | Oliver Schnyder piano
Lucerne Festival Orchestra 6 KKL Luzern, Concert Hall Lucerne Festival Orchestra | Yannick Nézet-Séguin conductor Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges Symphony No. 2 in D major | Mozart Symphony in D major, K. 504 Prague | Beethoven Symphony No. 7 in A major, Op. 92
Mozart Piano Concerto in C major, K. 467 | Beethoven Symphony No. 1 in C major, Op. 21 18.08. | 19.30
27.08. | 19.30
Lucerne Festival Orchestra 4 KKL Luzern, Concert Hall Lucerne Festival Orchestra | Riccardo Chailly conductor Schumann Manfred Overture, Op. 115 | Haydn Symphony in D major, Hob. I:101 The Clock | Beethoven Symphony No. 5 in C minor, Op. 67
Staatskapelle Berlin KKL Luzern, Concert Hall Staatskapelle Berlin | Daniel Barenboim conductor Schubert Symphony No. 5 B-flat major, D 485 | Beethoven Symphony No. 3 in E-flat major, Op. 55 Sinfonia eroica 08.09. | 19.30
London Symphony Orchestra KKL Luzern, Concert Hall London Symphony Orchestra | Sir Simon Rattle conductor | Magdalena Kožená mezzo-soprano Adámek Where Are You? | Beethoven Symphony No. 6 in F major, Op. 68 Pastoral
BEETHOVEN SYMPHONIES
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AMOUR FOU
Love is the craziest of all feelings. It’s the topic of Mozart’s Don Giovanni and Wagner’s Tannhäuser, whose title character is hopelessly addicted to the goddess Venus. Romeo and Juliet seek out a shared Liebestod, while Stravinsky’s Petrushka gets fatally stabbed by his jealous rival. Matters turn chaotic in Handel’s opera Partenope when three love-struck princes vie for the favor of the beautiful title heroine.
13.08. | 18.30
Lucerne Festival Orchestra 1 KKL Luzern, Concert Hall Lucerne Festival Orchestra | Riccardo Chailly conductor Mozart Overture to Don Giovanni, K. 527 | Symphony in G minor, K. 550 | Schubert Symphony No. 6 in C major, D 589 14.08. | 18.30
Lucerne Festival Orchestra 2 KKL Luzern, Concert Hall Lucerne Festival Orchestra | Riccardo Chailly conductor | Igor Levit piano Mozart Overture to Don Giovanni, K. 527 | Schumann Piano Concerto in A minor, Op. 54 | Mozart Symphony in G minor, K. 550 28.08. | 18.30
Mariinsky Orchestra 1 KKL Luzern, Concert Hall Mariinsky Orchestra | Valery Gergiev conductor | Yuja Wang piano 40
Prokofiev Four pieces from Romeo and Juliet, Op. 64 | Rachmaninoff Piano Concerto No. 4 in G minor, Op. 40 | Stravinsky Petrushka 30.08. | 19.30
Royal Concertgebouworkest KKL Luzern, Concert Hall Royal Concertgebouworkest | Daniel Harding conductor | Yefim Bronfman piano Wagner Tannhäuser Overture | Beethoven Piano Concerto No. 3 in C minor, Op. 37 | Debussy La Mer 03.09. | 19.30
Opera Partenope KKL Luzern, Concert Hall Les Arts Florissants | William Christie conductor | Sophie Daneman semistaging | Soloists from “Jardin des Voix” Class of 2021 Handel Partenope, HWV 27
All sorts of dubious figures – devils, demons, goblins and spirits – populate the 2021 Summer Festival. They bewilder the emotions in Weber’s Oberon and harass the imaginary hero in Suk’s A Summer’s Tale. They swarm around the necromancer Manfred; haunt nocturnal dreams, as in Ravel’s Gaspard de la nuit, or appear as such ominous seducers as Mephistopheles in Liszt’s Faust Symphony.
18.08. | 19.30
01.09. | 19.30
Lucerne Festival Orchestra 4 KKL Luzern, Concert Hall Lucerne Festival Orchestra | Riccardo Chailly Dirigent Schumann Manfred Overture, Op. 115 | Haydn Symphony in D major, Hob. I:101 The Clock | Beethoven Symphony No. 5 in C minor, Op. 67
Berlin Philharmonic 1 KKL Luzern, Concert Hall Berlin Philharmonic | Kirill Petrenko conductor Weber Oberon Overture | Schubert Symphony No. 8 in C major, D 944 Great C major Symphony
31.08. | 12.15
Berlin Philharmonic 2 KKL Luzern, Concert Hall Berlin Philharmonic | Kirill Petrenko conductor | Anna Vinnitskaya piano Prokofiev Piano Concerto No. 1 in D-flat major, Op. 10 | Suk Pohádka léta (“A Summer’s Tale”), Op. 29
Debut Zee Zee Lukaskirche Zee Zee piano Schoenberg Three Piano Pieces, Op. 11 | Ravel Gaspard de la nuit | Liszt Vallée d’Obermann, S 160, no. 6, Les Jeux d’eaux à la Villa d’Este, S 163, no. 4, and Tarantella, S 162, no. 3 from Années de pèlerinage
02.09. | 19.30
11.09. | 19.30
Budapest Festival Orchestra 1 KKL Luzern, Concert Hall Budapest Festival Orchestra | Iván Fischer conductor | Yuja Wang piano Liszt Piano Concerto No. 1 in E-flat major, S 124 | A Faust Symphony, S 108
DEVILS AND DEMONS 41
SIMPLY DIFFERENT
Many of the concerts in the “crazy” 2021 summer of music simply take a different tack. Chamber music by Lucerne Festival Orchestra players will astound with a synesthetic lighting design. The 12 Cellists of the Berlin Philharmonic invite us to tango. Patricia Kopatchinskaja stage directs a concert. And Iván Fischer pits a “gypsy band” against the Budapest Festival Orchestra, which not only plays but is also called upon to sing.
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15.08. | 19.30
04.09. | 16.00
Lucerne Festival Orchestra 3 KKL Luzern, Concert Hall Soloists of the Lucerne Festival Orchestra Ives From the Steeples and the Mountains | Antheil Sonata No. 2 for Violin and Piano | Rittler Mummum a 6 | Paganini La Campanella | Pärt Fratres | Ligeti Mysteries of the Macabre | Alkan La chanson de la folle au bord de la mer, Op. 31, no. 8 | Gesualdo Tenebrae factae sunt | Ustvolskaya Composition No. 1 Dona nobis pacem
Bye-Bye Beethoven KKL Luzern, Lucerne Hall Lucerne Festival Contemporary Orchestra | Patricia Kopatchinskaja violin, concept, and direction “Bye-Bye Beethoven” A staged concert with music by Ives, Haydn, Cage, J. S. Bach, Kurtág, Sánchez-Chiong, and Oliveros | Beethoven Violin Concerto in D major, Op. 61
31.08. | 19.30
The 12 Cellists KKL Luzern, Concert Hall The 12 Cellists of the Berlin Philharmonic Debussy La cathédrale engloutie | Clair de lune | Dean Twelve Angry Men | Tizol/ Ellington Caravan | Simons It’s Raining Skyscrapers, Op. 71, no. 1 | Dębski Cello Animation | Piazzolla selected tangos
12.09. | 17.00
Budapest Festival Orchestra 2 KKL Luzern, Concert Hall Budapest Festival Orchestra | Iván Fischer conductor | soloists Brahms, Liszt, and “Gypsy Music” Lisztes Improvisation | Liszt Hungarian Rhapsody in C-sharp minor, S 359, no. 2 | Brahms Hungarian Dances, WoO 1 Nos. 1, 4, and 6 | Sarasate Zigeunerweisen, Op. 20 | Brahms/Schoenberg Andante con moto and Rondo alla zingarese from the Piano Quartet No. 1 in G minor, Op. 25
Things do not go according to the book in this series. In “Out of the Box,” four musicians are transported onto the stage in crates. There are encounters between Beethoven and Hölderlin in the “Bagatelles” project and between Schumann and Liszt in Kit Armstrong’s recital – all four artists being “crazy” in their own way. And Luca Pianca celebrates the Follia, the craziest of all dances, with his theorbo.
15.08. | 16.00
01.09. | 12.15
Crazy 1 Südpol Reto Bieri clarinet, actor, and concept | Patricia Kopatchinskaja violin and actor | Anthony Romaniuk and Annekatrin Klein keyboard instruments and actor | Men’s chorus “Out of the Box” Performances made out of boxes and artists – with some very beautiful melodies by Ustvolskaya, Schubert, Lucier, Stravinsky, Verdi, and Xenakis and a film version of Kurt Schwitters’s Ursonate
Crazy 3 Lukaskirche Kit Armstrong piano C. Schumann Variations on a Theme by Robert Schumann, Op. 20 | R. Schumann Seven Piano Pieces in Fughetta Form, Op. 126 | Ghost Variations WoO 24 | Liszt Le triomphe funèbre du Tasse, S 517 | Széchényi, Teleki, and Mosonyi from Historical Hungarian Portraits, S 205 | Csárdás macabre, S 224
25.08. | 12.15
Crazy 2 Lukaskirche Michael Engelhardt speaker | Stefan Wirth piano “Bagatelles” Beethoven/Hölderlin: A Musical Encounter Beethoven Six Bagatelles for piano, Op. 126 | Hölderlin In lieblicher Bläue blühet and late poems
08.09. | 12.15
Crazy 4 Lukaskirche Luca Pianca theorbo “Follie e Stravaganze” works by Melli, Piccinini, Kapsberger, Pittoni, Hurel, and de Visée
CRAZY
43
IN THE STREETS
Bluegrass and Balkan brass, Indian folk and African vocal art are also part of Lucerne Festival. “In the Streets,” the world music festival within the festival, sets the entire city to music every summer. A colorful musical spectacle for young and old that shows how diverse the music of our planet is!
The Groups: Hudaki Village Band Ukraine
Maestrale Italy
Claudia Masika Kenya/Senegal/Guyana/Switzerland
Old Salt USA/Belgium
The Tapi Project India
Vołosi Poland
Bucherer AG – Partner In the Streets 44
24.08. | 17.30
Opening Concert Featuring All of the Groups Europaplatz with appearances afterwards by all of the groups in Lucerne’s Old City until 22.00 25.08. – 28.08.
Performances by All of the Groups Lucerne’s Old City always 18.00 – 22.00, Saturday 10.00 – 12.00 as well 29.08. | 16.00
Closing Concert Featuring All of the Groups Europaplatz preceded by appearances by the groups from 12.00 to 15.00 on the Europaplatz
Hans Erni: Still life with Guitar I, 1933, Hans Erni Foundation, Lucerne © Hans Erni Foundation, Lucerne © photo: Andri Stalder, Lucerne
EXPERIENCE LUCERNE! USE YOUR CONCERT TICKET FOR MUSEUM VISITS
Your concert ticket entitles you to free admission to the Kunstmuseum Luzern and a 50 % discount at the Rosengart Collection. You can also enjoy free guided tours at the Hans Erni Museum.* These benefits apply not only on the day of your concert visit but also on the day before and the day after. Simply show your concert ticket at the museum box office. * Details on how to register at lucernefestival.ch/museums
lucernefestival.ch/museums
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THIS IS LUCERNE FESTIVAL
12 ESSENTIALS 24 AGENDA 34 SPECIALS 46 CONCERTS 112 SUPPORTERS 120 SERVICE
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CON− CERTS
Russian National Youth Symphony Orchestra
Tue 10.08. MUSIC FOR FUTURE
Russian National Youth Symphony Orchestra 19.30 KKL Luzern, Concert Hall Russian National Youth Symphony Orchestra Valentin Uryupin conductor Sergei Dogadin violin Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto in D major, Op. 35 35 min
Symphony No. 6 in B minor, Op. 74 Pathétique 45 min CHF 50/10 (adults/children)
CLASSICAL MUSIC HAS NEVER SOUNDED YOUNGER! Not everyday do we get to experience this at the KKL Luzern, the Festival’s headquarters and a veritable cathedral for classical music: at the beginning of the Summer Festival, it will teem with young people. Instead of the major stars of the scene being given the first word, two youth orchestras will open the series of about 100 Festival events. The Russian National Youth Symphony Orchestra, one of the very finest in Europe, kicks off the Festival and need not fear comparison with established orchestras. Under the direction of Valentin Uryupin, who won the Sir Georg Solti Conducting Competition in 2017, an all-Tchaikovsky program is on the agenda, including the famous Pathétique, the Sixth Symphony, as the main work. In this score, the orchestra can pull out all of its artistic stops as the players traverse a broad emotional spectrum, from euphoria to deep despair. Before that, the gifted violin virtuoso Sergei Dogadin will play Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto. He has a very special relationship with this composer, having emerged as the winner of the prestigious Tchaikovsky Competition in 2019.
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isten | Look | L jo En y – e er at th Togeth rt n co ce 124 see p.
with the friendly support of Dr. Urs Mühlebach
“THE JOY OF DISCOVERY REIGNS HERE”
Wed 11.08. MUSIC FOR FUTURE
Kai Bumann on the Swiss Youth Symphony Orchestra
Swiss Youth Symphony Orchestra
They truly know how to support young talent: the Swiss Youth Symphony Orchestra, founded in 1969, brings together the most talented musicians from all around Switzerland to study works from different eras in two work phases per year. Difficult and demanding repertoire is also on the agenda: for example, symphonies by Mahler, Bruckner, and Shostakovich or scores by Stravinsky and Messiaen. Once the musicians have passed through this school, they acquire excellent career prospects that are not limited to the Swiss orchestral scene: former members now play with the Berlin and Vienna Philharmonics, the Israel and Oslo Philharmonics, the Bavarian Staatsorchester, and the NHK Symphony Orchestra in Japan. The current cohort will demonstrate its skills by playing Beethoven’s groundbreaking First Symphony, which requires musical energy, technical precision, and quirky humor in equal measure. Before it they will offer Mozart’s irresistible C major Piano Concerto. K. 467, with Oliver Schnyder as the soloist: he, too, is a Swiss who has long since pursued an international career.
Swiss Youth Symphony Orchestra 19.30 KKL Luzern, Concert Hall Swiss Youth Symphony Orchestra Kai Bumann conductor Oliver Schnyder piano Wolfgang Amadé Mozart Piano Concerto in C major, K. 467 28 min
Ludwig van Beethoven Symphony No. 1 in C major, Op. 21 27 min CHF 50/10 (adults/children)
isten | Look | L Enjoy – e er at th Togeth rt conce 124 see p.
Zurich Insurance Ltd Main Sponsor and Founding Partner Music for Future with the friendly support of the Bernard van Leer Foundation Lucerne 49
Thu 12.08. MUSIC FOR FUTURE
Award Winners Concert 12.15 Lukaskirche Winners of the Swiss Youth Music Competition The competition finale takes place in May 2021. The winners as well as program details will subsequently be announced. CHF 20/10 (adults/children)
“A STEPPING STONE INTO PROFESSIONAL MUSICAL LIFE” Founder Gerd Albrecht on the Swiss Youth Music Competition Making music can be a rather lonely business when you sit for hours upon hours in your little room, toiling away at finger exercises, scales, and etudes. “Practice makes perfect” goes the sober saying. But there are two kinds of reward. One is meeting like-minded people in a duo, ensemble, or orchestra – the incomparable experience of shared musical fulfillment. The other is via encounter at a competition. For after the long period of seclusion with the instrument it is inevitable, no, it is even desirable, to sound out one’s own potential and limits in competition with peers. The Swiss Youth Music Competition offers the ideal platform for this. There is hardly a musician or virtuoso from this country who has not gained important experience here. In this concert, the best contestants from the 2021 edition will introduce themselves and offer a glimpse into the future.
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with the friendly support of the Ruth Burkhalter-Stiftung zur Förderung junger Musiktalente Foundation Swiss Music Competition for Youth
“O MOZART, IMMORTAL MOZART”
Fri 13.08. SYMPHONY
Franz Schubert At long last: a beginning. The night before its Prague premiere, Mozart composed the overture to Don Giovanni, the “opera of operas.” But this beginning already reveals how it all will end: with the downfall, the hellish journey of the “punished libertine,” the amoral hero for whom the women go crazy. Of this dark prelude, the Romantic E.T.A. Hoffmann, who called himself Amadeus out of admiration for Mozart, wrote: “I saw fiery demons stretching out their glowing claws from nocturnal depths.” What a beginning! And did any symphony before Mozart start off like his G minor Symphony: so restlessly, softly and almost secretly, with no call-to-attention? Was this music written for a future age? Or for the next generation, to which Franz Schubert in Vienna belonged? Yet in his Sixth Symphony, Schubert focuses on the sunny side of life and benevolent musical spirits: C major, Viennese nonchalance, pleasure put to sound, playful ideas, and an affinity with Italian opera buffa. From dark night into the light …
Opening Lucerne Festival Orchestra 1 18.30 KKL Luzern, Concert Hall Lucerne Festival Orchestra Riccardo Chailly conductor Wolfgang Amadé Mozart Overture to Don Giovanni, K. 527 6 min
Symphony in G minor, K. 550 28 min
Franz Schubert Symphony No. 6 in C major, D 589 30 min
Riccardo Chailly | Lucerne Festival Orchestra
CHF 350/240/170/50
Lakeside Symphony The Opening Concert live projected on a giant screen 18.30 | Inseli free admission
Kühne-Stiftung Main Sponsor and Partner Lucerne Festival Orchestra Credit Suisse Main Sponsor and Presenting Partner Lakeside Symphony 51
Melitta Breznik
Sat 14.08. NZZ Podium 14.00 KKL Luzern, Auditorium Round table discussion (in German) with Melitta Breznik psychiatrist and author Heinz Holliger composer, oboist, and conductor
Gerald Hüther neurobiologist Host
Martin Meyer director of the NZZ Podium
“Crazy: Human Beings and Their Ecstasies” 90 min CHF 30/10 (reduced)
WHAT IS NORMAL, WHAT IS CRAZY? “The time is out of joint,” Hamlet remarks. Shakespeare’s play about the downfall of the Danish prince who seems to become insane is often viewed from an aesthetic distance, but coronavirus and Donald Trump have reminded us of what it feels like when the world is upside down. “Normal” and “crazy” are social conventions that require shared patterns of behavior and thinking. Those who follow the rules lead a “good” life. The Christian kingdom of heaven was also open to sick people and fools. With the proliferation of different lifestyles in modernity, however, the concept of normality has been disintegrating. A culture of progress encourages being different. The fascination of the subjective takes hold; the ego becomes the ultimate measure. Everything new awakens hope, insanity confers nobility, illness becomes interesting – especially in the artistic realm. But the universal demand for happiness and the concomitant demand for practicality prove to be overwhelming. Whoever fails to satisfy these goals is pathologized – often without mercy.
