08.08. – 10.09. 2023 Summer Festival Program
When was the last time you were in Paradise? On a desert island, on a mountain peak, in a cathedral, or perhaps in a temple devoted to gourmet? Whatever the case, Lucerne in August and September 2023 is where you will have the best prospects of entering the Garden of Eden, the Kingdom of Heaven, or the Land of Cockaigne — but without having to worry about immediately getting expelled from it again.
We have chosen “Paradise” as the theme for our Summer Festival and will explore promises of a better life in music spanning four centuries. For example, we’ll encounter delightful depictions of nature as set to music by Joseph Haydn, Antonín Dvořák, and Richard Strauss. Gustav Mahler makes us ask ourselves what happens after death, while with Anton Bruckner we aspire to the heavenly Jerusalem. Ludwig van Beethoven and Alexander Scriabin transport us into ecstatic states of intoxication. But humanity’s Fall is also a theme: Richard Wagner took this up in his opera Das Rheingold, depicting what happens when the Earth itself is looted. The climate catastrophe that results from this is currently on the minds of many musicians. This will likewise be the angle presented in this performance.
You can, of course, be certain to experience the best in the business: the finest orchestras from Berlin to Boston; the top stars of classical music, from “artiste étoile” Daniil Trifonov to AnneSophie Mutter; and the latest creations in contemporary music as presented by our composer-in-residence Enno Poppe and the Lucerne Festival Contemporary Orchestra (LFCO). And last but not least, we are looking forward to an anniversary: the one-ofa-kind Lucerne Festival Orchestra is turning 20, and we are celebrating this milestone birthday with no fewer than six concerts. Talk about heavenly expectations!
Best regards,
Beyond Eden. Ever since God kicked our primal ancestors Adam and Eve out of Paradise for eating an apple from the Forbidden Tree of Knowledge, humans have had to rely on their own devices. To be sure, we have been permitted to inhabit and populate this beautiful Earth, but we ourselves are responsible for preserving Creation, ensuring peace, and living together harmoniously. And none of this seems to be easy.
The longing for a return to Paradise drives humanity — all the more so in times of war and climate change, of famine and epidemics. But what does Paradise actually mean? Where do we find it? The word is ancient: it already existed in ancient Persian and Hebrew, found its way into Greek mythology as Elysium, and became equated with the kingdom of God, the kingdom of heaven, in both Christianity and Islam. All traditions share the idea that it involves a protected, tranquil space where no one has to worry and bliss rules.
When Lucerne Festival addresses the idea of Paradise in the summer of 2023, a range of widely different responses will result. Gustav Mahler, who is represented by no fewer than four symphonies, persistently wanted to know what happens after death. In his Third, to be heard on the Opening Concert (p. 35), he outlined a design of the universe with love positioned as the highest, most paradise-like form of existence. The Second, on the other hand, which closes the
Festival (p. 92), promises resurrection and thus a continuation of life beyond our earthly existence. In the Fourth (p. 58), Mahler even has us pay a visit to Paradise itself. And in the Seventh (p. 66), he presents such an ostentatiously jubilant finale that we are almost tempted to start doubting again …
Such doubts about the omnipotence of God and entrance into the kingdom of heaven were alien to Anton Bruckner: faith dominated and ordered the everyday life of this deeply religious Catholic. His symphonies likewise contain religious moments — not only because Bruckner often treats the orchestra like an organ or is fond of choralelike melodies. At the climax of the second movement of his Seventh Symphony (p. 73), he quotes his setting of “Non confundar” from the Te Deum: “Let me never be confounded.” In the Fourth (p. 87), he represents divine creation in music. And in the Eighth (p. 48), he builds veritable ladders to heaven, with arpeggios on the harp, the instrument of the angels, that seem to lead us into the midst of Paradise.
The
… Composers of all centuries have proven that music can depict nature in a moving way and reflect the happiness of communing with nature. Take Joseph Haydn, for example, who illustrates an idyllic panorama of the ideal world in his oratorio The Seasons Richard Strauss set the mountain world to sound in a particularly impressive way with his Alpine Symphony (p. 91). But Johannes Brahms also created a sonic symbol for the celestial world of the high mountains with an imaginary alphorn in the finale of his First
Symphony (p. 39). Antonín Dvořák intgrated bird calls into his Eighth Symphony (p. 82), Leoš Janáček evoked the magic of the forest in The Cunning Little Vixen, and Bedřich Smetana paid homage to the beauties of Bohemia by tracing the course of the Vltava River (both p. 83).
… and the Fall of Humanity
But what happens when humans transgress against divine creation? Richard Wagner was far ahead of his time with Das Rheingold (p. 55) in depicting the exploitation of nature, from which natural resources are looted, ultimately dooming the existing world order to ruin. But the expulsion from Paradise does not refer to despoliation of nature and climate change alone. The apocalypse of World War I inspired Maurice Ravel to write La Valse (p. 69), in which the splendor and glory of the old European monarchies are symbolized by the Viennese waltz, which Ravel pushes to a boiling point until it finally implodes.
Can’t we create our own Paradise? Some have posed this question before, seeking escape from the world: Richard Strauss, for example, who takes his leave for this reason at the end of his tone poem Ein Heldenleben (p. 70). Intoxication seems to be another proven means: Alexander Scriabin dedicated his Poème de l’extase to this idea (p. 59). And in his Seventh Symphony (p. 45), Ludwig van Beethoven stimulates such ecstatic states that some contemporaries believed that music like this could have been conceived only in a state of drunkenness.
The composers selected for our Contemporary programming each take a look at what a better world might be manifested: gender and racial distinctions balance each other out so that equal rights and parity become the focus. The young Swiss composer Jessie Cox is writing a new work for the Lucerne
Festival Contemporary Orchestra (LFCO) on the theme of “Paradise” (p. 49). In addition, varied LFCO ensembles will present works by Clara Iannotta, Tania León, Lei Liang, and Jalalu-Kalavert Nelson (p. 65), whose music addresses racism and discrimination and shows us how distant we remain in our everyday lives from a social paradise on earth.
Finally, even Adam and Eve, to whom we owe the trauma of Paradise Lost, will show up in person at the Summer Festival. Henry Purcell dedicated the fifth act of his music theater work The Fairy Queen (p. 80) to them and allows us to enter the Garden of Eden after all — this haven of joy and beauty where love blossoms. And all will be well again.
20 years of the Lucerne Festival Orchestra! Under Riccardo Chailly and Yannick Nézet-Séguin, our orchestra de luxe focuses on the great symphonies by Brahms, Bruckner, and Mahler. The musicians will continue their Rachmaninoff cycle, be joined by Maria João Pires and “artiste étoile” Daniil Trifonov, and also perform chamber music.