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“ETERNALLY CONTEMPORARY”
Sat 14.08. CONTEMPORARY
That is how Igor Stravinsky characterized Beethoven’s Grosse Fuge. Indeed, it is one of the craziest and most challenging works in quartet literature: the way Beethoven fuses fugue and variation techniques here, fragmenting the themes into probing motifs and radically exhausting the possibilities of counterpoint so that “the instruments have to struggle with tremendous difficulties, as if traversing the North and South Poles, criss-crossing with a myriad of dissonances” – this music continues to awaken either amazed wonder or baffled dismay to this day. In 2017, composer-in-residence Rebecca Saunders was no less eager to experiment with the string quartet genre: “A melody, think Bach” she notes above the first bars of Unbreathed. But of course it is not simply a melody that is heard. Rather, it is a fascinating excursion into sonority that initially revolves around the note D and allows the sound to wander through the instruments, coloring it microtonally and constantly extracting new facets through detailed instructions as to which string to play on, with or without vibrato, completely or only half on the bridge.
Quatuor Diotima 16.00 Hochschule Luzern – Musik Quatuor Diotima: Yun-Peng Zhao and Constance Ronzatti violins Franck Chevalier viola Pierre Morlet cello Alex Nante Quatuor à cordes no. 1 Prima Materia world premiere commissioned by Lucerne Festival 15 min
Rebecca Saunders Unbreathed 21 min
Ludwig van Beethoven Grosse Fuge in B-flat major, Op. 133
Quatuor Diotima
16 min CHF 50
The ders a Saun c c “Rebe ” e g a k Pac e t on thre iscoun g n ri 20% d tu s fea concert aunders aS c c e b e R 124 see p.
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Sat 14.08. SYMPHONY
Lucerne Festival Orchestra 2 18.30 KKL Luzern, Concert Hall Lucerne Festival Orchestra Riccardo Chailly conductor Igor Levit piano Wolfgang Amadé Mozart Overture to Don Giovanni, K. 527 6 min
Robert Schumann Piano Concerto in A minor, Op. 54 Igor Levit
31 min
“THE MYSTERY OF MOZART REMAINS UNFATHOMABLE”
Wolfgang Amadé Mozart Symphony in G minor, K. 550 28 min
Introduction to the Concert 17.30 | KKL Luzern, Auditorium with Susanne Stähr (in German) CHF 320/220/150/40
Riccardo Chailly If not for these two works, music history would likely have been different. Mozart wrote an opening movement for his G minor Symphony that seems to have been already going on before the first downbeat: its dramatic flair resembles a restless aria like the one Mozart’s Cherubino sings when overcome with emotion: “I no longer know what I am, what I do ...” To his contemporaries, this music seemed almost crazy, “too strongly spiced,” “like a meteor.” With his Piano Concerto, Robert Schumann meanwhile freed the genre from the conventional model of a “duel” between soloist and orchestra, between the individual ego and others. “There are no hierarchies anymore,” explains Igor Levit, who will perform the work in his first joint appearance with the Lucerne Festival Orchestra. “The piece is tremendously improvisatory; you play in an almost Miles Davisian sense.” And yet – or perhaps because of that? – the solo part is extremely demanding, especially the finale, which also requires the utmost in terms of virtuosity.
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Kühne Foundation Main Sponsor and Partner Lucerne Festival Orchestra
“33% OF THE EFFECT OF PSYCHO WAS DUE TO THE MUSIC”
Sun 15.08. SYMPHONY
Afternoon Concert 14.30 KKL Luzern, Concert Hall
Alfred Hitchcock The City of Lucerne’s afternoon concert is one of the Festival’s most attractive offerings: at a ticket price of only 10 CHF, Lucerne residents, guests from the region, and visitors from social institutions can all be part of it – making delightful musical experiences accessible regardless of budget. The Festival Strings Lucerne has been a partner of this concert series for many years, and they have as usual come up with a varied program. With Luigi Boccherini, they will escort the audience to the nighttime streets of Madrid, reproducing its soundscape with an almost naturalist flair. Gabriel Fauré’s tender flute fantasy is meanwhile dreamy and tinged with melancholy. And then come two film composers, both of whom collaborated with the great master of the thriller, Alfred Hitchcock. Arthur Benjamin, who wrote the music for The Man Who Knew Too Much, is actually represented here by a suite on motifs by Domenico Scarlatti he arranged. Quite another matter is Bernard Herrmann, who wrote the famous soundtrack to the thriller Psycho – a madly fitting piece in keeping with the theme of “crazy”!
Festival Strings Lucerne Daniel Dodds violin and musical direction
Johanna Dömötör flute Luigi Boccherini Musica notturna delle strade di Madrid, G. 324 13 min
Arthur Benjamin/ Domenico Scarlatti Suite for Flute and String Orchestra 12 min
Gabriel Fauré Fantaisie, Op. 79
Johanna Dömötör
arranged for flute and string orchestra by Amir Awad 7 min
Bernard Herrmann Psycho: A Narrative for String Orchestra edited by John Mauceri 15 min Tickets for CHF 10 are exclusively available from the Stadthaus Luzern from 2 to 13 August (Hirschengraben 17; always from 9.00 to 11.00 and from 14.00 to 16.00).
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Patricia Kopatchinskaja | Reto Bieri
Sun 15.08. Crazy 1 16.00 Südpol Reto Bieri clarinet, acting, concept Patricia Kopatchinskaja violin, acting Anthony Romaniuk and Annekatrin Klein keyboard instruments, acting Men’s chorus “Out of the Box” Performances made from boxes and artists – including beautiful melodies by Chick Corea, Franz Schubert, Alvin Lucier, Igor Stravinsky, Giuseppe Verdi, and Iannis Xenakis as well as a film version of Kurt Schwitters’s Ursonate 75 min
“NOT SICK AT ALL IS NOT HEALTHY EITHER!”
CHF 30
Karl Valentin What a performance! Four house technicians drag four large, heavy wooden boxes onto the stage, carefully unpack and open them ... and – surprise! – “out of the box” climb Patricia Kopatchinskaja, Reto Bieri, Annekatrin Klein, and Anthony Romaniuk. With the violin, the clarinet, and various keyboard instruments, they explore the most diverse musical constellations, oscillating between sense and nonsense – in the process provoking deep insights or revealing surprising connections. All of this happens to great music by composers from Franz Schubert and Giuseppe Verdi to Galina Ustvolskaya, Iannis Xenakis, and Alvin Lucier. Also on the program is the famous Ursonate, the legendary sound poem by the Dada poet Kurt Schwitters: it will be presented as a film recording with the four artists. At the end, they will be packed up again and transported away in their crates. A staged concert that stands out from the ordinary – aiming to enchant us all, the nurse as well as the sales manager.
with friendly support of the Landis & Gyr Foundation 56
“EVERY GREAT INSPIRATION IS BUT AN EXPERIMENT”
Sun 15.08. Lucerne Festival Orchestra 3 19.30 KKL Luzern, Concert Hall
Charles Ives This concert has it all. The Renaissance prince Carlo Gesualdo, as famous for his expressive madrigals as he is infamous for murdering his wife, meets the self-declared “bad boy of music” George Antheil, whose Second Violin Sonata quotes all sorts of popular tunes and turns the pianist into a percussionist. There is Arvo Pärt’s meditative “bell style” alongside memories of bell hymns by the experimental maverick Charles Ives. And the lineup includes the composer/piano virtuoso Charles Valentin Alkan, represented by his disquieting “Song of a Madwoman on the Sea Shore.” The musicians of the Lucerne Festival Orchestra have put together a colorful chamber music revue that will be enhanced by a wild-and-crazy light design. And they have peppered it with all kinds of virtuoso craziness – from the bravura music by the “devil’s violinist” Niccolò Paganini to György Ligeti’s Mysteries of the Macabre, an arrangement of three fiendishly difficult coloratura arias that will be rendered by Reinhold Friedrich on the trumpet. All of these exceedingly different composers have one thing in common: they each went their own way, thus subverting the musical standards of their eras.
Soloists of the Lucerne Festival Orchestra Charles Ives From the Steeples and the Mountains George Antheil Sonata for Violin and Piano No. 2 Philipp Jakob Rittler Mummum a 6 Niccolò Paganini La Campanella from the Violin Concerto in B minor, Op. 7 version for violin and piano
Arvo Pärt Fratres for trombone and piano György Ligeti Mysteries of the Macabre for trumpet and piano Charles Valentin Alkan La chanson de la folle au bord de la mer, Op. 31, no. 8 Carlo Gesualdo Tenebrae factae sunt Galina Ustvolskaya Composition No. 1 Dona nobis pacem
Members of the Lucerne Festival Orchestra
The concert ends at approximately 20.45. CHF 50
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Wolfgang Rihm (Composer Seminar 2019)
Mon 16.08. – Thu 19.08. CONTEMPORARY
Composer Seminar always 10.00–11.30 and 12.00–13.30 KKL Luzern, Clubraum 8 Participants in the Composer Seminar: Arnau Brichs, Tyson Davis, Lanqing Ding, Theo Finkel, Anton Koshelev, Guillem Palomar, Daniil Posazhennikov, and Senay Uğurlu Wolfgang Rihm director Dieter Ammann co-docent additional guests Presentation and discussion of the selected works for auditors CHF 100/30 (course pass/ day pass)
“BECOME WHO YOU ARE” Wolfgang Rihm Composer-in-residence Rebecca Saunders once made her way to Karlsruhe to study with Wolfgang Rihm. Jörg Widmann, Márton Illés, and David Philip Hefti also benefitted from his lessons. Completely different artistic personalities, in other words, which demonstrates that Rihm is a teacher who is as inspiring as he is undogmatic. This also applies to the Composer Seminar, which he offers every summer in Lucerne: Rihm explains that he neither wants to found a school nor aims for a competition that awards prizes to the (allegedly) best of the upcoming generation of composers. Instead, he is trying to assemble composers “from various states of development and consciousness” from a pool of more than 250 international applications. He is interested in a productive discussion and in “finding the path toward articulating one’s own voice, consolidating one’s own obstinate individuality” – but to achieve this, “positions that are completely different must be represented.” The sessions of the first week, in which the participants discuss their works with Rihm, Dieter Ammann, and other guests, are open to anyone who is curious.
Composer Seminar – Closing Concert Sat 28.08. | 14.30 Hochschule Luzern – Musik Ensemble of the Lucerne Festival Contemporary Orchestra see p. 79
with the friendly support of the RHL Foundation 58
“A VERY SMALL PIANO CONCERTO”
Mon 16.08. SYMPHONY
Johannes Brahms on his Opus 83 When Der Spiegel asked Daniel Barenboim a few years ago whether he could imagine another conductor for his West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, he responded: “That’s like asking a happily married man whether his wife could be happy with someone else.” But now Barenboim is indeed vacating his seat at the podium of his beloved orchestra – for one evening at least. And there are two good reasons for that. For one, the “someone else” who will stand in his place with the baton is the 32-year-old Lahav Shani. Barenboim has been a mentor, fostering the young Israeli’s stellar career rise to remarkable effect. As a result, Shani now serves as music director of two top orchestras: the Israel and Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestras. Barenboim can trust him completely when he himself takes on one of the greatest challenges in the pianistic repertoire, the Second Piano Concerto by Johannes Brahms, whose intricate solo part really seems to require more than ten fingers. In any case, he’ll certainly not have attention to spare to wield the conductor’s baton as well.
West-Eastern Divan Orchestra 1 19.30 KKL Luzern, Concert Hall West-Eastern Divan Orchestra Lahav Shani conductor Daniel Barenboim piano Sergei Prokofiev Symphony No. 1 in D major, Op. 25 Symphonie classique 16 min
Johannes Brahms Piano Concerto No. 2 in B-flat major, Op. 83 52 min
Introduction to the Concert 18.30 | KKL Luzern, Auditorium with Susanne Stähr (in German)
Lahav Shani
CHF 200/130/90/30
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Lea Sobbe
Tue 17.08. MUSIC FOR FUTURE
Debut Prix Credit Suisse Jeunes Solistes 12.15 Lukaskirche Lea Sobbe recorder Halldór Bjarki Arnarson harpsichord Pons d’Ortaffa Si ay perdut mon saber Thomas Preston/ Nitay Feigenbaum once:more Paolo Benedetto Bellinzani Sonata in D minor, Op. 3, no. 12 Marco Uccellini Sonata Seconda detta La Luciminia contenta
“SHE KNOWS HOW TO CONQUER THE AUDIENCE”
Dorothee Hahne Commentari III Georg Philipp Telemann Sonatina quinta TWV 41:a4
Jury Chair Noémi L. Robidas on Lea Sobbe
Emanuele Casale Studio 2a
Is the recorder confined solely to the realm of early music? Lea Sobbe, who was born in Trier in 1994 and is currently completing her master’s degree at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis, showed this to definitively not be the case at the 2021 Prix Credit Suisse Jeunes Solistes, winning the coveted CHF 25,000 prize for young musicians as well as the opportunity to appear at Lucerne Festival in a Debut recital. She will experiment with different types of recorders, from the Middle Ages to modern models, and explore the question of how much repetition is needed to achieve complete musical freedom, pleasure, and joy in playing. Sobbe will combine contemporary pieces with live electronics in a program of improvisations and early Baroque repertoire, which she performs with her chamber music partner on harpsichord, the Icelander Halldór Bjarki Arnarson. “Magnificent, daring, beautiful, flowing, touching,” remarked Noémi L. Robidas, jury chair of the 2021 Prix Credit Suisse Jeunes Solistes, describing her impression of Lea Sobbe’s playing and program conceptualization.
Nicola Matteis Bizarrie sopra la Vecchia Sarabanda o pur Ciaccona
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CHF 30
Debut in the Schoolhouse On 7 September Lea Sobbe also performs for school classes. Credit Suisse Main Sponsor Credit Suisse Foundation Donor Prix Credit Suisse Jeunes Solistes
“WHAT IS IMPOSSIBLE IS Tue 17.08. SIMPLER THAN WHAT IS West-Eastern Divan Orchestra 2 DIFFICULT” 19.30
SYMPHONY
Daniel Barenboim
KKL Luzern, Concert Hall
Where others give up, Daniel Barenboim really gets going. He has turned many visionary projects into reality. For example, the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, founded in 1999, in which young musicians from Israel and the Arab world make music together and show how to overcome national, religious, and cultural divides. Their guiding principle is: peace does not have to be only utopian. Barenboim’s “Divan” has long since outgrown its infancy as a youth orchestra and is one of the top ensembles worldwide. And some of its members have gone on to have international solo careers themselves. Like violinist Michael Barenboim, son of the maestro, or cellist Kian Soltani, who won the 2018 Credit Suisse Young Artist Award. They now reunite for Brahms’s Double Concerto: a family reunion in Lucerne. This is followed by the ingenious D minor Symphony by César Franck, the “Belgian Brahms,” as he is sometimes called, for his similar blend of subtle compositional construction with emotional richness.
West-Eastern Divan Orchestra Daniel Barenboim conductor Michael Barenboim violin Kian Soltani cello Johannes Brahms Concerto in A minor for Violin, Cello, and Orchestra, Op. 102 33 min
César Franck Symphony in D minor 40 min CHF 200/130/90/30
isten | Look | L jo n E y– e er at th g To eth rt n o c ce 124 see p.
Daniel Barenboim
e Go to th re fo e b concert ert: c n o c e th today! 40min 22 see p.
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Wed 18.08. SYMPHONY
Lucerne Festival Orchestra 4 19.30 KKL Luzern, Concert Hall Lucerne Festival Orchestra Riccardo Chailly conductor Robert Schumann Overture to the dramatic poem Manfred, Op. 115
Riccardo Chailly
12 min
Joseph Haydn Symphony in D major, Hob. I:101 The Clock 30 min
Ludwig van Beethoven Symphony No. 5 in C minor, Op. 67 32 min
“UNBRIDLED EMOTIONS, RAGING FEVER” Hector Berlioz on Beethoven’s Fifth Riccardo Chailly and his Lucerne Festival Orchestra heat up the “crazy” 2021 Summer Festival with a program that revolves entirely around obsessions, emotional and musical alike. First up is the most extravagant hero in Romanticism, Lord Byron’s Manfred, for whom Robert Schumann built a musical monument. Manfred wanders through the Alps to escape his shame, an incestuous relationship that led to a fatal outcome; not even the occult powers he invokes can redeem him. Joseph Haydn was, however, focusing less on extreme psychological states when he added a ticking sound to his Symphony Hob. I:101: in the Andante, eighth notes are made to sound like the tick-tock of a clock. Ludwig van Beethoven, meanwhile, created what is probably the most famous piece of classical music with the opening movement of his Fifth Symphony. He proceeds in a quasi-Minimalist manner, restricting himself to only three note values – eighth, quarter, and half notes – and demands a strict, unified tempo. But that is precisely why his music sounds so compelling, so insistent. Simply obsessive.
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Introduction to the Concert 18.30 | KKL Luzern, Auditorium with Susanne Stähr (in German) CHF 320/220/150/40
“THE GREATEST MUSICIAN WHO HAS EVER LIVED”
Thu 19.08. MUSIC FOR FUTURE
Debut Dmitry Smirnov 12.15 Lukaskirche
Steve Reich on Bach Dmitry Smirnov loves crazy challenges. In his debut, he does more than combine two of the most demanding compositions for solo violin, Bach’s D minor Partita and Bartók’s Solo Sonata. He also intertwines them by shuttling back and forth between the two, playing the movements in alternation and thus creating an imaginary unity of a work that transcends the centuries. He will additionally frame this new construct with Steve Reich’s Violin Phase, a masterpiece of Minimalism from 1967. The result is a triple portrait of three unsentimental composers that at the same time highlights their idiosyncrasies: the rhetorically influenced beat of Bach’s musical language, Bartók’s archaic phrases, and Reich’s repetitive patterns. Smirnov, who was born in St. Petersburg in 1994 and studied with Rainer Schmidt in Basel, won the Tibor Varga Competition as well as the Concours de Lausanne and today works with Heinz Holliger and Giovanni Antonini. No question: he has one of the most unconventional minds among young violinists.