Fri 11.08. | 18.30
Opening
Lucerne Festival Orchestra 1
KKL Luzern, Concert Hall
Lucerne Festival Orchestra |
Women of the Bavarian Radio Choir | Luzerner Kantorei | Riccardo Chailly conductor | Wiebke Lehmkuhl alto
Mahler Symphony No. 3 in D minor
Sat 12.08. | 18.30
Lucerne Festival Orchestra 2
KKL Luzern, Concert Hall
Lucerne Festival Orchestra | Riccardo Chailly conductor | Maria João Pires piano
Mozart Piano Concerto in D minor, K. 466 | Brahms Symphony No. 4 in E minor, Op. 98
Sun 13.08. | 11.00
Lucerne Festival Orchestra 3
KKL Luzern, Concert Hall
Soloists of the Lucerne Festival Orchestra
Dvořák String Quintet in G major, Op. 77 | Debussy Sonata for Flute, Viola, and Harp | Ravel Introduction et Allegro for harp, flute, clarinet, and string quartet | Schoenberg Verklärte Nacht, Op. 4
Mon 14.08. | 18.00
Panel Discussion
KKL Luzern, Auditorium
“20 Years of the Lucerne Festival Orchestra” with Annette zu Castell, Wolfram Christ, Reinhold Friedrich, Michael Haefliger, and Veronika Hagen (moderator: Susanne Stähr)
Wed 16.08. | 19.30
Lucerne Festival Orchestra 4
KKL Luzern, Concert Hall
Lucerne Festival Orchestra | Riccardo Chailly conductor | Daniil Trifonov piano
Rachmaninoff Piano Concerto No. 4 in G minor, Op. 40 | Symphony No. 1 in D minor, Op. 13
Fri 18.08. | 19.30
Chamber Music Daniil Trifonov
KKL Luzern, Concert Hall
Soloists of the Lucerne Festival Orchestra | Daniil Trifonov piano
Brahms Piano Quintet in F minor, Op. 34 | Schubert Trout Quintet, D 667
Sat 19.08. | 18.30
Lucerne Festival Orchestra 5
KKL Luzern, Concert Hall
Lucerne Festival Orchestra | Yannick Nézet-Séguin conductor | Boulanger D’un soir triste | Bruckner Symphony No. 8 in C minor, WAB 108
We cordially thank our Main Sponsor Kühne Foundation for its generous support of the Lucerne Festival Orchestra.
Wolfgang Rihm, Artistic Director
Around 120 young instrumentalists, conductors and composers convene at Lake Lucerne every summer to focus on the music of the 20th and 21st centuries — from the classics of Modernism to numerous world premieres.
14. – 17.08. | 10.00/12.00
Composer Seminar
KKL Luzern, Club Room 8 with Wolfgang Rihm and Dieter Ammann
Sat 19.08. | 21.00
Lucerne Festival Academy 1
KKL Luzern, Lucerne Hall
Lucerne Festival Contemporary Orchestra (LFCO) | Ilan Volkov conductor Cox new work for orchestra (world premiere) | Ruzicka Spiral. Concerto for horn quartet and orchestra | Lewis
Minds in Flux for Symphonic Orchestra and Interactive Electronics
Sun 20.08. | 14.30
Lucerne Festival Academy 2
KKL Luzern, Lucerne Hall
Ensemble of the Lucerne Festival Contemporary Orchestra (LFCO) | Enno Poppe conductor
Poppe Speicher I-VI
Sat 26.08. | 11.00
Lucerne Festival Academy 3
KKL Luzern, Concert Hall
Lucerne Festival Contemporary Orchestra (LFCO) | Rita Castro Blanco, Enno Poppe, and Jack Sheen conductors
Moliner Estructura IV “Dämonische
Iris” | Sardaryan Ikone (“Roche Young Commissions” world premieres) | Spahlinger passage/paysage
Sat 26.08. | 14.30
Composer Seminar — Closing Concert
KKL Luzern, Lucerne Hall
International Ensemble Modern Academy (IEMA Ensemble 2022-23) | Participants in the ContemporaryConducting Program conductors | Wolfgang Rihm and Dieter Ammann moderators
Composer Seminar Showcase (world premieres)
We cordially thank our Main Sponsor Roche for its generous support of the Lucerne Festival Academy.
Sun 27.08. | 16.00
Lucerne Festival Academy 5
KKL Luzern, Lucerne Hall
Ensemble of the Lucerne Festival Contemporary Orchestra (LFCO) | Participants in the ContemporaryConducting Program conductors | Jalalu-Kalvert Nelson trumpet
León Indígena | Iannotta Intent on Resurrection — Spring or Some Such
Thing | Lei Liang Bamboo Lights | Nelson Jim Is Still Crowing
Sat 02.09. | 19.30
Lucerne Festival Academy 4
KKL Luzern, Concert Hall
Lucerne Festival Contemporary Orchestra (LFCO) |
Susanna Mälkki conductor | Wu Wei sheng
Poppe Fett for orchestra |
Chin Šu for sheng and orchestra | Stravinsky Le Sacre du printemps
He is both a poet and a super-virtuoso: for Daniil Trifonov, the 32-year-old Russian pianist who lives in New York, there are no limits. As our “artiste étoile” in the summer of 2023, he will play his favorite Rachmaninoff concerto, venture into Romantic dream worlds with Robert Schumann, span the spectrum from Mozart to Scriabin in a solo recital, and take on the role of chamber musician with music by Schubert and Brahms.
Wed 16.08. | 19.30
Lucerne Festival Orchestra 4
KKL Luzern, Concert Hall
Lucerne Festival Orchestra | Riccardo
Chailly conductor | Daniil Trifonov piano
Rachmaninoff Piano Concerto No. 4 in G minor, Op. 40 | Symphony No. 1 in D minor, Op. 13
Fri 18.08. | 19.30
Chamber Music Daniil Trifonov
KKL Luzern, Concert Hall
Soloists of the Lucerne Festival Orchestra | Daniil Trifonov piano
Brahms Piano Quintet in F minor, Op. 34 |
Schubert Trout Quintet, D 667
Sun 20.08. | 11.00
Recital Daniil Trifonov
KKL Luzern, Concert Hall
Daniil Trifonov piano
Tchaikovsky Children’s Album, Op. 39 | Schumann Fantasie in C major, Op. 17 | Mozart Fantasie in C minor, K. 475 | Ravel Gaspard de la nuit | Scriabin Piano Sonata No. 5, Op. 53
Wed 23.08. | 19.30
Mahler Chamber Orchestra
KKL Luzern, Concert Hall
Mahler Chamber Orchestra | Daniel Harding conductor | Daniil Trifonov piano
Schumann Manfred Overture, Op. 115 | Piano Concerto in A minor, Op. 54 | Brahms Symphony No. 3 in F major, Op. 90
Enno Poppe is one of the most original composers of our time, with a highly recognizable musical language. Poppe observes his musical materials as if under a microscope, discovering their richness, ferreting out their uniqueness, and developing complex but always comprehensible sound worlds out of them. In Lucerne he will be represented by such major works as Speicher, Prozession, and Rundfunk and will conduct Mathias Spahlinger’s orchestral monolith passage/paysage
Sun 13.08. | 14.30
Ensemble intercontemporain
KKL Luzern, Lucerne Hall
Ensemble intercontemporain | Enno Poppe conductor
Poppe Blumen for ensemble (world premiere) | Prozession for large ensemble
Sun 20.08. | 14.30
Lucerne Festival Academy 2
KKL Luzern, Lucerne Hall
Ensemble of the Lucerne Festival Contemporary Orchestra (LFCO) | Enno Poppe conductor
Poppe Speicher I-VI for large ensemble
Sat 26.08. | 11.00
Lucerne Festival Academy 3
KKL Luzern, Concert Hall
Lucerne Festival Contemporary Orchestra (LFCO) | Enno Poppe conductor Spahlinger passage/paysage
Sat 02.09. | 19.30
Lucerne Festival Academy 4
KKL Luzern, Concert Hall
Lucerne Festival Contemporary Orchestra (LFCO) | Susanna Mälkki conductor
Poppe Fett for orchestra
Thu 07.09. | 19.30
räsonanz — Donor Concert
KKL Luzern, Concert Hall
Les Siècles | François-Xavier Roth conductor | Sarah Maria Sun soprano
Poppe Öl for ensemble | Augen. 25 songs for soprano and chamber orchestra
Sat 09.09. | 11.00
Portrait Enno Poppe
Hochschule Luzern — Musik, Kriens
Ensemble Helix
Poppe Rundfunk for nine synthesizers
Through our special concert offers for children and young people, for families and schools, we show that classical music is not just for grown-ups. For more information, including our discounts for schoolchildren and students, please visit lucernefestival.ch/ en/lucerne-festival-young.