Dmitry Smirnov violin Steve Reich Violin Phase for violin and pre-recorded tape, Parts 1 & 2 10 min
Johann Sebastian Bach Partita in D minor for solo violin, BWV 1004 30 min
Béla Bartók Sonata for solo violin, Sz 117 26 min
Dmitry Smirnov
CHF 30
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Igor Levit
Thu 19.08. Recital Igor Levit 1 19.30 KKL Luzern, Concert Hall Igor Levit piano Ludwig van Beethoven Piano Sonata in E minor, Op. 90 14 min
Piano Sonata in A major, Op. 101 22 min
Piano Sonata in B-flat major, Op. 106 Hammerklavier Sonata 42 min CHF 120/90/60/30
“RIDING THE RAZOR’S EDGE” Igor Levit on the Hammerklavier Sonata Igor Levit had originally wanted to conclude his grand Beethoven cycle playing all 32 of the composer’s piano sonatas in Lucerne during the anniversary year 2020, but the coronavirus pandemic thwarted his plans. The good news is that this summer he will catch up with the last two installments of the eight-part series – and ascend the “Mount Everest” of piano repertoire with the Hammerklavier Sonata. “It's really a borderline experience in terms of its manual, physical, and emotional demands,” Levit explains. “Not a day goes by that I don't think about this sonata.” But the two works he performs earlier also provide moments of musical bliss. The Op. 90 E minor Sonata, cast in only two movements, beguiles with a rondo that circles merrily around, like an endless melodic loop. Meanwhile, right from the first measure, the A major Sonata, Op. 101, sounds as if it had already begun long before. And its vivid Scherzo, which seems to anticipate Schumann’s Davidsbündler marches, strikes out far into the future.
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with the friendly support of Berthold Herrmann and Dr. Mariann Grawe-Gerber
“A BARRIER-FREE BAROQUE ENSEMBLE”
Fri 20.08. Berliner Barock Solisten 19.30 KKL Luzern, Concert Hall
Reinhard Goebel on the Berliner Barock Solisten Exactly 300 years ago, on 24 March 1721, Johann Sebastian Bach sent a calligraphic fair copy of “Six concerts avec plusieurs instruments” to Margrave Christian Ludwig of Brandenburg. Under the name Brandenburg Concertos, they are today among the most popular works in the Baroque repertoire, in part because they feature their “various instruments” – flute, oboe, trumpet, violin, viola, and harpsichord – in matchless solo parts. The Berliner Barock Solisten consists of members of the Berlin Philharmonic, early music specialists and guest stars such as trumpeter Reinhold Friedrich, and they have reworked the legendary cycle together with Reinhard Goebel. In 1985-86, Goebel made a sensation with his first recording. At that time, he followed the premises of historical performance practice; today he sees things more liberally and prefers a freer approach. His new book about the Brandenburg Concertos, which he wrote during the corona lockdown, shows just how close to his heart these works are.
Berliner Barock Solisten Reinhard Goebel musical direction Mathieu Dufour flute Christoph Hartmann oboe Reinhold Friedrich trumpet Roberto González-Monjas violin and viola
Raphael Alpermann harpsichord “The Brandenburg Concertos at 300” Johann Sebastian Bach Brandenburg Concerto No. 1 in F major, BWV 1046 16 min
Brandenburg Concerto No. 2 in F major, BWV 1047
Berliner Barock Solisten
9 min
Brandenburg Concerto No. 3 in G major, BWV 1048 9 min
Brandenburg Concerto No. 4 in G major, BWV 1049 14 min
Brandenburg Concerto No. 5 in D major, BWV 1050 20 min
Brandenburg Concerto No. 6 in B-flat major, BWV 1051 17 min CHF 200/130/90/30
e Go to th re fo e b rt conce cert: n o c e th today! 40min 22 see p.
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Sat 21.08. CONTEMPORARY
Portrait Rebecca Saunders 1 11.00 KKL Luzern, Lucerne Hall Marco Blaauw trumpet
Arditti Quartet
Arditti Quartet: Irvine Arditti and Ashot Sarkissjan violin Ralf Ehlers viola Lucas Fels cello Trio Accanto: Marcus Weiss saxophone Nicolas Hodges piano Christian Dierstein percussion Rebecca Saunders shadow. Study for piano Swiss premiere 11 min
“A NOTE IS NEVER JUST A NOTE” Rebecca Saunders What is better than one trumpet? A trumpet that sounds like two. Marco Blaauw has developed just that with his double-bell trumpet, which – as the name suggests – has two bells. He can produce the craziest sounds on it, for example switching between open and muffled tones at lightning speed or mixing the two. Composer-in-residence Rebecca Saunders has developed a fascinating solo piece out of these subtle color changes. In her portrait concert, instrumental docents from the Lucerne Festival Academy will show how she is constantly in search of fresh, unfamiliar sounds. In shadow, Nicolas Hodges uses the piano’s sostenuto and sustaining pedals to create reverberations of varying densities: indeed, acoustic shadows. It’s a prelude to Saunders’s new piano concerto, which he will unveil on 4 September together with the Lucerne Festival Contemporary Orchestra. And in Fletch, the legendary Arditti Quartet continually shoots out arrows of sound – just as suggested by the title of the work, which refers to each of the feathered vanes of an arrow: timbrally rich, harmonically shimmering tremolos that evaporate in a glissando.
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Fletch for string quartet Swiss premiere 15 min
blaauw for double-bell trumpet 11 min
That Time. Trio for saxophone, percussion, and piano comissioned by Radio France, Lucerne Festival, Südwestrundfunk, and Milano Musica – Associazione per la musica contemporanea Swiss premiere 21 min CHF 50
The ders a Saun c c e “Reb ” e g a k c Pa e t on thre iscoun g n ri 20% d tu a s fe concert aunders aS Rebecc . 124 see p
“THERE IS IN RAVEL THE SOUL OF A CHILD”
Sat 21.08. SYMPHONY
Yannick Nézet-Séguin “Nézet-Séguin has obviously taken the hearts of the musicians by storm,” wrote the Neue Zürcher Zeitung following the Canadian maestro’s debut with the Lucerne Festival Orchestra in 2019. No wonder that this triumph now has a sequel – and this time with two concerts. On the first evening, “Yannick,” as he is universally known, has no less than the pianist Yuja Wang as his comrade-in-arms, when she launches her residency as “artiste étoile” with Mozart’s D minor Concerto, a work that anticipates Romanticism. Two masterpieces of French orchestral artistry provide the frame. Claude Debussy’s epochal tone poem Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune marks the birth of Modern music. Maurice Ravel, on the other hand, dreamed his way back into the world of fairy tales with Ma mère l’Oye, creating an enchanting score full of delicate nuances. “You have to let all this live as naturally as possible,” remarks Nézet-Séguin, “to allow its innocent and simple poetry to emerge, as with a child. But this comes with all the knowledge and experience of an adult.”
Lucerne Festival Orchestra 5 18.30 KKL Luzern, Concert Hall Lucerne Festival Orchestra Yannick Nézet-Séguin conductor Yuja Wang piano Claude Debussy Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune 10 min
Wolfgang Amadé Mozart Piano Concerto in D minor, K. 466 31 min
Maurice Ravel Ma mère l’Oye Ballet version 28 min
Yannick Nézet-Séguin
Introduction to the Concert 17.30 | KKL Luzern, Auditorium with Susanne Stähr (in German) CHF 320/220/150/40
Clariant Foundation Theme Sponsor 67
Sun 22.08. SYMPHONY
Concert Cecilia Bartoli 14.30 KKL Luzern, Concert Hall Cecilia Bartoli (mezzo)soprano Carlo Vistoli countertenor Les Musiciens du Prince-Monaco Gianluca Capuano conductor
Cecilia Bartoli
Giovanni Battista Pergolesi Stabat Mater as well as additional works of sacred music by Antonio Vivaldi et al. This concert lasts approx. 80 min CHF 290/190/130/40
“MUSIC IS FOOD FOR THE SOUL” Cecilia Bartoli This summer, Cecilia Bartoli will devote herself to a sacred program. She has chosen not only works by a composer she especially cherishes, Antonio Vivaldi, but also music by Giovanni Battista Pergolesi, the “angelico maestro,” as Vincenzo Bellini called him. For Pergolesi, whose compositions sound like a promise of the future and in some moments already anticipate Mozart or Schubert, was only 26 when he completed his celebrated Stabat Mater a few weeks before his death in March 1736. That work is the focus of Bartoli’s concert with her ensemble Les Musiciens du Prince-Monaco led by Gianluca Capuano. Unlike the recording from the early years of her career, this time Bartoli takes the higher of the two vocal parts – for the lower one, she has invited the countertenor Carlo Vistoli, who previously appeared at Lucerne Festival in John Eliot Gardiner’s Monteverdi trilogy. Together they will make Pergolesi’s simple and songful cantilenas blossom – melodies that do not seek to overwhelm the listener with artistry, going all the deeper and straight to the heart.
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“SCHUMANN TAKES US TO Sun 22.08. THE REALM OF DREAMS”
SYMPHONY
Steven Isserlis The dawn of a new era: this evening Michael Sanderling launches his tenure as the Lucerne Symphony Orchestra’s new Principal Conductor. And what’s more, he will present two milestones in the major Schumann cycle, in which Lucerne Festival is tracing the composer’s last 15 years, from his happiest period to his tragic end in a mental hospital. Sanderling devotes himself to the Fourth, which spans an entire decade in Schumann’s life. The original version was written as early as 1841, but ten years later Schumann revised the work and changed the orchestration, making it darker and heavier. The Cello Concerto, for which Sanderling (himself originally a cellist) has engaged the British virtuoso and Schumann expert Steven Isserlis, also dates from this late phase, in which posterity has sought to identify traces of mental disintegration. But Isserlis rejects any suspicion of that: “Anyone who believes that Schumann’s works are products of madness is mistaken. He did not compose at all during phases of depression.”
Schumann Cycle 1 19.30 KKL Luzern, Concert Hall Lucerne Symphony Orchestra Michael Sanderling conductor Steven Isserlis cello Carl Maria von Weber Overture to Der Freischütz, Op. 77 10 min
Robert Schumann Cello Concerto in A minor, Op. 129 23 min
Symphony No. 4 in D minor, Op. 120 1851 version, with retouching by Michael Sanderling 32 min
Michael Sanderling
CHF 120/90/60/30
Artemis Group / Franke Group Concert Sponsor 69
Mon 23.08. Recital Igor Levit 2 19.30 KKL Luzern, Concert Hall Igor Levit piano Ludwig van Beethoven Piano Sonata in E major, Op. 109 19 min
Piano Sonata in A-flat major, Op. 110 20 min
Piano Sonata in C minor, Op. 111 Igor Levit
28 min
“AFTER THIS THERE IS ONLY ‘PARADISE’” Igor Levit on the end of Opus 111 Igor Levit’s grand Beethoven cycle arrives at its final destination here: with the last three sonatas, which have attained mythic status. Beethoven composed them when he was already completely deaf – when he himself could no longer hear what he had achieved. This was no more and no less than a renewal and readjustment of his own art. In the E major sonata, according to Levit, he “reinvented the form of the variations” using a world-weary Sarabande, which he at times varies like a Bach invention, but at others with a melodic freedom that brings Chopin to mind. The A-flat major Sonata, Op. 110, reflects a process of recovery: an instrumental lament, the “Arioso dolente,” gives way to a light fugue that ascends into jubilation at the end – “pure happiness,” as Levit puts it. And with the C minor Sonata, Op. 111, according to Thomas Mann in his novel Doktor Faustus, the fate of the entire genre seems to have reached its fulfillment. A hymnlike chant resounds at the end, flowing in ever greater ecstasy and redeemed from all earthly burdens.
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CHF 120/90/60/30
“A GROTESQUE SOCRATIC MARATHON”
Tue 24.08. MUSIC FOR FUTURE
Daniel Ciobanu on practicing piano “Music becomes an experience with Daniel Ciobanu,” Deutschlandfunk Radio declared about the pianist’s debut CD, which was released in the fall of 2020. This keyboard wizard possesses an “uncompromising desire to tell stories” and on top of that has “the technical ability” to make it happen: in short, he is “a clever and extremely emotional artist.” The native Romanian, who cites Vladimir Horowitz, Arthur Rubinstein, and Arcadi Volodos as role models, appeared on Lang Lang’s show 100 Pianos as early as 2011, when he was 19 years old. In 2017 he won the silver medal and the audience prize at the Rubinstein Competition in Tel Aviv, and since then he has performed with such renowned partners as the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, the Israel and Royal Philharmonic Orchestras, the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen, and the Enescu Philharmonic Orchestra, which appointed him artist-in-residence. In his Lucerne debut, Ciobanu will span a wide range, from the nocturne to such bubbly pieces as the closing paraphrase on waltzes from Die Fledermaus.
Debut Daniel Ciobanu 12.15 Lukaskirche Daniel Ciobanu piano Moritz Moszkowski Étincelles, Op. 36, no. 6 3 min
Modest Mussorgsky Pictures at an Exhibition 33 min
George Enescu Carillon nocturne, Op. 18, no. 7 6 min
Sergei Prokofiev Piano Sonata No. 7 in B-flat major, Op. 83
Daniel Ciobanu
19 min
Alfred Grünfeld Soirée de Vienne, Op. 56 concert paraphrase on waltz motifs from Johann Strauss’s Die Fledermaus et al. 6 min CHF 30
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Tue 24.08. SYMPHONY
Yannick Nézet-Séguin | Lucerne Festival Orchestra
Lucerne Festival Orchestra 6 19.30 KKL Luzern, Concert Hall Lucerne Festival Orchestra Yannick Nézet-Séguin conductor Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges Symphony No. 2 in D major 8 min
Wolfgang Amadé Mozart Symphony in D major, K. 504 Prague 32 min
Ludwig van Beethoven Symphony No. 7 in A major, Op. 92 40 min
“RIPE FOR THE MADHOUSE”
Introduction to the Concert 18.30 | KKL Luzern, Auditorium with Susanne Stähr (in German) CHF 320/220/150/40
Carl Maria von Weber on Beethoven Yannick Nézet-Séguin and the Lucerne Festival join together for a fascinating encounter this evening: Wolfgang Amadé Mozart and his famous Prague Symphony meet “Le Mozart noir,” which is how the violinist, conductor, and composer Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges – one of the all-too-few people of color in the classical music world of Mozart’s era – was known by his contemporaries. The Chevalier, whose mother had been a slave from Guadeloupe, conducted the famous orchestra of the Loge Olympique in Paris and also premiered Haydn’s Paris Symphonies there. Yet his own works are rarely played anymore. Ludwig van Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony, by contrast, is one of his most frequently performed compositions. And one of his craziest. For the Seventh relies overwhelmingly on the power of rhythm, which is relentlessly whipped forward, culminating in a frenzied finale. The music teacher Friedrich Wieck claimed that Beethoven could have composed something like this only in a drunken state. And Carl Maria von Weber even believed that his colleague was no longer in his right mind.
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Zurich Insurance Company Ltd Main Sponsor
IS HÖLDERLIN’S LANGUAGE MUSIC? IS BEETHOVEN’S MUSIC LANGUAGE? They never met each other. Nor is there any evidence of the one engaging artistically with the work of the other. Yet Ludwig van Beethoven and Friedrich Hölderlin have far more in common than simply their year of birth, 1770. Both figures exhausted the possibilities of their respective arts in terms of form and content, both transgressed the aesthetic conventions of their time. And both were isolated at the ends of their lives: Beethoven by his deafness, Hölderlin in the Tübingen Tower, where he spent an incredible 36 years following a mental breakdown. The Bagatelles, Op. 126, and the so-called Tower Poems sparkle like crystals in the late work of these two artists: condensed and concentrated, summations of their experience. When they are placed side by side, amazing correspondences become apparent: the linguistic aspects of Beethoven’s music and Hölderlin’s poetic sonority cross-fertilize. As Jean Paul once observed: “Everything about a great man is interesting, and the trivial things about him are not the least interesting.”
Wed 25.08. Crazy 2 12.15 Lukaskirche Michael Engelhardt narrator and concept
Stefan Wirth piano and conceptualization Mark Sattler idea and conceptualization “Bagatelles” Beethoven/Hölderlin: A Musical Encounter 45 min
Ludwig van Beethoven Six Bagatelles for Piano, Op. 126 Friedrich Hölderlin In lieblicher Bläue blühet late poems (in German)
Michael Engelhardt
CHF 30
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Wed 25.08. SYMPHONY
Schumann Cycle 2 19.30 KKL Luzern, Concert Hall Tonhalle Orchestra Zurich Paavo Järvi conductor Christian Tetzlaff violin Robert Schumann Overture to Genoveva, Op. 81 9 min
Violin Concerto in D minor, WoO1 Paavo Järvi
30 min
Symphony No. 3 in E-flat major, Op. 97 Rhenish 32 min CHF 120/90/60/30
“HIS MUSIC IS SO UNBELIEVABLY SPONTANEOUS” Paavo Järvi on Schumann With his complete recording plus a concert film about the four Schumann symphonies, Paavo Järvi created a sensation – and set interpretive standards. Like few others, the Estonian maestro knows how to penetrate to the interior of these scores. “Schumann has the ability to suddenly change from the deepest melancholy, sadness, and depression into a firework of joy. That is unique,” Järvi believes. “He felt that music should never be written for its own sake. There seems to be a story behind each of his compositions.” With the Tonhalle Orchestra Zurich and the Rhenish Symphony, Järvi recounts the initial euphoria that overwhelmed Schumann when he moved to Düsseldorf in 1850 to take up the post of music director. With Christian Tetzlaff and the late Violin Concerto, however, the program escorts us into the composer’s darkest period. The work was considered so crazy and infected by “madness” that it was never played during Schumann’s lifetime and only received its premiere 84 years late, in 1937.
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e Go to th re fo e b concert ert: c n o c e th today! 40min 22 see p.
“AS A CHILD I WANTED TO BECOME A SINGER”
Thu 26.08. MUSIC FOR FUTURE
Timothy Ridout With the British musician Timothy Ridout, who was born in 1995, the small but fine guild of top brass players has gained a new member. He is “a gift,” the magazine The Strad wrote about the young musician. Ridout, who won both the Lionel Tertis and Cecil Aronowitz competitions and was named a 2019 BBC New Generation Artist, combines superior virtuosity with soulful tone and flawless phrasing. When asked in an interview about his favorite composer, he gave two answers: as a listener, Bach is his favorite, but when he himself plays, he prefers the works of York Bowen. And so Bowen’s First Viola Sonata will be heard in his debut concert: late Romantic music to revel in, a real discovery! But before that, Ridout will pay homage to Robert Schumann, the secret hero of this Summer Festival, with the famous song cycle Dichterliebe. When he “sings” it on the viola, it becomes understandable even without words.
Debut Timothy Ridout 12.15 Lukaskirche Timothy Ridout viola Frank Dupree piano Robert Schumann Dichterliebe, Op. 48 arranged for viola and piano by Timothy Ridout 30 min
York Bowen Viola Sonata No. 1 in C minor, Op. 18 26 min
Timothy Ridout
CHF 30
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Thu 26.08. SYMPHONY
Mahler Chamber Orchestra 19.30 KKL Luzern, Concert Hall Mahler Chamber Orchestra Yuja Wang piano Roberto González-Monjas concertmaster
Jean-Féry Rebel Chaos from Les élémens
Yuja Wang
7 min
Johann Sebastian Bach Piano Concerto in F minor, BWV 1056 10 min
Igor Stravinsky Octet for wind instruments 18 min
“MY LIFE IS CRAZY” Yuja Wang Can this really be music from the Baroque era? When the Mahler Chamber Orchestra plays the Chaos section from Jean-Féry Rebel’s ballet suite Les élémens, you might almost take it for an intensified variant of Igor Stravinsky’s Le Sacre du printemps – so radical, percussive, and dissonant is the work’s beginning. No question: in the search for the craziest piece of the summer, Rebel’s rebellious music is a very hot candidate. It far outdoes Stravinsky, who is represented here not as a young savage but as a neoclassicist, from the angle of Modernism. La passione is the nickname of Joseph Haydn’s Symphony in F minor on account of its unbridled expressive rage – a score full of eccentric and provocative ideas. And then “artiste étoile” Yuja Wang gets in on the action: first she will perform Johann Sebastian Bach’s incomparable F minor Concerto, which combines dance-like exuberance with contrapuntal mastery and transcendental rapture. She then will focus on late Janáček, an “old savage,” with his whimsical Capriccio for left-handed piano.
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Leoš Janáček Capriccio for piano (left hand) and wind instruments 17 min
Joseph Haydn Symphony in F minor, Hob. I:49 La passione 23 min CHF 170/120/90/30
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“BEETHOVEN ALWAYS GOES TO THE EDGE”
Fri 27.08. SYMPHONY
Daniel Barenboim With his Sinfonia eroica of 1803, Ludwig van Beethoven introduced an epoch-making work that defied the previous standards of the genre. The first two movements are longer than an entire Haydn symphony. The opening chords, as solid as supporting columns, along with the biting dissonances that Beethoven uses in the opening movement, had a shocking effect on the audience of the time. The pathos of the “Marcia funebre,” with its echoes of French revolutionary music, and the ideological exaggeration of the finale, which alludes to the Prometheus myth, opened up layers of extra-musical messages. For some contemporaries, this went too far. The young Franz Schubert, for example, composed the antithesis with his Fifth in 1816: a symphony using slender instrumentation and a sound pattern modeled after Mozart. And yet Schubert need not fear comparison with Beethoven at all. The graceful lyricism and playful agility of his music, its naturalness and artful simplicity, show this composer, who was only 19 years old at the time, also to be a master of his craft.
Staatskapelle Berlin 19.30 KKL Luzern, Concert Hall Staatskapelle Berlin Daniel Barenboim conductor Franz Schubert Symphony No. 5 in B-flat major, D 485 30 min
Ludwig van Beethoven Symphony No. 3 in E-flat major, Op. 55 Sinfonia eroica 55 min CHF 290/190/130/40
Staatskapelle Berlin | Daniel Bareboim
the Got to efore b rt e c con ert: c n o the c today! 40min 22 p see .
KPMG AG Concert Sponsor 77
Eleonora Savini | Federico Carraro
Sat 28.08. MUSIC FOR FUTURE
Children’s Concert 11.00 and 14.00 Maskenliebhabersaal Eleonora Savini violin Federico Carraro viola Pietro Gaudioso choreography and movement coach
Giuditta Gaudioso painting and stage design
“Mona Violina” A musical stroll through pictures with music by Alessandro Rolla, Wolfgang Amadé Mozart, Johann Sebastian Bach, Bohuslav Martinů and others 50 min For everyone ages 5 and up.
CHF 20/10 (adults/children)
UP CLOSE – ON PILLOWS In a quest for perfection, a violist practices day and night in an old, secluded house – and forgets about the world and life outside his self-imposed solitude. Then suddenly, moved by his music, one of his favorite portraits comes to life. It leaves the canvas and decides to accompany him on the violin on a musical journey that is as romantic as it is entertaining... In this staged concert for the whole family, the paintings are part of the stage set. They are movable and are illuminated in different ways, creating forms that are ever new in the interplay of shadow and light, revealing and concealing the two protagonists. Is their encounter a mere dream or after all real? Violinist Eleonora Savini and violist Federico Carraro met in 2012 at the Lucerne Festival Academy and combine their different experiences – hers in various children’s and youth productions, his in the field of contemporary music – in this project.
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“A GENERATION THAT IS CHARACTERIZED BY INDIVIDUALS”
Sat 28.08. CONTEMPORARY
Composer Seminar – Closing Concert 14.30 Hochschule Luzern – Musik
Wolfgang Rihm Wolfgang Rihm has given the young participants in this year’s Composer Seminar an unusual instrumentation to work with: seven brass players with harp, piano, and two percussionists. What a variety of timbres is possible! The particular makeup of this formulation, however, is not random but is based on Pierre Boulez’s Initiale, a virtuoso brass fanfare that the founder of the Lucerne Festival Academy wrote for the Houston Symphony Orchestra in 1987. The piece will open a concert in which you can encounter a wide range of examples of the emerging generation of composers, for variety is what matters to Rihm. His goal is “to promote distinctiveness rather than a seeming adherence to conventions, whether avant-garde or reactionary.” And because few people are able to talk about music with such illumination – about what its creators intended and what listeners perceive – Rihm himself will offer guidance through this survey of works and introduce each composer and their works during the concert.
Ensemble of the Lucerne Festival Contemporary Orchestra Pierre Boulez Initiale for seven brass players 5 min
Composer Seminar Showcase: works by Arnau Brichs, Tyson Davis, Lanqing Ding, Theo Finkel, Anton Koshelev, Guillem Palomar, Daniil Posazhennikov, and Senay Uğurlu 120 min
Wolfgang Rihm presents the participants and their works in concert
Wolfgang Rihm
CHF 50
Composer Seminar Mon 16.08. – Fri 20.08. see p. 58
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Yuja Wang
Sat 28.08. SYMPHONY
Mariinsky Orchestra 1 18.30 KKL Luzern, Concert Hall Mariinsky Orchestra Valery Gergiev conductor Yuja Wang piano Sergei Prokofiev Four pieces from the ballet Romeo and Juliet, Op. 64 19 min
Sergei Rachmaninoff Piano Concerto No. 4 in G minor, Op. 40 24 min
Igor Stravinsky Petrushka Revised version from 1947 34 min
“RESOUNDING MAGIC” Claude Debussy on Stravinsky’s Petrushka Where is the music coming from? In Igor Stravinsky’s ballet Petrushka, it seems to emanate from everywhere – near and far, left and right, front and back; at the same time, all of the swirling melodies and rhythms mix into a breathtakingly crazy melange, as if at a fairground. And that is exactly where the scenario involving the Russian version of the hapless puppet Punch is set. In this score, Stravinsky opened the window wide in the direction of Modernism by blending the musical material as if in a free collage, jump-cutting from one texture to another – all this as far back as 1911! Sergei Rachmaninoff likewise shows an unusually modern aspect in his Fourth Piano Concerto, which will be performed by our “artiste étoile” Yuja Wang: he incorporated a number of jazz-like sounds into this score. At the beginning of this all-Russian evening with the Mariinsky Orchestra and its leader Valery Gergiev, we encounter Sergei Prokofiev at his finest, in four touching and exciting pieces from Romeo and Juliet, a ballet version of the world’s most famous love story.
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Introduction to the Concert 17.30 | KKL Luzern, Auditorium with Malte Lohmann (in German) CHF 290/190/130/40
“YOU HAVE TO LET OUT THE MONSTER IN YOU”
Sat 28.08. CONTEMPORARY
This conviction guides Rebecca Saunders when she composes for voice. She does not merely want to set a text to music, but tries to “giv[e] the text a new framework and environment, letting it resonate in an acoustic landscape in order to create a new perspective from which the essence of the text can be heard and felt” – whether working with spoken, whispered, or sung text. In several works, this year’s composer-in-residence has drawn inspiration from Molly Bloom’s famous final monologue in James Joyce’s century-old novel Ulysses. Nether from 2019 translates Molly’s chaotic stream of consciousness, a wild whirl of flashes of mind, scraps of memory, and sensory impressions, into a highly emotional vocal performance. Iannis Xenakis and Martón Illés also set out in search of new sounds in two energetic works for string orchestra that are separated by almost half a century. Glissandi and pizzicato attacks migrate through the instruments, are layered on top of each other, condense, and break off unexpectedly. High-voltage music!
Lucerne Festival Academy 1 22.00 KKL Luzern, Lucerne Hall Ensemble of the Lucerne Festival Contemporary Orchestra Johanna Malangré conductor Juliet Fraser soprano Iannis Xenakis Syrmos for 18 strings 15 min
Martón Illés Post Torso for string orchestra Swiss premiere 15 min
Rebecca Saunders Nether for soprano and ensemble Swiss premiere 31 min CHF 50
Juliet Fraser
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Sun 29.08. CONTEMPORARY
Lucerne Festival Academy 2 16.00 KKL Luzern, Lucerne Hall Lucerne Festival Contemporary Orchestra Lin Liao conductor (Milenko) Johanna Malangré conductor (Vaughan) Heinz Holliger conductor Felix Renggli flute
Heinz Holliger
Kirsten Milenko Traho for orchestra Roche Young Commissions world premiere 10 min
Alex Vaughan Logos for orchestra Roche Young Commissions world premiere 10 min
“NOT AT ALL CRAZY. MUCH MORE A VISIONARY” Heinz Holliger on Friedrich Hölderlin “Music only takes place at the borderlines. There is nothing in the middle that could be of interest to art,” Heinz Holliger believes. Which is why he has always been fascinated by artists in crisis: border crossers on the fringes of society who have been classified as “crazy” and shipped off to the insane asylum. For Holliger, however, they “simply have many more antennae.” Thus, in his Turm-Musik (“Tower Music”), a central part of his Scardanelli cycle written over a period of 16 years, he intensively explored Friedrich Hölderlin and his late poems, which were always signed with the pseudonym Scardanelli. Hölderlin (who is said to have been a good flutist) wrote them during the 37 years of his life that he spent as “incurably mentally ill” in the seclusion of a tower in Tübingen. Ostinato funebre, which is also part of the Scardanelli cycle, at the same time pays homage to another artist: here Holliger quotes, paraphrases, distorts, and overwrites Mozart’s Masonic Funeral Music. In addition, the Lucerne Festival Contemporary Orchestra premieres two scores that were created as part of the Roche Young Commissions series.
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Wolfgang Amadé Mozart Masonic Funeral Music in C minor, K. 477 (479a) | 7 min Heinz Holliger Ostinato funebre for small orchestra | 8 min Turm-Musik for solo flute, small orchestra, and tape | 25 min Introduction to the concert 15.00 | KKL Luzern, Lucerne Hall Kirsten Milenko, Alex Vaughan, and Heinz Holliger in conversation with Mark Sattler (in English and German) CHF 50
Roche Main Sponsor and Partner Lucerne Festival Academy
“ART IS THE MOST CHARMING LIE”
Sun 29.08. SYMPHONY
Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov The first, Alexander Borodin, taught as a professor of organic chemistry at the Medical-Surgical Academy in St. Petersburg. The second, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, cruised the oceans as a naval officer on a warship. And the third, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, worked as a lawyer in the Russian Ministry of Justice. However, all three achieved everlasting fame in a different profession through their compositions: musical careers can be pretty crazy! In their second appearance in Lucerne, Valery Gergiev and his Mariinsky Orchestra lead us on a foray through the founding years of Russian symphonic music, presenting works that are not programmed everyday. Like Borodin’s Second Symphony, whose irresistible mixture of yearning melody, touching melancholy, and dancing verve makes for a truly pleasurable work. With its numerous quotes from folk song, Tchaikovsky’s Little Russian also has its earworms. In fact, it sounds so familiar from the first encounter that you feel as if you’ve known it forever.
Mariinsky Orchestra 2 18.30 KKL Luzern, Concert Hall Mariinsky Orchestra Valery Gergiev conductor Alexander Borodin Symphony No. 2 in B minor 31 min
Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov Suite from the opera The Tale of Tsar Saltan, Op. 57 20 min
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky Symphony No. 2 in C minor, Op. 17 Little Russian 35 min
Valery Gergiev
Introduction to the Concert 17.30 | KKL Luzern, Auditorium with Susanne Stähr CHF 290/190/130/40
Church Festival Worship Service 17.00 | Jesuitenkirche Soloists, vocal ensemble, and orchestra from the Collegium Musicum Luzern | Pascal Mayer conductor | Suzanne Z’Graggen organ L. Mozart Missa solemnis in C major
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Mon 30.08. SYMPHONY
Royal Concertgebouworkest 19.30 KKL Luzern, Concert Hall Royal Concertgebouworkest Daniel Harding conductor Yefim Bronfman piano Richard Wagner Overture to Tannhäuser 15 min
Ludwig van Beethoven Piano Concerto No. 3 in C minor, Op. 37 Daniel Harding
37 min
Claude Debussy La Mer 30 min
“THE FUTURE WILL TELL WHO IS A CLASSIC” Claude Debussy A musician who is in danger of going deaf, no longer able to hear properly what he is playing and what he is composing: this fate, which would have driven others mad, led Ludwig van Beethoven to develop his heroic style. The Third Piano Concerto, performed by the American keyboard titan Yefim Bronfman, exemplifies this style. The soloist enters the scene with hammer-like double octaves; an aura of existential severity prevails. The music suggests self-assertion, radiating willpower and pride. Claude Debussy also brought about a paradigm shift in music when he wrote his tone poem La Mer. Doing away with the central compositional principle of developing thematic ideas, he loosely strung motif together with motif. But like the waves in the sea, no two are alike. And so an undulating organism is created, a veritable ocean of sounds, which Debussy orchestrated with relish and dazzle. A showpiece for the magnificent Royal Concertgebouworkest, this time led by the British conductor Daniel Harding.
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Introduction to the Concert 18.30 | KKL Luzern, Auditorium with Susanne Stähr (in German) CHF 320/220/150/40
“SHE TAKES US TO ANOTHER REALITY”
Tue 31.08. MUSIC FOR FUTURE
Belgian radio on Zee Zee The Chinese pianist Zee Zee has constructed a wonderful program on the theme of “crazy.” With Arnold Schoenberg’s Op. 11 Piano Pieces, which dispense with conventional musical “grammar,” she presents what is probably the most momentous “madness” in music history: the leap into atonality. Ravel’s Gaspard de la nuit revolves around a demonic spirit that robs people of their sleep – and at the same time calls for a crazed level of virtuosity. This is required by the works of Franz Liszt as well: for example in the Tarantella, a crazy Italian folk dance that is performed to the point of frenzy, as if the dancers had been bitten by a tarantula. Zee Zee, who studied with Leon Fleisher and was advised by Alfred Brendel, won the Gina Bachauer Competition and has already performed with the San Francisco Symphony, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the London Philharmonia Orchestra, and the Zurich Tonhalle Orchestra. The latter’s principal conductor Paavo Järvi called her “one of the most extraordinary pianistic talents I have ever encountered.”
Debut Zee Zee 12.15 Lukaskirche Zee Zee piano Arnold Schoenberg Three Piano Pieces, Op. 11 15 min
Maurice Ravel Gaspard de la nuit 23 min
Franz Liszt selections from the Années de pèlerinage: Vallée d’Obermann, S 160, no. 6 Les Jeux d’Eaux à la Villa d’Este, S 163, no. 4 Tarantella, S 162, no. 3 total 30 min
Zee Zee
CHF 30
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Tue 31.08. The 12 Cellists 19.30 KKL Luzern, Concert Hall
The 12 Cellists of the Berlin Philharmonic
The 12 Cellists of the Berlin Philharmonic Claude Debussy La cathédrale engloutie Clair de lune | total 9 min Brett Dean Twelve Angry Men | 19 min Juan Tizol/Duke Ellington Caravan | 5 min Marijn Simons It’s Raining Skyscrapers | 3 min Krzesimir Dębski Cello Animation | 4 min
“IT’S PURE JOY” German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier on the 12 Cellists “There is no such thing as light or serious music, there is only good or bad music,” Leonard Bernstein once observed. The 12 Cellists of the Berlin Philharmonic, who will celebrate their 50th anniversary in the 2021-22 season, have taken him at his word. In their programs, the “Fabulous Twelve” combine the seemingly incompatible: they perform new works composed especially for them, such as Brett Dean’s Twelve Angry Men, written for the ensemble’s 25th anniversary (the group by now includes “angry women”). They will play refined arrangements of classics but also devote themselves with fervor to the tango, French chansons, and hits by the Beatles. The 12 Cellists make music without blinkers, with a sense of joyful openness. But whatever they play in these musical border crossings turns into a triumph of sound, of the full, rich cello sonority in which one can simply revel. And since the twelve musicians are not lacking in spirit and playfulness, they offer the audience everything that good music can.
Astor Piazzolla Buenos Aires Hora Cero | Revirado | Soledad | Tres minutos con la realidad total 20 min CHF 120/90/60/30
On 1 September the 12 Cellists will give a school concert in the KKL Luzern hosted by Sarah Willis. e Go to th re befo rt e c n co cert: the con ay! tod 40min 22 p e se .
The Adecco Group Foundation Main Sponsor 86
“HE LISTENED TO THE VOICES OF ANGELS”
Wed 01.09.
Clara on Robert Schumann, 20 February 1854 On 17 February 1854, Rose Monday, Robert Schumann, who was dressed only in a robe and felt slippers, joined the Düsseldorf carnival – but not to participate in the celebrations. He went straight for the pontoon bridge and threw himself into the Rhine, wanting to end his life. Although he was rescued by fishermen, he was admitted to the Endenich mental hospital as “mentally deranged.” On that fateful day, he was still working on his last composition, the Ghost Variations on a theme that the angels are said to have sung to him. Can one hear Schumann’s condition in this music? Kit Armstrong offers interesting answers in his “crazy” recital. He meanwhile couples that work with Clara Schumann’s Variations, Op. 20, which may have served as a model for her husband’s swan song. With his Piano Pieces in Fughetta Form, Armstrong will show that Schumann had pursued similarly crazy concepts before. And with works by Franz Liszt, he will showcase an eccentric piano artistry in which transgressions similarly abound.