Tue 08.08. | 19.30
Mozart y Mambo
KKL Luzern, Concert Hall
The Havana Lyceum Orchestra | José Antonio Méndez Padrón conductor | Sarah Willis horn
“Mozart y Mambo.” Mozart meets Cuban music
Wed 09.08. | 19.30
National Youth Orchestra Jazz
KKL Luzern, Lucerne Hall
Carnegie Hall’s National Youth Orchestra Jazz (NYO Jazz) |
Sean Jones trumpet and musical direction | Dee Dee Bridgewater vocals
The Sound of the Big Band: From the Swing Era to Hip-Hop, R & B, and Pop
Thu 10.08. | 12.15
The Jazz Symphony Lukaskirche
Worlds Beyond Orchestra |
Daniel Schnyder saxophone and conductor | Ken Filiano bass | Michael Wimberly drums
“The Jazz Symphony.” Works by Schnyder, Ellington, Gershwin, et al.
Sun 03.09. | 14/15.30
Family Concert — Cello Comedy (in German)
KKL Luzern, Lucerne Hall
“In Heaven” (in German)
Sat 09.09. | 10/14
Family Concert — Music Theater
KKL Luzern, Lucerne Hall
“The Devil with the Golden Curls” (in German) SCHOOL CONCERTS
Thu 31.08. | 10.00
KKL Luzern, Concert Hall
Brass Ensemble of the Berlin Philharmonic
Mon 04.09. | 9/10.30
KKL Luzern, Lucerne Hall
“In Heaven”
Mon 04.09. & Tues 05.09. Sarah Willis and the Sarahbanda perform in Lucerne’s cantonal schools
Fri 08.09. | 9/10.30
KKL Luzern, Lucerne Hall
“The Devil with the Golden Curls”
Wed 30.08.
Mon 04.09.
Fri 08.09.
Isata Kanneh-Mason
Ben Goldscheider and Richard Uttley
Isidore String Quartet
Would you like to register for one of our school presentations? We would be delighted if you got in touch with us at: schulen@lucernefestival.ch
With the purchase of a ticket for selected concerts, adults receive two free tickets of equal value for their young companions (children, grandchildren, godchildren …). The list of concerts and purchase options can be found at lucernefestival.ch/ look-listen-enjoy.
40 Minutes Festival: For ten years now, we’ve been introducing selected artists and works in the 40min series, presenting music and conversation early in the evening — and, for the first time this summer, as part of a 40min Special. Admission is free, there is no dress code, and no prior knowledge is necessary.
Tue 15.08. | 18.20
“In the Paradise of Chamber Music”
KKL Luzern, Lucerne Hall
Soloists of the Lucerne Festival Orchestra
Thu 17.08. | 18.20
“Bruckner’s Mystery”
KKL Luzern, Lucerne Hall
Lucerne Festival Orchestra | Yannick Nézet-Séguin conductor
Sat 19.08. | starting at 14.00
40min Special
Europaplatz next to the KKL
14.00 | “Brass for Five”
KamBrass
15.00 | “Stroke after Stroke”
Lucerne Festival Contemporary Orchestra (LFCO) percussion ensemble
16.00 | “Greetings from Havana”
Sarah Willis and the Sarahbanda Moderator for the 40min Special:
Sarah Willis
Mon 21.08. | 18.20
“Paradise Lost”
KKL Luzern, Lucerne Hall
International Ensemble Modern Academy (IEMA Ensemble 2022-23)
Wed 23.08. | 18.20
“How New Things Are Created: The 2023 ‘Roche Young Commissions’”
KKL Luzern, Lucerne Hall
Lucerne Festival Contemporary Orchestra (LFCO) | Rita Castro Blanco and Jack Sheen conductors
Fri 25.08. | 18.20
“Classical Music Composed Today”
KKL Luzern, Lucerne Hall
International Ensemble Modern Academy (IEMA Ensemble 2022-23) | Participants in the Contemporary-Conducting Program | Wolfgang Rihm and Dieter Ammann moderators
Composer Seminar Showcase, part 1
!A valid ticket is required for admission to the 40min series concerts (with the exception of the 40min Special on 19 August). Five days before each event, you can obtain free, open-seating tickets through our website at lucernefestival.ch. The number of tickets is limited to two per order. On the day of the event, any remaining tickets can be obtained on site.