Crazy 3 12.15 Lukaskirche Kit Armstrong piano Clara Schumann Variations on a Theme of Robert Schumann, Op. 20 11 min
Robert Schumann Seven Piano Pieces in Fughetta Form, Op. 126 25 min
Ghost Variations in E-flat major, WoO 24 12 min
Franz Liszt Le triomphe funèbre du Tasse, S 517
Kit Armstrong
12 min
Széchényi, Teleki, and Mosonyi from the Historical Hungarian Portraits, S 205 12 min
Csárdás macabre, S 224 7 min CHF 30
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Wed 01.09. CONTEMPORARY
Masterclass in Conducting 16.00 KKL Luzern, Lucerne Hall Lucerne Festival Contemporary Orchestra Participants in the masterclass Ilan Volkov director
Ilan Volkov
Rebecca Saunders void for percussion duo and orchestra
“THE ACADEMY IS A DIALOGUE” Wolfgang Rihm on the Lucerne Festival Academy Conducting is not child’s play. This is all the more true when it comes to scores from the 20th and 21st centuries, because these are frequently so complex that fundamental questions of coordination have to be dealt with first, before one can take up more far-reaching interpretive decisions. In addition to instrumentalists and composers, the Lucerne Festival Academy supports young conductors every summer. Within the framework of a broadly defined Conducting Fellowship, participants follow the Academy’s daily rehearsals and can exchange ideas with the invited artists. In addition, there is a conducting masterclass open to the public, in which the young conductors themselves step up to the Lucerne Festival Contemporary Orchestra podium and gain practical experience: this summer, under the guidance of Ilan Volkov. Live lessons on the concert podium, where the audience also learns much about the art of conducting as well as about the scores being discussed.
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Anton Webern Variations for Orchestra, Op. 30 for auditors CHF 30
followed by: 40min 18.20 | KKL Luzern, Lucerne Hall “The Art of Conducting” with participants in the masterclass and Ilan Volkov
“THIS HEAVENLY LENGTH!”
Wed 01.09. SYMPHONY
Berlin Philharmonic 1 19.30 KKL Luzern, Concert Hall
Robert Schumann on Schubert’s Great C major Symphony Was Franz Schubert no longer in his right mind? During his life, he earned recognition essentially as a “prince of song” and a miniaturist. But something drove him to devote himself to a symphony of enormous proportions near the end of his short life: the “Great” C major Symphony, whose insistent repetitions of motifs exert an hypnotic effect. Because of its length and difficulty, the Vienna Society of Friends of Music, to whom he dedicated the work, refrained from presenting it, so Schubert’s last symphony was not premiered until 11 years after his death. When Kirill Petrenko and the Berlin Philharmonic perform this work, no one will be able to understand how it could have ever been refused. On the first evening of their guest appearance in Lucerne, they also pay homage to Schubert’s contemporary Carl Maria von Weber with the enchanting Oberon Overture, which the composer wrote only a few weeks before he died. It introduces us to a crazy realm of elves, the call of the horn in the very first measure setting the mood for the dreamy world of Romanticism.
Berlin Philharmonic Kirill Petrenko conductor Carl Maria von Weber Overture to Oberon 10 min
Franz Schubert Symphony No. 8 in C major, D 944 Great C major Symphony 60 min CHF 320/220/150/40
Kirill Petrenko
e Go to th re befo rt e c n co cert: the con ay! tod 40min 22 p e se .
Dr. Christoph M. Müller and Sibylla M. Müller Concert Sponsor 89
Thu 02.09. MUSIC FOR FUTURE
Debut Salomo Schweizer 12.15 Lukaskirche Salomo Schweizer oboe Petya Mihneva piano Robert Schumann Three Romances for Oboe and Piano, Op. 94
Salomo Schweizer
15 min
Isaac Albéniz Aragón, Sevilla and Cataluña from the Suite española, Op. 47 16 min
Christoph Willibald Gluck Dance of the Blessed Spirits from Orfeo ed Euridice 3 min
“ITS SOUND GOES STRAIGHT TO THE HEART” Salomo Schweizer on the oboe He was born in Lucerne, gained his first musical experience as a choirboy in the Lucerne Kantorei, and also initially studied at his native city’s music academy. So his appearance at the Summer Festival is something of a home game for Salomo Schweizer. But the oboist, who was born in 1993, has long since made his way in the wider world of music. His later studies took him via Zurich and Lausanne to the Berlin Philharmonic’s Dominik Wollenweber, with whom he put the finishing touches on his skills. Since 2017 he has been playing as principal with the Braunschweig State Orchestra, with which ensemble he has performed the oboe concertos of Mozart, Haydn, and Strauss. His debut program explores various facets of the theme of “crazy.” Robert Schumann must, of course, be among the offerings. He is represented by the Three Romances, Op. 94 – intimate domestic music from the wild, revolutionary year of 1849. Schweizer also plays Antonio Pasculli, the “Paganini of the oboe”; takes us to the afterlife with Gluck’s Dance of the Blessed Spirits; and celebrates the exuberant Spanish joie de vivre with music by Isaac Albéniz.
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Antonio Pasculli Concerto sopra motivi dell’opera “La Favorita” di Donizetti 12 min
Gaetano Donizetti Andante sostenuto 5 min CHF 30
Debut in the Schoolhouse On 3 September Salomo Schweizer will also perform for school classes.
“A TRUE LIONESS AT THE KEYBOARD”
Thu 02.09. SYMPHONY
The Washington Post on Anna Vinnitskaya Josef Suk has been high on Kirill Petrenko’s list of priorities ever since he discovered the Czech composer’s music as a student. Suk’s opulent sound world, which combines echoes of Wagner with the Bohemian tradition and influences from Impressionism, captivated him from the start. For the Berlin Philharmonic’s second performance, Petrenko has chosen A Summer’s Tale, which Suk composed after the deaths of his beloved wife Otilie and father-in-law Antonín Dvořák. The five movements represent a journey through the day, from the first hour of the morning until deep into the night, representing the attempt to find one’s way back to life after suffering tragedy. But in the process, the imaginary “hero” also has to contend with crazy delusions, hallucinations, and a witches’ sabbath before he finds peace in the end. The concert will be opened by Anna Vinnitskaya, who is celebrated as both a virtuoso and a poet of sound: she will play the breath-taking D-flat major Piano Concerto, with which the young Sergei Prokofiev suddenly rose to fame as an “enfant terrible.”
Berlin Philharmonic 2 19.30 KKL Luzern, Concert Hall Berlin Philharmonic Kirill Petrenko conductor Anna Vinnitskaya piano Sergei Prokofiev Piano Concerto No. 1 in D-flat major, Op. 10 15 min
Josef Suk Pohádka léta (“A Summer’s Tale”) Symphonic Poem, Op. 29 50 min
Introduction to the Conert 18.30 | KKL Luzern, Auditorium with Susanne Stähr (in German)
Anna Vinnitskaya
CHF 320/220/150/40
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William Christie
Fri 03.09. SYMPHONY
Opera Partenope 19.30 KKL Luzern, Concert Hall Les Arts Florissants William Christie conductor Sophie Daneman director Soloists of the Jardin des Voix 2021: Ana Vieira Leite Partenope Helen Charlston Rosmira/Eurimene Hugh Cutting Arsace Alberto Miguélez Rouco Armindo Jacob Lawrence Emilio Matthieu Walendzik Ormonte George Frideric Handel Partenope, HWV 27 Opera in three acts Semi-staged performance Abridged version by William Christie
“SIMPLY RAVISHED BY THIS MUSIC” William Christie on Handel The beautiful queen Partenope can hardly save escape her admirers: three princes vie for her favor. One of them, Arsace, has even abandoned his bride Rosmira for her. But the latter is out to get revenge: disguising herself as the Armenian nobleman Eurimene, she joins the three princes as another suitor. In this four-way fight among rivals, things become quite heated. Prince Emilio even resorts to the threat of war because Partenope will not hear him out. And Arsace, who soon recognizes Eurimene’s true identity, is challenged by this “rival” to a climactic duel – but then insists it take place without their shirts on. Which means only a confession can untie the plot’s almost inextricable knot. Partenope is Handel’s most absurd opera, sparkling with an irony that ridicules the heroic style, military music, and the conventions of “trouser roles.” A treat for William Christie and the graduates of his master workshop Le Jardin des Voix, who will bring this rarely performed masterpiece to the concert hall in a semi-staged arrangement.
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The performance ends at approx. 21.00.
Introduction to the concert 18.30 | KKL Luzern, Auditorium with Susanne Stähr (in German) CHF 240/150/100/30
Nestlé S.A. Concert Sponsor
THIS WORK HAS ALMOST BECOME A MYTH Seventy years ago, Polyphonie X was performed for the first and thus far only time. Its fragmented sounds, subjected in all their parameters to a radically serial approach, caused a veritable scandal at the premiere. The attention abruptly catapulted Pierre Boulez, then 26 years old, to the forefront of the musical avant-garde. To his colleague John Cage, Boulez had compared the Polyphonie project to the hubris of building the Tower of Babel, quipping, “I hope I don’t fall on my face balancing on the curb like this.” After the premiere, he deleted it from his official catalog of works because he felt it was too theory-laden. The score never appeared in print; the only evidence of the work until now has been the live recording of the premiere. The Ensemble of the Lucerne Festival Contemporary Orchestra offers a new encounter with Polyphonie X – which is to say with a fascinating Boulezian work concept that marks an important step in his development. It will be juxtaposed with two brand-new works by representatives of the young generation of composers, both written for the same instrumentation.
Fri 03.09. CONTEMPORARY
Lucerne Festival Academy 3 21.30 Südpol Ensemble of the Lucerne Festival Contemporary Orchestra Lin Liao conductor Victor Colţea Orbitor for ensemble world premiere commissioned by Lucerne Festival with support of the Swiss cultural institution Pro Helvetia 11 min
Samir Amarouch new work for ensemble world premiere commissioned by Lucerne Festival 10 min
Pierre Boulez Polyphonie X for 18 instruments
Pierre Boulez
16 min
Introduction with Wolfgang Rihm at the beginning of the concert (in German) CHF 50
Lecture and Interview 16.30 | KKL Luzern, Auditorium Lecture by Martin Zenck on Boulez’ Polyphonie X followed by a conversation with Angela de Benedictis, Wolfgang Rihm, and Mark Sattler (in German) Free admission
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Sat 04.09. CONTEMPORARY
Portrait Rebecca Saunders 2 11.00 Hochschule Luzern – Musik
Rebecca Saunders
Soloists of the Hochschule Luzern – Musik Clemens Heil conductor Daniela Argentino soprano (Skin) Juliet Fraser soprano (The Mouth) Charlotte Lorenz cello Erik Borgir assistant conductor Alexis Baskind/IRCAM computer music design
Rebecca Saunders Solitude for cello solo 17 min
The Mouth for soprano and tape Swiss premiere 19 min
“UNADORNED HUMAN VULNERABILITY” Rebecca Saunders on the sound of the voice The titles Skin and The Mouth denote interfaces between inside and outside with those respective body parts. And it is precisely these transitions that Rebecca Saunders homes in on in her vocal compositions. She wants to move from the surface of the sound “to the essence of the voice: the physical body that produces this sound.” The Mouth explores “the wide range of colors and sounds that are naturally produced in the oral cavity.” This involves “the gap between our secret inner monologue and the voice that is sent out into the world and heard.” Saunders has worked closely with soprano Juliet Fraser to develop fresh, new forms of articulation that go far beyond what is commonly called singing: the soloist whispers, susurrates, breathes. She sings as she breathes in and out, and her voice merges with the ensemble sound. But along with vocal works, our composer-in-residence for the summer of 2021 is also represented here by two instrumental pieces.
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Sole. Trio in F-sharp for mobile accordion, percussion, and piano Swiss premiere 12 min
Skin for soprano and 13 instruments Swiss premiere 28 min CHF 50
The ders a Saun c c e “Reb ” e g a k c Pa e t on thre iscoun g n ri 20% d tu a s fe concert aunders aS Rebecc . 124 see p
“IT’S NOT JUST A CONCERT Sat 04.09. BUT SOMETHING COMBye-Bye Beethoven PLETELY DIFFERENT” 16.00
SYMPHONY
Patricia Kopatchinskaja
KKL Luzern, Lucerne Hall
“How do you make old pieces so fresh that they still give an impression today of how rebellious and innovative Beethoven was?” asks Patricia Kopatchinskaja. And she has come up with a crazy concert collage revolving Beethoven’s famous – indeed, all-too-famous – Violin Concerto that juxtaposes the classic score with fragments by composers from Bach to Kurtág. “Maybe this title Bye-Bye Beethoven is provocative,” the violinist explains. “Of course we don’t want to actually say goodbye to him. But I do want to bid farewell to an industry that gets fixated on Beethoven, Bruckner, Brahms and loses relevance. I feel like we’re driving in a huge car, and everyone’s looking back and saying, ‘Oh, how nice it was,’ and no one’s looking ahead.” Which is why Patricia Kopatchinskaja and the Lucerne Festival Contemporary Orchestra will turn the familiar topsy-turvy in this program. The finale of Haydn’s Farewell Symphony, for example, in which the orchestra members actually leaves the stage one by one, will here be performed in reverse, with the musicians gradually entering and the music going backward, as it were ...
Lucerne Festival Contemporary Orchestra Patricia Kopatchinskaja violin, concept, and musical direction
Lani Tran-Duc visual design Ricarda Schnoor lighting Jonas Link video “Bye-Bye Beethoven” A staged concert 75 min
Fragments from works by Charles Ives, Joseph Haydn, John Cage, Johann Sebastian Bach, György Kurtág, Jorge Sánchez-Chiong, and Pauline Oliveros Ludwig van Beethoven Violin Concerto in D major, Op. 61
Patricia Kopatchinskaja
CHF 100/50
with friendly support of Carla Schwöbel-Braun 95
Nicolas Hodges
Sat 04.09. CONTEMPORARY
Lucerne Festival Academy 4 18.30 KKL Luzern, Concert Hall Lucerne Festival Contemporary Orchestra Ilan Volkov conductor Nicolas Hodges piano Christian Dierstein and Dirk Rothbrust percussion Rebecca Saunders void for percussion duo and orchestra Swiss premiere 19 min
“A SAINT OF MUSIC”»
The ders a Saun c c e “Reb ” e g a k c Pa e t on thre iscoun g n ri 20% d tu a s fe concert aunders aS Rebecc . 124 see p
Igor Stravinsky on Webern Composer-in-residence Rebecca Saunders is a tireless researcher into sounds. She prefers to focus on individual instruments and works intensive with her performers. This is how “inspiring sessions of sonic exploration” with the percussionists Christian Dierstein and Dirk Rothbrust resulted in void. The British composer, who lives in Berlin, similarly explores unusual playing techniques in her new piano concerto to an utterance. “The solo piano within this concerto was conceived as a disembodied voice. It seeks to tell its own story… an incessant, compulsive soliloquy… on the precipice of non-being…” Saunders’s music is juxtaposed with that of two modern icons regarded by many as polar opposites: Igor Stravinsky, with his unleashed rhythms and archaizing melodies, and Anton Webern, the advocate of strict 12tone music. But in such late works as the mini-piano concerto Movements, the artistic chameleon Stravinsky took Webern himself as his model, elevating him to “a perpetual Pentecost for all who believe in music.”
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Anton Webern Variations for Orchestra, Op. 30 8 min
Symphony, Op. 21 10 min
Igor Stravinsky Movements for piano and orchestra 10 min
Rebecca Saunders to an utterance for piano and orchestra Roche Commissions world premiere 25 min
Introduction to the Concert 17.30 | KKL Luzern, Auditorium with Rebecca Saunders and Mark Sattler (in German) CHF 120/90/60/30
Roche Main Sponsor and Partner Lucerne Festival Academy
“YOU HAVE TO ENJOY SINGING”
Sun 05.09.
Juan Diego Flórez on his recipe for success
Juan Diego Flórez tenor Vincenzo Scalera piano Selected lieder and arias by Richard Strauss, Giuseppe Verdi, Vincenzo Bellini, Gioachino Rossini et al. CHF 240/150/100/30
Juan Diego Flórez
Juan Diego Flórez is at the zenith of his art as a celebrated tenor. Who else commands such a sovereign and captivatingly beautiful high register? Who can make coloratura notes sound more sparkling and phrase melodies more sensitively? And who is even remotely as versatile as this tenor, who performs Mozart, bel canto, Verdi, French roles, and folk music – all with the same persuasive power? Since his spectacular debut at the Rossini Festival in Pesaro 25 years ago, the native Peruvian has been a regular on the world’s major stages. Along the way, he has cautiously expanded his repertoire. “I watch my voice, know it very well, control it,” the 48-year-old says, explaining his secret. “On stage, I’m pretty fearless. And I lead a balanced life, mainly in Europe.” So his appearance at Lucerne Festival with a colorful bouquet of arias and songs fits in well with the program. And perhaps he’ll pick up the guitar again at the end to accompany himself on a South American folk song.
Recital Juan Diego Flórez 11.00 KKL Luzern, Concert Hall
Clariant Foundation Theme Sponsor 97
Sun 05.09. MUSIC FOR FUTURE
Family Concert – Die Schurken (“The Rogues”) 14.30 and 16.00 KKL Luzern, Lucerne Hall
“Inspector Flunke and die Schurken”
Die Schurken: Stefan Dünser idea, trumpet Martin Schelling clarinet Martin Deuring double bass Goran Kovacevic accordion Lilian Genn Inspector Flunke Theresita Colloredo libretto, staging
Murat Üstün music “Inspector Flunke and Die Schurken” An action-packed musical detective story for children (in German) 50 min
“IS EVERYTHING CLEAR, FRAU INSPECTOR?”
For everyone ages 5 and up
CHF 20/10
Their names are Romero Calzone, Al Arrabiata, Mozzarella, and Diavolo. They are, of course, four villains through and through. And they are in trouble. They want to give a concert, but the sounds they produce are just awful. Music Inspector Flunke from the Smart-Aleck Department is supposed to help. And she soon has a hot lead. Supported by singing, clapping, and dancing children from the audience, the Inspector shows the rogues that it’s not enough to just play what’s written down in the score when making music together. It’s about more: about breathing together, about rhythm, and about listening to each other. But first of all, of course, the instruments have to be tuned correctly. The Vorarlberg-based ensemble Die Schurken, which has twice been awarded the “Young Ears” prize, conveys the secrets of musical interplay using slapstick, language games, and sizzling melodies. An imaginative musical theater for the whole family!
with friendly support of the Geert and Lore BlankenSchlemper Foundation Charitable Accentus Foundation 98
“THE MUSIC BUSINESS IS UNINTENTIONALLY FUNNY”
Sun 05.09. Staatstheater 16.00 Luzerner Theater
Mauricio Kagel The premiere of Staatstheater 50 years ago at the Hamburg State Opera was scandalous: the Argentinean-German composer Mauricio Kagel breaks with many theatrical traditions on the grand state opera stage and instead of telling a straightforward story makes playing and the theatrical apparatus itself the subject. The master of instrumental theater brings instrumentalists, singers, and chorus together in a large-scale composition that must be reassembled in each performance from a kind of scene construction kit. If in the 1970s the piece had an aura of iconoclasm and turmoil, today we can see Staatstheater as a celebration of the possibilities of theater. At the start of Ina Karr’s directorship at the Luzerner Theater, the stage director Lydia Steier will illuminate all of these possibilities with her team and the ensembles in a large collage: urban space and stage space will blur, as opera characters appear in unusual contexts. And Kagelian nonsense meets ghosts from the rich tradition of theater.
Luzerner Theater Ensemble Ensemble of the Lucerne Festival Contemporary Orchestra Stefan Schreiber musical direction Lydia Steier staging Sophia Schneider and Barbara Lenartz sets Jennifer Mosen costumes Mauricio Kagel Staatstheater staged composition for singers, actors, dancers, and instrumentalists Swiss premiere 120 min A co-production of the Luzerner Theater with Lucerne Festival Tickets available starting 23 August exclusively from the Luzerner Theater: t +41 (0)41 228 14 14 (box office closed from 14 June to 23 August because of theater pause)
Luzerner Theater
Additional performances until 19 September Detailed information at luzernertheater.ch
with friendly support of the Arthur Waser Foundation 99
Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla
Sun 05.09. SYMPHONY
Schumann Cycle 3 18.30 KKL Luzern, Concert Hall Mozarteum Orchestra Salzburg Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla conductor Mieczysław Weinberg Adagio from the Symphony No. 2, Op. 30 11 min
Robert Schumann Symphony No. 1 in B-flat major, Op. 38 Spring Symphony 32 min
Symphony No. 2 in C major, Op. 61 37 min CHF 170/120/90/30
“THERE’S A GREAT ONE EMERGING!” Die Welt on Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla Robert Schumann’s first two symphonies reflect the ups and downs of his life. He composed the Spring Symphony as in a frenzy, within just a few weeks at the beginning of 1841. Newly married and full of inspiration, he set off on a creative flight of fancy. Four years later, when he wrote the Second, things looked very different. Schumann complained of insomnia and dizzy spells, and he suffered from strange anxiety disorders and auditory hallucinations. Only with difficulty did he fight his way out of this crisis with this score. In the finale, which uses a quotation from Beethoven’s song cycle To the Distant Beloved as a confession of love for his wife Clara, healing seems to have been achieved. Or is this work already a harbinger of the final breakdown that would lead to the composer’s admission to a mental hospital in 1854? Lithuanian maestra Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla, who led stellar performances at the 2016 and 2017 Summer Festivals, will offer answers with the Salzburg Mozarteum Orchestra as she guides us into the contradictory, miraculous world of Schumann’s music.
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This concert is under the auspices of the Friends of Lucerne Festival
“I WANT MUSIC TO FLY”
Mon 06.09.
György Kurtág
SYMPHONY
What’s new in music being written today? Find out at this räsonanz – Donor Concert, which brings you up-to-date orchestral music. Iris Szeghy presents the Offertorium from her recent Requiem, which features an expressive solo soprano singing verses by Emily Dickinson. Beat Furrer has taken advantage of the coronavirus downtime to compose a fiendishly difficult violin concerto for Ilya Gringolts. A “20-minute eruption,” wrote the Süddeutsche Zeitung about the Munich premiere last October. “Furrer strings together tapestries of sound made of dark whispers spiced with harried solo writing, harsh contrasts, and rapid virtuoso runs that arrive like a breeze. Everything is effective, stirring, complex.” Finally, in a series of orchestral pieces written between 2015 and 2020, Miroslav Srnka traces not just musical movements but what sets them in motion: the physical movements of the musicians. For the first complete performance, he has again revised move 1-4.
räsonanz – Donor Concert 19.30 KKL Luzern, Concert Hall Bamberg Symphony Jakub Hrůša conductor Juliane Banse soprano Ilya Gringolts violin Iris Szeghy Offertorium for soprano and orchestra world premiere 7 min
Beat Furrer Concerto for Violin and Orchestra Swiss premiere 18 min
Miroslav Srnka move 1–4 for orchestra
Jakub Hrůša
First performance of the complete cycle and world premiere of the new version of move 2 38 min
Introduction to the Concert 18.30 | KKL Luzern, Auditorium Iris Szeghy and Miroslav Srnka in conversation with Mark Sattler (in German) CHF 120/90/60/30
Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation Partner räsonanz – Donor Concert 101
Tue 07.09. MUSIC FOR FUTURE
Debut Connaught Brass 12.15 Lukaskirche
Connaught Brass
Connaught Brass: Aaron Akugbo and Harry Plant trumpet Robyn Blair horn Chris Brewster trombone Aled Meredith-Barrett tuba Jan Bach Rounds and Dances 22 min
Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber excerpts from the Battalia in D major arranged by William Foster 10 min
“AND THE SHARK, HE HAS TEETH …” In 2019, the Philip Jones International Brass Competition took place for the first time. Ursula Jones, member of the Lucerne Festival Board of Trustees, created the competition in memory of her husband, the trombonist Philip Jones. With his Brass Ensemble, which was founded in 1951, he became something like the forefather of all brass formations, which since then have attracted an ever-growing fan base. The jury, which is chaired by Reinhold Friedrich, chose the British quintet Connaught Brass – whose members met at the Royal Academy of Music in London in 2016 – as the winner of the first competition. For their Debut concert in Lucerne, the five devised a program inspired by the Festival theme of “crazy.” Jan Bach’s Rounds and Dances offers a quirky mixture of canons and dances from different countries, while Kurt Weill’s Threepenny Opera bridges the gap with jazz and Mack the Knife’s ballad. Biber’s Battalia is a humorous work evoking battle music, and Strauss’s Dance of the Seven Veils, in which the protagonist Salome has to dance stark naked, was considered a scandal at the opera’s premiere in 1905.
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Richard Strauss Dance of the Seven Veils from the opera Salome, Op. 54 arranged by William Foster 10 min
Kurt Weill Suite from The Threepenny Opera arranged by Anthony DiLorenzo 22 min CHF 30
Debut in the Schoolhouse On 8 September Connaught Brass will perform for school classes as well.
“MUSIC IS A HUGE GIFT”
Tue 07.09.
Anne-Sophie Mutter Anne-Sophie Mutter has stood out among classical music stars during the coronavirus pandemic by campaigning for a new start in musical life. She not only appealed to politicians, pointing out the catastrophic situation of freelancers in particular in numerous interviews, but also appeared as a surprise guest in church services where she collected donations for colleagues in distress. “Music is a basic human need,” she says, summing up her commitment. In this recital, Anne-Sophie Mutter and her piano partner Lambert Orkis will prove just how effective music is as an agent that can delight and inspire. She has chosen three violin sonatas, all of which go deep to the heart. Mozart’s E minor Sonata begins in an agitated mood and leads into a beguilingly rapturous finale. Beethoven’s Spring Sonata exudes a decidedly relaxed, light, and friendly atmosphere. And César Franck’s passionate A major Sonata, which he gave to the famous virtuoso Eugène Ysaÿe as a wedding present, is an icon of the violin repertoire.
Recital Anne-Sophie Mutter 19.30 KKL Luzern, Concert Hall Anne-Sophie Mutter violin Lambert Orkis piano Wolfgang Amadé Mozart Violin Sonata in E minor, K. 304 15 min
Ludwig van Beethoven Violin Sonata in F major, Op. 24 Spring Sonata 26 min
César Franck Violin Sonata in A major 30 min CHF 240/150/100/30
Anne-Sophie Mutter
e Go to th re fo e b concert ert: c n o c e th today! 40min 22 see p.
with friendly support of the Apricum Circle 103
Luca Pianca
Wed 08.09. Crazy 4 12.15 Lukaskirche Luca Pianca theorbo “Follie e Stravaganze” works by Pietro Paolo Melli, Alessandro Piccinini, Giovanni Girolamo Kapsberger, Giovanni Pittoni, Charles Hurel, and Robert de Visée total 60 min CHF 30
“BAROQUE MUSIC’S ADDICTIVE TUNE” Novelist Peter Schneider on the follia This dance drove half of Europe crazy: the follia, the Italian name which means “madness” or “insanity,” spread like wildfire from the Iberian peninsula across the continent starting in the 16th century. It was considered so unbridled and wild that it was even banned for a time. The follia is based on a very simple formula: above a concise bass sequence in the triple meter of the sarabande, the upper voice ascends and descends; parallel to this, the harmonies constantly shift between major and minor. This scheme developed in the Baroque era into the most popular basic pattern for variations, which are increasingly shortened and speeded up until the listener becomes dizzy. The 2018 Swiss Music Prize-winning lute virtuoso from Ticion, Luca Pianca, a longtime collaborator with Nikolaus Harnoncourt and Giovanni Antonini, will perform some of the most beautiful examples of the follia (plus other crazy “extravaganzas”) on his theorbo, whose deep, brazen sound is ideal for the prominent bass part. And in the process he will drive us into a frenzy.
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“ONE OF THE PROFOUNDEST OF SYMPHONIES” Sir Simon Rattle on the Pastoral In Beethoven’s Pastoral the brook murmurs, cuckoos, quail, and nightingales sing, lightning flashes, and thunder rumbles. But the composer himself warned the performers not to take it too naturalistically: “More the expression of feeling than illustration,” he indicated at the top of the score. Simon Rattle, too, finds the notion that “the storm somehow has to do with the weather” to be downright awful: “It’s clearly about a spiritual crisis, about the horrors of the French Revolution, or about Beethoven’s rage in the face of his own physical infirmities and his gratitude to God that he managed to live with them.” A search for meaning and God is also the topic of the concert’s opening work, when Magdalena Kožená sings the cycle Where Are You? by her fellow Czech Ondřej Adámek, which was first performed in March 2021. “Adámek tends to combine the driving rhythms of Minimalism with experimental techniques as well as folk music patterns,” wrote the Süddeutsche Zeitung. “In this way, his music remains comprehensible and purposeful at every moment.”
Wed 08.09. SYMPHONY
London Symphony Orchestra 19.30 KKL Luzern, Concert Hall London Symphony Orchestra Sir Simon Rattle conductor Magdalena Kožená mezzo-soprano Ondřej Adámek Where Are You? for mezzosoprano and orchestra Swiss premiere 34 min
Ludwig van Beethoven Symphony No. 6 in F major, Op. 68 Pastoral 44 min
Magdalena Kožená | Sir Simon Rattle
CHF 290/190/130/40
e Go to th re befo rt e c n co cert: the con ay! tod 40min 22 p e se .
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Marmen Quartet
Thu 09.09. MUSIC FOR FUTURE
Debut Marmen Quartet 12.15 Lukaskirche Marmen Quartet: Johannes Marmen and Ricky Gore violins Bryony Gibson-Cornish viola Steffan Morris cello Salvatore Sciarrino String Quartet No. 7 10 min
Carlo Gesualdo Madrigal O vos omnes 4 min
György Ligeti String Quartet No. 1 Métamorphoses nocturnes 23 min
“IT FEELS CRAZY” Bryony Gibson-Cornish on the Marmen Quartet’s triumph The Marmen Quartet won two important competitions in 2019: the Canadian Banff Competition and the Concours de Bordeaux. The ensemble, which was founded in 2013 at the Royal College of Music in London, has been stirring up the quartet scene ever since. Not only do these four masterful virtuosos phrase as if from the same breath. They love to tell stories with their programs. In Lucerne, where the summer theme is “crazy” they will certainly do so when they play a madrigal by Carlo Gesualdo, the prince of Venosa and murderer of his unfaithful wife, who composed music so weird that you would think it came from the 20th century. Salvatore Sciarrino wrote his opera Luci mie traditrici about this “old master” – and competes with Gesualdo’s “craziness” by using excessive glissandi in his Seventh String Quartet. György Ligeti’s First Quartet was so controversial in Communist Hungary that he was not even allowed to have the work performed. And Mozart raised the genre to a new level with the six so-called “Haydn Quartets,” the third of which is heard here.
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Wolfgang Amadé Mozart String Quartet in E-flat major, K. 428 27 min CHF 30
“YOU WOULD ALMOST THINK YOU’RE IN THE FOREST”
Thu 09.09. SYMPHONY
Vienna Philharmonic 1 19.30 KKL Luzern, Concert Hall
Herbert Blomstedt on Bruckner’s Fourth
Vienna Philharmonic Herbert Blomstedt conductor Anton Bruckner Symphony No. 4 in E-flat major, WAB 104 Romantic 68 min
Introduction to the Concert 18.30 | KKL Luzern, Auditorium with Susanne Stähr (in German) CHF 320/220/150/40
Herbert Blomstedt
Bruckner had a habit of incessantly counting just about everything – a fact that can be heard in his Fourth Symphony. Take the rhythm of the short call intoned by the horn at the beginning, which is heard 16 times within the first minute! “But it’s not like the thump of the bass in rock music, where all you hear for three or five minutes is boom, boom, boom,” says Herbert Blomstedt. “In fact, the harmonies that Bruckner uses for this are constantly changing, thus creating a landscape. You feel like a tourist in the Alps, continually discovering new perspectives, vistas, and surprises. So it never becomes boring: you’re always looking in different directions.” With the Vienna Philharmonic, with whom he has enjoyed a close association since he made his debut with them in 2011 at the age of 83, Blomstedt will elicit a multitude of secrets from Bruckner’s Romantic. He will allow us to hear just how this music, with its bird calls and forest idylls, is so beautiful. And he will ensure that the typical Brucknerian ingredients – solemn string tremolos, chorales, and horn calls – build to an overwhelming apotheosis in the finale.
Credit Suisse Main Sponsor 107
Herbert Blomstedt
Fri 10.09. SYMPHONY
Vienna Philharmonic 2 19.30 KKL Luzern, Concert Hall Vienna Philharmonic Herbert Blomstedt conductor Franz Schubert Symphony No. 7 in B minor, D 759 Unfinished 27 min
Johannes Brahms Symphony No. 4 in E minor, Op. 98 45 min
Introduction to the Concert 18.30 | KKL Luzern, Auditorium with Susanne Stähr (in German) CHF 320/220/150/40
“THE CONDUCTOR IS THE FIRST ONE TO HEAR” Herbert Blomstedt “You must change yourself,” Herbert Blomstedt declared last summer during the Festival’s podcast “Happy Hour.” What a remarkable motto for a 93-year-old! But perhaps this is precisely the key to his ability to remain so youthful and to radiate an unbroken vitality. No wonder Blomstedt took advantage of the coronavirus lockdown to make some new discoveries; he studied no fewer than eight new scores. At the same time, he has also taken up the supposedly familiar repertoire again: works such as Schubert’s stirring Unfinished Symphony, which the composer abandoned after only two movements, though these in themselves could hardly be more complete. Blomstedt will now present his latest findings as he conducts the Vienna Philharmonic. In the second part, Blomstedt will focus on the Brahms Fourth, whose intimate melodies he likens to “a musical embrace,” but “without any sentimentality.” He regards the Passacaglia finale as “a very strong piece: very moving, rich, and novel, yet difficult to shape.” That he will manage to do so masterfully is beyond question.
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Credit Suisse Main Sponsor
GRAND OPERA FOR LITTLE PEOPLE
Sat 11.09. MUSIC FOR FUTURE
When Hans and Greta sing and dance, they naturally want the audience to join in to make it really fun! In the process, things sometimes get broken, especially when an unknown woman with lots of ideas has her fingers in the pie. No wonder, then, that the mother scolds Hans and Greta and sends them to the forest to pick berries. There, in addition to berries, there are also mushrooms, but they are dangerous and can have unexpected effects. Besides, there is this woman again – is she fun or actually the opposite? In any case, she doesn’t like it when people nibble on her little house without asking and speak badly of her. Then she can become really unpleasant ... Gretel becomes Greta, the witch’s broom becomes a vacuum cleaner. Hans and Greta is based on the Grimm Brothers’ fairy-tale but is set in the here and now. It’s about good and evil and about what makes reasonable judgments versus mere prejudices: “If I’m not sure, I’d better look twice!” The young Festival audience will be actively involved in this colorful and witty piece of musical theater fun. And some of the little guests will even suddenly become Hans or Greta.
Family Concert – Opera 11.00 and 14.00 KKL Luzern, Lucerne Hall Taschenoper Lübeck: Marlene Metzger Greta, Sandman, Dew Fairy
Margrit Dürr/Dorothee Bienert Baker, Mother, Witch
Giacomo Schmidt Hans, Father Dirk Rave accordion Cornelia Bach violin Carl Augustin musical direction Sascha Mink staging Katia Diegmann decor “Hans and Greta” based on Engelbert Humperdinck’s opera Hänsel und Gretel arranged by Margrit Dürr and Julian Metzger (sung in German) 45 min
Scenes from Hans and Greta
for everyone ages 6 and up A production of Taschenoper Lübeck in cooperation with Theater Lübeck
CHF 20/10 (adults/children)
with the friendly support of the Geert and Lore BlankenSchlemper Foundation Charitable Accentus Foundation 109
Yuja Wang
Sat 11.09. SYMPHONY
Budapest Festival Orchestra 1 19.30 KKL Luzern, Concert Hall Budapest Festival Orchestra Iván Fischer conductor Yuja Wang piano Franz Liszt Piano Concerto No. 1 in E-flat major, S 124 21 min
A Faust Symphony, S 108 original version of 1854 58 min
Introduction to the Concert 18.30 | KKL Luzern, Auditorium with Susanne Stähr (in German)
“NONE OF YOU UNDERSTAND THIS, HA HA!” Hans von Bülow on the main theme of Liszt’s Concerto in E-flat major Super-virtuoso and visionary composer, womanizer and Franciscan, patriot and citizen of the world: Franz Liszt, perhaps the first pop star in the history of classical music, was a study in the most curious contradictions – which is what makes him such a fascinating figure. Our “crazy” summer of 2021 would be remiss not to include this figure, believed by many to be in alliance with higher powers (divine or diabolical). “Artiste étoile” Yuja Wang will perform the notorious First Piano Concerto, which Liszt tailored to his own manual skills, including his breathtaking dexterity. And in doing so, she will show that virtuoso grandstanding is by no means just a male domain. Liszt’s delight in demonic sounds is also obvious in what follows, when Iván Fischer and the Budapest Festival Orchestra perform A Faust Symphony. Its third movement is dedicated to Mephistopheles, the incarnation of the carnal. The work, which will be heard in its original version, is Liszt’s orchestral masterpiece, showing that he was a pioneer in the field of tone poetry.