Tue 29.08. | 18.20
“Paradise! Carte blanche for the Lucerne Festival Contemporary Leaders”
KKL Luzern, Lucerne Hall
Members of the Lucerne Festival Contemporary Orchestra (LFCO)
Wed 30.08. | 18.20
“Enno Poppe’s Fat Sounds”
KKL Luzern, Lucerne Hall
Lucerne Festival Contemporary Orchestra (LFCO) | Susanna Mälkki conductor
Tue 05.09. | 18.20
“Paradise from Scarlatti to Bartók”
KKL Luzern, Lucerne Hall
Students of the Hochschule Luzern — Musik | Tereza Kotlánová soprano | Jon Flurin Buchli trumpet
Thu 07.09. | 18.20
“On Sixteen Strings”
KKL Luzern, Lucerne Hall
Isidore String Quartet
We cordially thank our Main Sponsor Zurich Insurance Company Ltd for its generous support of the 40min series.
Paradise-like conditions: for six days, music groups from all over the world come together in Lucerne’s Old City to surprise you with danceable and dreamy sounds, with spirited Latin grooves and Alpine melodies. “In the Streets” will again provide a colorful musical spectacle in 2023 — admission is free. We will publish the detailed program in July.
The Groups:
Beyond the Borders (Iran/Israel)
Gentle Breeze (Brazil/Switzerland)
Hannah James/Toby Kuhn (Great Britain/France)
Kaleidoscope String Quartet (Switzerland)
Maria Moctezuma (Mexico)
plus additional groups
Tue 22.08. | 17.30
Opening Concert featuring all of the groups Europaplatz afterwards all groups will perform in Lucerne’s Old City until 22.00
23.08. - 26.08.
Performances by all of the groups Lucerne’s Old City every day from 18.00 to 22.00, Saturdays also from 10.00 to 12.00
Sun 27.08. | 16.00
Closing Concert featuring all of the groups Europaplatz preceded from 12.00 to 15.00 by performances by the groups on the Europaplatz
LUCERNE FESTIVAL
Board of Trustees
Markus Hongler, Chairman*
Dr. Christian Casal, Treasurer*
Dr. Rolf Dörig*
Dr. Christoph Franz
Christian Gellerstad
Regula Gerber
Andrea Gmür-Schönenberger
Dr. Marianne Janik
Walter B. Kielholz*
Dr. Hariolf Kottmann*
Michel M. Liès
Giovanna Maag
Anne-Sophie Mutter
Urs Rohner
Prof. Klaus Schwab
Marcel Schwerzmann
Anne Schwöbel
Isabelle Welton*
Beat Züsli
* committee member
Honorary Chairman
Jürg R. Reinshagen
Board of Trustees
Markus Hongler, Chairman
Dr. Christian Casal, Treasurer
Dr. Franz Egle
Andrea Gmür-Schönenberger
Elisabeth Oltramare
EXECUTIVE AND ARTISTIC DIRECTOR
Michael Haefliger
EXECUTIVE MANAGEMENT
Michael Haefliger
Danièle Gross
Christiane Weber
Michael Haefliger*, Executive and Artistic Director
Sara Stocker
Press & Public Relations
Nina Steinhart, Director
Sereina Kubli
Sponsoring & Friends
Marianna Rossi, Director
Alexandra Buholzer | Claudia
Cavallari | Katja Fleischer | Luca
Gnos | Isabelle Köhler | Dario Theiler
Christiane Weber*, Director Artistic Office
Susanne Stähr, Dramaturgy | Monika Widler
Lucerne Festival Contemporary
Felix Heri, Director
Lea Arnet | Mark Sattler, Dramaturgy
Editorial
Susanne Stähr, Director
Denise Fankhauser | Malte Lohmann
BUSINESS AREAS
Danièle Gross*, Business Director
Fincance, Human Resources, Sustainability & IT
Marcel Kaufmann | Stephanie MurrayRobertson | Fabian Zemp
Marketing & Digital Development
Bettina Jaggi, Director
Jovana Bozic | Mariagrazia Panzarella |
Jason Planzer | Anna-Barbara Rothen
Sales & Visitor Services
Dominik Wirth, Director
Felix Baumann | Aline Baumgartner |
Claudia Cavallari | Hana Javorska |
Brigitte Keller | Regina Meyer
* Member of the Board
An unusual encounter. A collision of art and science. A spark that leads to an idea, newfound creativity, and innovation.