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CHF 240/150/100/30
isten | Look | L Enjoy – e er at th Togeth rt conce 124 see p.
“ITS RULE IS TO BE WITHOUT RULES”
Sun 12.09. SYMPHONY
Franz Liszt on “gypsy music” Iván Fischer is a specialist in offbeat ideas. He will give yet another example of this with a finale program that promises to turn every-thing we’re accustomed to upside down. As his starting point, Fischer has chosen the music of the Roma from Hungary. This music caused a sensation in the 19th century, when it was known as “gypsy music” and influenced countless classical composers, including Johannes Brahms, Franz Liszt, and Pablo de Sarasate. Fischer calls it “one of the great cultural treasures of Europe.” The concert will have an unorthodox start with improvisations by Jenő Lisztes, likely today’s best-known virtuoso of the cimbalom (the Hungarian dulcimer). For Brahms’s Hungarian Dances, a second “orchestra” – a “gipsy band” – will suddenly appear onstage to perform these spirited pieces in its own way. What is authentic and what is merely “imitation”? And the mood will reach a boiling point when the Budapest Festival Orchestra not only plays but also sings Brahms’s Fourth Hungarian Dance. This ravishingly crazy finale is not to be missed!
Budapest Festival Orchestra 2 17.00 KKL Luzern, Concert Hall Budapest Festival Orchestra Iván Fischer conductor and host Jenő Lisztes, Lajos Sárközi jr., László Ónodi, and Rudolf Sárközi “Gipsy Band”
József Lendvay violin (Sarasate) Brahms, Liszt, and “Gipsy Music” Jenő Lisztes Improvisation on the cimbalom 3 min
Franz Liszt Hungarian Rhapsody in C-sharp minor, S 359, no. 2 10 min
Iván Fischer
Johannes Brahms Hungarian Dances WoO 1, nos. 1 and 6 played in alternation by the “Gipsy Band” and the Budapest Festival Orchestra 15 min
Pablo de Sarasate Zigeunerweisen, Op. 20 10 min
Johannes Brahms Hungarian Dance WoO 1, no. 4 arranged for a singing orchestra by Iván Fischer 4 min
Johannes Brahms/ Arnold Schoenberg Andante con moto and Rondo alla zingarese from the Piano Quartet No. 1 in G minor, Op. 25 20 min CHF 240/150/100/30
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THIS IS LUCERNE FESTIVAL
12 ESSENTIALS 24 AGENDA 34 SPECIALS 46 CONCERTS 112 SUPPORTERS 114 Partners 118 Friends of Lucerne Festival
120 SERVICE
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SUP− PORTERS
THANK YOU GRAZIE MERCI Great musical experiences need strong partners. We warmly thank all of our partners and supporters for their invaluable commitment!
Cooperation Partners AMAG Audi Center Luzern – Car Partner Confiserie Sprüngli – Chocolate Partner Egon Zehnder KKL Luzern – Event Partner Luzern Tourismus MetaDesign – Partner in Communication Radio SRF Kultur – Media Partner Ringier AG – Media Partner Grants and Subsidies Kanton Luzern Stadt Luzern
Many thanks also go to our friends and all those supporters who do not wish to be mentioned by name.
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Official Rail Carrier
Lucerne Festival is a member of
Main Sponsors
Theme Sponsor
Concert Sponsors Artemis Group / Franke Group Dr. Christoph M. Müller and Sibylla M. Müller KPMG AG Nestlé S.A. Carla Schwöbel-Braun Co-Sponsors Andermatt Swiss Alps AG Apricum Circle B. Braun Medical AG Bucherer AG la Mobilière Family Goer Glencore Schindler Elevator Ltd. Swiss Life Swiss Re Zuger Kantonalbank Foundations Arthur Waser Foundation Beisheim Foundation Bernard van Leer Foundation Lucerne
Cleven Foundation Credit Suisse Foundation Else v. Sick Stiftung Ernst Göhner Stiftung Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation Fondation SUISA Fritz-Gerber-Stiftung für begabte junge Menschen Geert and Lore Blanken Schlemper Foundation Charitable Accentus Foundation Hilti Foundation Josef Müller Stiftung Muri Kunststiftung NRW Landis & Gyr Foundation Pro Helvetia, Arts Council of Switzerland René und Susanne Braginsky Stiftung RHL Foundation Ruth Burkhalter-Stiftung zur Förderung junger Musiktalente Foundation Melinda Esterházy de Galantha Zurich Foundation Swiss Music Competition for Youth Strebi-Stiftung Luzern 115
CREATING SOMETHING NEW
The term “world premiere” can sound like a dry, even bureaucratic term – it’s often diminished into the abbreviation “WP.” Yet it refers to one of the most spectacular events in musical life, when a new, never-before-heard composition is unveiled. Nobody really knows what to expect. What will the new score sound like? How will the audience react? Will the work catch on and establish itself in the repertoire?
The “Roche Commissions” make such moments of novelty and openness possible. Supported by its long-standing main sponsor Roche, Lucerne Festival awards work commissions to outstanding contemporary composers every two years. Since 2003, nine new scores by the following composers have been premiered at the Summer Festival: Sir Harrison Birtwistle, Chen Yi, Hanspeter Kyburz, George Benjamin, Toshio Hosokawa, Matthias Pintscher, Unsuk Chin, Olga Neuwirth, and Peter Eötvös. Alternating with the “Roche Commissions” since 2013, “Roche Young Commissions” has also been a regular series; it commissions two young composers to write new
Kirsten Milenko and Alex Vaughan | “Roche Young Commissions” 2021
Long live music! But in order for it to live, music needs to keep developing. And through the “Roche Commissions” and the “Roche Young Commissions,” Lucerne Festival awards commissions to contemporary composers to create new works every summer.
Rebecca Saunders | “Roche Commissions” 2020
works. Through intensive interactions with two young conductors and Wolfgang Rihm, Artistic Director of the Lucerne Festival Academy, the composers develop new orchestral works and present them to the public during the Festival Summer in Lucerne. In addition, they have the opportunity to hear their scores after a year – i.e., halfway through the process – in an initial practical run-through by the accomplished musicians of the Lucerne Festival Contemporary Orchestra. Prizewinners to date have included Matthew Kaner, Marianna Liik, Samy Moussa, Piotr Peszat, Josep Planells Schiaffino, and Lisa Streich.
to the coronavirus pandemic, the musicians will unveil three new orchestral works this year. Berlin-based British composer-inresidence Rebecca Saunders will present her new piano concerto to an utterance at Lucerne’s 2021 Summer Festival. And Kirsten Milenko and Alex Vaughan have written new orchestral works as this year’s “Roche Young Commissions.” We eagerly look forward to three exciting premieres!
The Lucerne Festival Contemporary Orchestra, the Festival’s in-house orchestra of excellence for the music of our time, introduces these new works in exemplary premiere concerts. Since the 2020 Summer Festival could not be held as originally planned due 117
FRIENDS OF LUCERNE FESTIVAL Communication between artists and the audience as well as between generations is important to us. That is why we support one of the most important music festivals in the world. The Friends have been an indispensable partner of Lucerne Festival for more than 50 years. Through our personal commitment and generous annual donations, we make a significant contribution to the Festival’s financial security and sustainability. We do more than support the Festival of today, for example by sponsoring the Lucerne Festival Orchestra. We are also dedicated to its further development by fostering young
Firmly anchored in Lucerne as a city of music and in Switzerland as a whole, while at the same time internationally networked, we offer you the opportunity to deepen your concert experience through exclusive discussions with artists, encounters with musical experts, and rehearsal visits; at the same time, we invite you to become part of a community of music fans as well as of the “Festival family.” We are particularly eager to attract young adults to our circle of Friends and to benefit from their input and inspiration. That’s why we introduced the Young Friends program: they attend concerts together at discounted rates and meet regularly to share their passion for classical music.
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We are passionate about outstanding performances of both traditional and contemporary repertoire.
talent through the Lucerne Festival Academy and Music for Future, thus establishing a basis for the art of tomorrow to flourish.
Rehearsal visit with the Orchestra of the Lucerne Festival Alumni
We love classical music.
Rehearsal with Riccardo Chailly
Artist talk with Lucas Macías Navarro
Lucerne Festival thanks all of its Friends for their solidarity and generous support. A special thank-you goes to: Thomas Abegg Nachlass Ernest I. Ascher Bâloise Holding Ltd. Stanley Bergman Regula Bibus-Waser Dr. Christian Casal and Katja Biella Casal Project Villa Serdang Oswald J. Grübel Berthold Herrmann and Dr. Mariann Grawe-Gerber André and Rosalie Hoffmann Dr. Rudolf W. Hug Dr. Klaus Jenny Katharina Marchal–Kovarbasic Dr. Urs Mühlebach Dr. Christoph M. Müller and Sibylla M. Müller Makoto Nakao Dr. Lutz and Christiane Peters Dr. Annemarie S. Reynolds Charlotte Scheidegger-Vonlanthen Carla Schwöbel-Braun Monique and Dr. Thomas Staehelin-Bonnard Dr. Dolf and Maria Stockhausen Alan Vickery Margrit Wullschleger-Schmidlin
Contact Stiftung Freunde Lucerne Festival Isabelle Köhler, Relationship Manager Hirschmattstrasse 13 | CH–6002 Luzern t +41 41 226 44 52 | i.koehler@lucernefestival.ch lucernefestival.ch/friends 119
2
THIS IS LUCERNE FESTIVAL
12 ESSENTIALS 24 AGENDA 34 SPECIALS 46 CONCERTS 112 SUPPORTERS 120 SERVICE 122 Ticketing Information 124 Discounts 125 Attending the Concert 126 Getting There 127 Map of Lucerne | Venues 128 Seating Map 130 Hotels 135 The KKL Lucerne
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SERVICE
TICKETING INFORMATION
Online tickets sales begin on 17 May 2021, 12.00 noon (Lucerne Time) Mail and fax sales begin on 19 May 2021 Telephone sales
begin on 19 May 2021 Mon – Fri from 10.00 to 12.00 noon (Lucerne Time); also from 14.00 to 17.00 during the week when general ticket sales begin Telephone hours during the Summer Festival: Mon – Sun from 10.00 to 12.00 and from 14.00 to 17.00
Tickets & Information Lucerne Festival Sales & Visitor Service | P.O. Box | CH–6002 Luzern t +41 (0)41 226 44 80 | ticketbox@lucernefestival.ch | lucernefestival.ch 122
KARTENVERKAUF
During the Summer Festival At the Lucerne Festival ticket box near the main entrance of the KKL Luzern (lakeside), you can purchase tickets for the Summer Festival daily from 10 August 10 to 12 September 2021, from 2.00 p.m. until the evening concert starts.
We kindly ask you to check our website at lucernefestival.ch before the Festival starts for information on ordering and the registration process for our free offers. Due to the current situation and contact tracing requirements, we have not yet finalized the ordering process.
For morning, midday, and late-night events at the KKL Luzern, as well as for events at an outdoor venue, you can buy your tickets (subject to availability) on site starting one hour before the concert begins. Only cash payment is accepted at the outdoor venues.
Ticket Refunds Unfortunately, we cannot accept returns of tickets that have already been purchased. Due to contact tracing as required by the authorities, tickets are personal and nontransferable. However, tickets that you have purchased online via Print@Home can be re-personalized independently in your customer account. Tickets that you have ordered via the Lucerne Festival ticket office unfortunately cannot be re-personalized independently. In this case, please contact Lucerne Festival as early as possible.
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Because tickets must be personalized, we recommend early purchase online via our website lucernefestival.ch (up to three hours before the event starts).
Personalized Tickets In order to ensure contact tracing as required by the authorities, we collect personal data for all concert visitors when they purchase a ticket (first and last name, postal code, telephone number, and e-mail address). When purchasing tickets, you expressly confirm that it is not permitted to resell purchased tickets. The tickets are personal and nontransferable. Ticket holders must be present at the event. Appropriate checks may be carried out at the entrance.
Our Health Protection Plan Your health is close to our hearts! To ensure that you can enjoy your concert visit free of worry even in this time of coronavirus, we have developed a comprehensive protection plan together with the KKL Luzern that we continuously adapt to the current situation and coordinate with the responsible authorities. Complete information, supplemented by answers to frequently asked questions (FAQ), can be found on our website at lucernefestival.ch/protection-concept.
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DISCOUNTS
Discounts for Students and KulturLegi Holders Special offers for events that are not sold out will be available at the 2021 Summer Festival for grade school, university, and vocational students as well as members of the JTC up to the age of 29 as well as Kultur-Legi holders. Due to the current situation and the requirements for contact tracing, we have not yet finalized the purchase process. Detailed information on these offers will be available as soon as the Festival begins at lucernefestival.ch/ students. Special Offer: “Look | Listen | Enjoy – Together at the Concert” When purchasing a ticket for selected events, adults will receive two free tickets of the same value to bring their young companions (children, grandchildren, godchildren, etc.) to the concert for free. This special offer is valid for price groups 1, 2, and 3. The selected events for which this offer is available are highlighted in the program section by a green circle. We will be publishing a list of more concerts about four weeks after the start of online sales, which you can find at lucernefestival.ch/look-listen-enjoy.
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WhatsApp-News for Students Which concerts have tickets still available for students at the box office? What’s on at the Festival for primary, secondary, and university and vocational students? Use our WhatsApp News feature to get up-to-date information. How does it work? Simply add a contact for our number +41 (0)79 385 36 53 and send the message “Start” using WhatsApp. Special Package Deal You can order the Rebecca Saunders package online at lucernefestival.ch/saunders or by using the order form as soon as advance sales start.
ATTENDING THE CONCERT KONZERTBESUCH
Health Protection Plan We are continually adapting our health protection plan to the latest developments. The most up-to-date information, supplemented by answers to frequently asked questions (FAQ), can be found on our website. Entrance to the Concert Hall The main KKL Concert Hall opens 30 minutes before the beginning of the concert; late entry is not permitted. For events in the KKL’s Lucerne Hall or at one of the venues outside the KKL, if applicable, access will start shortly before the beginning of the event. If the concert is missed on account of tardy arrival, tickets will not be refunded. Read the Program Booklet before the Concert You may purchase your program booklet online in PDF form starting about seven days before the event in question. Each concert’s detail page on our website has a direct link where you can purchase and download the PDF. Audio and Video Recording For all Lucerne Festival events, customers are strictly prohibited from making visual or audio recordings, including even for private use. Failure to comply will result in expulsion from the event venue. Lucerne Festival makes audio and/or video recordings of certain performances. With the purchase of a concert ticket, the customer understands that Lucerne Festival also uses recordings in which it is possible that he or she may appear.
Cloakroom The use of the cloakroom in the KKL Luzern is free of charge. Handbags and backpacks up to a size of 42 x 29.7 cm (A3) may be taken into the hall. All larger bags and luggage, as well as other bulky items, must be left at the cloakroom for a charge of CHF 5 per item. For security reasons, coats and jackets are also not permitted to be taken into the hall and can be left free of charge at the cloakroom. Information on Wheelchairs The main concert hall of the KKL Luzern has six wheelchair spaces with a good view of the stage, which are available on special terms. The Festival cannot ensure that accompanying persons will receive a seat in the same price range or in the general vicinity. You can access the KKL Luzern through ground-level doors directly into the foyer, from which elevators give you access to all levels of the building. Wheelchair-accessible restrooms are located near the cloakrooms on the downstairs level. Wheelchair spaces are also available at the other event locations. Should you require help at any event venue, please do not hesitate to contact us. Our local staff is always available to help with questions and problems. General Terms & Conditions The General Terms & Conditions may be found at lucernefestival.ch/en/agb.
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GETTING THERE
Arrival and Departure by Train: 40% Rebate in the Swiss Rail Network Your concert tickets entitle you to a discount of 40% (1st or 2nd class) for a round trip to Lucerne. (Concert tickets must be presented upon inspection.) With the half-fare travel card, you can receive a discount of up to 70% off the full price. This special ticket must be purchased before beginning your trip: either at a Swiss Rail ticket counter, from a ticket machine, by calling the SBB Contact Center at 0848 44 66 88 (CHF 0.08/minute in the Swiss telephone network), or online at the SBB ticket shop (sbb.ch/lucernefestival). Arrival via Car The KKL Luzern is located right next to Lucerne’s main train station. Owing to the parking and traffic situation, we recommend using public transportation during the Festival season. Guests who travel by car are advised to observe the city’s parking guidance system and to take the bus from the parking garages to the KKL Luzern. The parking garages are indicated on the adjacent map; you can find additional information at parking-luzern.ch.
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Park & Ride Several train stations outside the City of Lucerne offer Park & Ride for rail travel to Lucerne. The following stations are especially convenient and provide ample parking: Sursee, Rotkreuz, Zug, Wolhusen, ArthGoldau, and Sarnen.
Would you like to learn more about Lucerne and its surrounding area? Are you in need of accommodation? Tourist Information Tourist Information Luzern Zentralstrasse 5 | CH–6002 Luzern t +41 (0)41 227 17 17 luzern@luzern.com | luzern.com Accommodation Lucerne’s Tourist Office can help you find accommodation. Central reservations no.: t +41 41 227 17 27 | luzern@luzern.com
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Venues KKL KKL Luzern, Europaplatz 1, Luzern E Europaplatz HL Hochschule Luzern – Musik, Arsenalstr. 28, Kriens (Bus no. 14 from the main train station) I Inseli, Inseliquai, Luzern JK Jesuitenkirche (Jesuit Church), Bahnhofstrasse 11a, Luzern LK Lukaskirche (Church of St. Luke), Morgartenstrasse 16, Luzern LT Luzerner Theater, Theaterstrasse 2, Luzern M Maskenliebhabersaal, Süesswinkel 7, Luzern MK Matthäuskirche (Church of St. Matthew), Hertensteinstrasse 30, Luzern S Südpol, Arsenalstrasse 28, Kriens (Bus no. 14 from the main train station)
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SEATING MAP
4. Gallery right 3. Gallery right 2. Gallery right 1. Gallery right
4. Balcony 3. Balcony
4. Gallery left 3. Gallery left 2. Gallery left 1. Gallery left
2. Balcony 1. Balcony
Front stalls
Stage Organ Loft
Front Stalls Gallery right
Front Stalls Gallery left
Categories 1
2
3
4
This seating map shows the distribution of the four price categories in the KKL Concert Hall. The space available may be limited due to the current situation, and allocation of seats is made in compliance with the legal parameters. Lucerne Festival reserves the right to release individual sectors for sale at a later date. The availability status of sectors and seats is updated daily at lucernefestival.ch. Subject to change without notice. 128
HOTELS Hotels rated by hotelleriesuisse (H) / GastroSuisse (G) Ä(Superior) Renaissance Lucerne Hotel G 041 226 87 87 info@renaissancelucerne.com The Hotel Lucerne, Autograph Collection G 041 226 86 86 info@the-hotel.ch Bürgenstock Hotels, Bürgenstock H 041 612 60 00 information@ burgenstockresort.com Park Hotel, Vitznau H 041 399 60 60 info@parkhotel-vitznau.ch The Chedi Andermatt, Andermatt H 041 888 74 88 info@chediandermatt.com Villa Honegg, Bürgenstock H 041 618 32 00 info@villa-honegg.ch
Central Luzern H 041 210 50 60 info@hotel-central-luzern.com De la Paix H 041 418 80 00 info@de-la-paix.ch Des Alpes H 041 417 20 60 info@desalpes-luzern.ch Drei Könige H 041 248 04 80 hotel@drei-koenige.ch ibis Styles Luzern City H 041 418 48 48 H8549@accor.com Thorenberg G 041 250 52 00 info@thorenberg.ch Arcade, Sins H 041 789 78 78 info@hotel-arcade.ch Holiday Inn Express, Luzern-Kriens H 041 545 69 00 info@hiex-luzern.ch Holiday Inn Express Luzern-Neuenkirch H 041 288 28 28 info@expressluzern.com Lux, Emmenbrücke H 041 289 40 50 office@hotel-lux.ch Taverne 1879, Bürgenstock H 041 612 60 00 information@ burgenstockresort.com (Superior)
Ö Grand Hotel National H 041 419 09 09 Schweizerhof H 041 410 04 10 Waldhotel Healthy Living Bürgenstock H 041 612 60 00
info@grandhotel-national.com info@schweizerhof-luzern.ch information@ burgenstockresort.com
Stern Luzern ibis Luzern Kriens Ó
H H
041 227 50 60 info@sternluzern.ch 041 349 49 49 h2982@accor.com
Chärnsmatt, Rothenburg
H
041 280 34 34 info@chaernsmatt.ch
À(Superior)
k
Art Deco Hotel Montana H 041 419 00 00 info@hotel-montana.ch Hotel Astoria G 041 226 88 88 info@astoria-luzern.ch Hermitage Seehotel H 041 375 81 81 welcome@hermitage-luzern.ch Kreuz, Sachseln H 041 660 53 00 info@kreuz-sachseln.net Palace Hotel, Bürgenstock H 041 612 60 00 information@ burgenstockresort.com Sonnmatt Luzern H 041 375 32 32 info@sonnmatt.ch Radisson Blu Hotel Luzern H 041 369 90 00 info.lucerne@radissonblu.com
Ibis Budget Luzern City Swiss Lodge
H
041 367 80 00 H6782@accor.com
Balm, Meggen BnB Haus im Löchli Hammer, Eigenthal Jugendherberge Luzern Pickwick Sonnenberg, Kriens The Bed + Breakfast Gasthaus Kreuz, Meggen Swiss-Chalet B&B, Merlischachen
H H H H H H H H
041 377 11 35 info@balm.ch 041 250 90 73 bnb_loechli@bluewin.ch 041 497 52 05 info@hotel-hammer.ch 041 420 88 00 luzern@youthhostel.ch 041 410 59 27 welcome@hotelpickwick.ch 041 320 66 44 info@hotelsonnenberg.ch 041 310 15 14 info@theBandB.ch 041 377 11 14 info@kreuz-meggen.ch
H
041 854 54 54 info@swiss-chalet.ch
Õ Ameron Hotel Flora H 041 227 66 66 flora@flora-hotel.com Cascada Boutique Hotel H 041 226 80 88 info@cascada.ch Château Gütsch H 041 289 14 14 info@chateau-guetsch.ch Continental-Park H 041 228 90 50 hotel@continental.ch Des Balances H 041 418 28 28 info@balances.ch Grand Hotel Europe H 041 370 00 11 info@europe-luzern.ch Hofgarten H 041 410 88 88 hotel@hofgarten.ch Monopol H 041 226 43 43 mail@monopolluzern.ch Rebstock H 041 417 18 19 hotel@rebstock-luzern.ch Wilden Mann H 041 210 16 66 mail@wilden-mann.ch Hotel Sempachersee, Nottwil H 041 939 23 23 info@hotelsempachersee.ch Parkhotel, Zug H/G 041 727 48 48 info@parkhotel.ch Schloss-Hotel, Merlischachen H 041 854 54 54 info@swiss-chalet.ch Seehotel Sternen, Horw H 041 348 24 82 info@seehotel-sternen.ch Winkelried, Stansstad H 041 618 23 23 hotel@winkelried.ch Ã(Superior) Waldstätterhof H 041 227 12 71 info@hotel-waldstaetterhof.ch Hotel Pilatus-Kulm H 041 329 12 12 hotels@pilatus.ch Jugendstilhotel Paxmontana G 041 666 24 00 info@paxmontana.ch Seerausch Hotel, Beckenried H/G 041 501 01 31 info@seerausch.ch Zugertor, Zug H 041 729 38 38 info@zugertor.ch Ô Altstadt Hotel Krone Ambassador Anker Bellevue Boutique Hotel Weisses Kreuz
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H H H H
041 419 44 00 info@krone-luzern.ch 041 418 81 00 hotel@ambassador.ch 041 220 88 00 anker@remimag.ch 041 371 27 27 info@bellevue-luzern.ch
H
041 418 82 20 contact@altstadthotelluzern.ch
Hotels not rated by hotelleriesuisse / GastroSuisse Alpha Alpina Luzern Altstadt Hotel Le Stelle Altstadt Hotel Magic Anstatthotel Business Apartments Appartements Hofquartier Beau Séjour Luzern AG B & B Bettstatt Neustadt Guest House Daniela HITrental AG Hotel Linde Luzern Lucerne Business Apartments Braui Luzernerhof Richemont RomeroHaus Royal Tourist Hotel Bellevue, Pilatus-Kulm Schwendelberg
041 240 42 80 041 210 00 77 041 412 22 20 041 417 12 20
info@hotelalpha.ch info@alpina-luzern.ch info@lestelle.ch mail@magic-hotel.ch
041 755 00 03 041 410 43 47 041 410 16 81 041 210 43 09 041 240 51 41 041 311 29 29 041 410 31 93
mail@anstatthotel.ch info@appartements-luzern.ch info@beausejourlucerne.ch info@bettstatt.ch info@guesthouse-daniela.ch info@hitrental.com
079 663 89 20 041 418 47 47 041 375 85 80 041 249 39 29 041 419 46 46 041 410 24 74 041 329 12 12 041 340 35 40
mail@lucernebusinessapartments.ch info@luzernerhof.ch gastronomie@richemont.swiss romerohaus@igarbeit.ch info@hotel-royal-luzern.ch info@thetouristhotel.ch hotels@pilatus.ch info@schwendelberg.com
Tourist Information Luzern Zentralstrasse 5, located in the main Lucerne train station | CH–6002 Luzern t +41 (0)41 227 17 27 luzern@luzern.com | luzern.com
Pilatusstrasse 15, CH-6002 Lucerne, Tel. +41 41 226 87 87, www.renaissance-lucerne.com
Design Jean Nouvel
Sempacherstrasse 14, CH-6002 Lucerne, Tel. +41 41 226 86 86, www.the-hotel.ch
EXTENDED OPENING HOURS during the Lucerne Summer Festival
Pilatusstrasse 29, CH-6002 Lucerne, Tel. +41 41 226 88 88, www.astoria-luzern.ch
Telefon +41 (0)41 410 0 410
www.schweizerhof-luzern.ch
A gourmet restaurant with atmosphere. gourmet restaurant with atmosphere. AAgourmet restaurant with atmosphere. Have a feast, savour your choice, Have a feast, savour your choice, Have a and feast, savour your choice, enjoy yourself. andenjoy enjoyyourself. yourself. and
Indulge. Indulge. Indulge.
Hotel Wilden Mann Luzern Hotel Wilden Mann ·Luzern Bahnhofstrasse · 6003 Luzern T +41 41 210 16 66 Hotel30Wilden Mann Luzern Bahnhofstrasse 30 · 6003 Luzern · T +41 41 210 16 66 Bahnhofstrassewww.wilden-mann.ch 30 · 6003 Luzern · T +41 41 210 16 66 www.wilden-mann.ch www.wilden-mann.ch
F R O M B Ü R G E N S TO C K R E S O RT D I R EC T LY TO T H E CO N C E RT H A L L As a hotel guest you enjoy free travel with the Bürgenstock Funicular and the Shuttle Boat to Europaplatz in front of the KKL.
Bürgenstock Hotels & Resort – 6363 Obbürgen – Switzerland T +41 (0)41 612 60 00 – info@burgenstockresort.com – burgenstockresort.com
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FANCY A CULINARY SHORT BREAK?
DINNER & CASINO: CHF 88.– INSTEAD OF CHF 122.–
We welcome you at Restaurant Olivo.
Make your reservation: 041 418 56 61 www.grandcasinoluzern.ch
Jetzt registrieren!
Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons Print in Perfection for 125 years.
Together, we create a masterpiece of printing that leaves a lasting impression – to please your eyes in line with your ears.
impressive
WELCOME TO LUCIDE Head chef Michèle Meier, GaultMillau female chef of the year 2021, and host Christian Gujan along with their team are looking forward to welcoming you to the restaurant (awarded 16 GaultMillau points) with its breathtaking view. Information & reservation lucide-luzern.ch lucide@kkl-luzern.ch +41 41 226 71 10
A RECIPE FOR MUSIC: THE KKL LUZERN It’s one of the best-sounding locations in the world: the KKL Luzern’s concert hall, created by Jean Nouvel and renowned for its phenomenal acoustics and exquisite architecture alike. This is where the majority of Lucerne Festival’s concerts take place. With a feeling for geometry, forward-looking thinkers in the 19th century had already come to realize what really matters: the sound is best when the concert hall is shaped like a shoebox. Jean Nouvel and the American acoustician Russell Johnson emphasized this even more: from the outset they understood that a modern concert hall needs to be acoustically variable, that Bach and Bruckner require different sonic environments. The acoustic canopy over the stage, a total of 50 heavy echo chamber structures weighing up to eight tons, plaster reliefs, and all of the materials that are used help to implement the highest level of acoustical quality. Along with double doors that swallow noise and a ventilation system that operates well
below the threshold of audibility, Russell Johnson established a foundation for what any good acoustical environment requires: the sort of absolute quiet in which sounds are allowed to resonate across their entire dynamic range – from the gentlest pianissimo to the mightiest fortissimo. This fastidious attention to quality extends to the culinary sphere: with their uniquely composed menus, the Restaurant Lucide (rated 16 points by Gault Millau), the Le Piaf and the Seebar round out the total experience of the KKL Luzern. KKL Luzern Europlatz 1 | CH–6005 Luzern t +41 (0)41 226 70 70 info@kkl-luzern.ch | kkl-luzern.ch 135
FESTIVAL-CITY LuCErnE The Festival City Lucerne delights throughout the year: classical music, blues, rock, comics and enthralling sport events. Zaubersee Festival 10-year anniversary 25 – 30 May 2021 www.zaubersee.ch LUCERNE REGATTA 21 – 23 May 2021 www.lucerneregatta.com Athletics Meeting Lucerne 29 – 30 June 2021 www.spitzenleichtathletik.ch
Lucerne Festival | Summer 10 August – 12 September 2021 www.lucernefestival.ch
Lucerne Blues Festival 6 – 14 November 2021 www.bluesfestival.ch
World Band Festival Lucerne 25 September – 03 October 2021 www.worldbandfestival.ch
Lucerne Festival | Autumm 19 – 21 November 2021 www.lucernefestival.ch
SwissCityMarathon – Lucerne 31 October 2021 www.swisscitymarathon.ch
Lilu Light Festival Lucerne 6 – 16 January 2022 www.lichtfestivalluzern.ch
BLUE BALLS FESTIVAL 23 – 31 July 2021 www.blueballs.ch
Luzern Luzern Tourismus Tourismus -Tourist – Tourist Information Information | Zentralstrasse | Zentralstrasse 5 | CH-6002 5 | CH-6002 Luzern Luzern Tel. +41 Tel. (0)41 +41 (0)41 227 17 2271717| luzern@luzern.com 17 | luzern@luzern.com | www.luzern.com | www.luzern.com
First-class tones. sbb.ch/lucernefestival PUBLIC TRANSPORT TICKET WITH
40%* Picture: KKL Lucerne
DISCOUNT
* Benefit from a 40% discount on the public transport ticket to Lucerne and back. Valid 10.8. to 12.9.2021 (on event dates). sbb.ch/lucernefestival
Art
has many forms.
At Roche we embrace science and art. Both energize our imaginations and inspire inventions - making our world better.
Magic Moments at Unique PlaceS PARTNERS OF SWISS TOP EVENTS:
10.07. 17.10.
2021
«I LIKE A BIGGER GARDEN» CHARLOTTE HERZIG, BEN SLEDSENS, JOSEPHINE TROLLER
Ben Sledsens, De Bloemenplukster, 2016, Öl, Kreide und Acryl auf Leinwand, 200 × 185 cm, Tim Van Laere Gallery, Antwerpen
IMAGE CREDITS
p. 1: Daniel Auf der Mauer/Lucerne Festival – p. 4 and 23: Stefan Deuber/Lucerne Festival – p. 6, 42, 51, 58, 60, 61, 64, 79, 82, 89, 92, 105, and 151: Priska Ketterer/Lucerne Festival – p. 8 and 48: Evgeny Razumny – p. 15, 59, 67, 72, 101, and 107: Peter Fischli/Lucerne Festival – p. 17, 43 and 49: Patrick Hürlimann/Lucerne Festival – p. 19: Norbert Kniat/DG – p. 21 and 94: Astrid Ackermann – p. 38 Schumann-Haus, Zwickau – p. 39: Wien Museum – p. 40: Staatliche Museen zu Berlin - p. 41: Google Art Project - p. 43 and 56: patriciakopatchinskaja.com – p. 49: Anna-Tia Buss – p. 50: Ueli Steingruber – p. 52: Peter von Felbert – p. 53: Jérémie Mazenq – p. 54: Robbie Lawrence – p. 55: Lukas Jahn – p. 57: Georg Anderhub/Lucerne Fesitval – p. 62, 69, 85, 91, 95, 106, and 111: Marco Borggreve – p. 63: Bernard Bayle – p. 65: berlinerbarocksolisten.de – p. 66: Astrid Karger – p. 68: Simon Fowler/Decca Classics – p. 70: Felix Broede/Sony Classical – p. 71: Alex Coman – p. 73: Martin Wieldraaijer/Stephan Maria Glöckner – p. 74: Alberto Venzago – p. 75: Kaupo Kickas – p. 76: Kirk Edwards – p. 77: Monika Rittershaus – p. 78: Paolo Manzionna – p. 80 and 110: Julia Wesely – p. 81: Dimitri Djuric – p. 83: Alexander Shapunov – p. 84, 118, and 119: Manuela Jans/Lucerne Festival – p. 86: Uwe Arens – p. 87: JF Mousseau – p. 88: James Mollison – p. 90: Michael Papendieck – p. 92: Oscar Ortega – p. 93: estado.com.br – p. 96: Eric Richmond – p. 97: Gregor Hohenberg/Sony Classical – p. 98: Gerhard Klocker – p. 99: Ingo Höhn – p. 100: Ben Ealovega – p. 102: Les Brewster – p. 103: Harald Hoffmann/DG – p. 104: Giorgio Marafioti – p. 108: Martin U.K. Lengemann – p. 109: taschenoper-luebeck.de – p. 116: Nik Hunger – p. 117: EvS Musikstiftung
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THE FESTIVAL TEAM
OVERALL MANAGEMENT Michael Haefliger*, Executive and Artistic Director Alexandra Lankes Press & Public Relations Nina Steinhart, Director Katharina Schillen Sponsoring & Friends Marianna Rossi, Director Claudia Cavallari | Cynthia Coletto | Luca Gnos | Hana Javorska | Isabelle Köhler | Katharina Stadlin
ARTISTIC OFFICE
BUSINESS AREAS Danièle Gross*, Business Director Finance & Human Resources Marcel Kaufmann | Stephanie Murray-Robertson Marketing & Digital Development Bettina Jaggi, Director Jovana Bozic | Mariagrazia Panzarella | Jason Planzer | Jacqueline Saner | Gisela Sigrist Sales & Visitor Service Dominik Wirth, Director Claudia Cavallari | Hana Javorska | Brigitte Keller | Regina Meyer | Deborah Staub * Member of the Board
Christiane Weber*, Director Artistic Office Katharina Christen | Silvia Rösselet | Susanne Stähr, Dramaturgy | Monika Widler Lucerne Festival Contemporary Felix Heri, Director Lea Arnet | Mark Sattler, Dramaturgy Editorial Susanne Stähr, Director Denise Fankhauser | Malte Lohmann
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ADDRESSES | PUBLISHING CREDITS
Lucerne Festival Hirschmattstrasse 13 | P.O. Box | CH–6002 Luzern t +41 (0)41 226 44 00 | f +41 (0)41 226 44 60 info@lucernefestival.ch | lucernefestival.ch Sales & Visitor Service Lucerne Festival | P.O. Box | CH–6002 Luzern t +41 (0)41 226 44 80 | ticketbox@lucernefestival.ch | lucernefestival.ch Publisher Stiftung Lucerne Festival Executive and Artistic Director Michael Haefliger Editing and Content Susanne Stähr, Malte Lohmann English Language Editor and Translator Thomas May Corporate Design Concept MetaDesign Zürich Layout and Execution Denise Fankhauser Advertising Patricia Thérisod, Mariagrazia Panzarella Printing Engelberger Druck AG, Stans This program was published in May 2021 and is subject to alteration without prior notice. Printed prices are subject to correction. Follow Lucerne Festival on
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Printed in Switzerland | © 2021 by Lucerne Festival 144
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