Roche Scientist Barbara Geering and Roche Commissions Composer Beat Furrer
Sarah Willis, the American-British horn player of the Berlin Philharmonic, has found her personal paradise in Cuba, for there she is able to combine two of her great musical passions: Mozart and mambo. Together with the young musicians of the Havana Lyceum Orchestra, she has already recorded two highly successful albums combining the best of both worlds: masterpieces by the classical icon and Caribbean sounds and rhythms. In Lucerne, too, Mozart will have your hips swaying as his Third Horn Concerto is juxtaposed with such traditional Cuban hits as El bodeguero, El manisero, and Dos gardenias, which became famous around the world thanks to the Buena Vista Social Club. In Rondo alla Mambo, Mozart’s melodies are combined with salsa and son. Sarah Willis will also present excerpts from Cuban Dances, the first-ever Cuban horn concerto, which was created as a collaboration by young Cuban composers, each inspired by famous dances from their homeland.
Mozart y Mambo
19.30
KKL Luzern, Concert Hall
The Havana Lyceum Orchestra
José Antonio Méndez Padrón conductor
Sarah Willis horn
“Mozart
Richard Egües
El bodeguero | 5 min
Wolfgang Amadé Mozart
Serenade in D major, K. 239
Serenata notturna | 14 min
Horn Concerto No. 3 in E-flat major, K. 447 | 15 min
Joshua Davis/Yuniet Lombida
Rondo alla Mambo | 6 min
Jenny Peña
Samba Son | 7 min
From Cuban Dances for horn, strings, and percussion:
Jorge Aragón
Un Bolero para Sarah
Yuniet Lombida/Ernesto Oliva
Sarahchá
Swiss premieres | 12 min total
Chucho Valdés
Mambo influenciado | 8 min
Isolina Carrillo
Dos gardenias | 5 min
Moisés Simons
El manisero | 8 min
CHF 50/10 (adults/children)
Bringing the rich sound of big band music to the KKL Luzern, the members of the National Youth Orchestra Jazz (NYO Jazz) are between 16 and 19 years old and rank among the most talented young jazz musicians in the US. Their foray through the history of American jazz will encompass examples from the swing era to the present. And they will be joined by an international star: the threetime Grammy winner Dee Dee Bridgewater, whose vocal spectrum ranges from scat singing to soulful ballads. Big band classics by Duke Ellington and Dizzy Gillespie will be performed during the two 45-minute sets, along with new, imaginative arrangements by John Clayton as well as numerous pieces from today that trace the influence of jazz on hip-hop, R & B, and pop music. These young musicians will also, of course, be given plenty of room for virtuoso solos. “The jazz orchestra can cover the entire gamut of American music genres,” according to Sean Jones, the director of NYO Jazz.
National Youth Orchestra Jazz
19.30
KKL Luzern, Lucerne Hall
Carnegie Hall’s National Youth Orchestra Jazz (NYO Jazz)
Sean Jones trumpet and musical direction Dee Dee Bridgewater vocals
“Carnegie Hall’s NYO Jazz with special guest Dee Dee Bridgewater” 90 min (incl. intermission)
CHF 50/10 (adults/children)
In partnership with the Embassy of the United States of America
Worlds Beyond Orchestra: the name says it all, and in more ways than one. Here, selected prize winners of the Swiss Youth Music Competition 2023 and other European competitions for young musicians form a transnational string orchestra. They will be joined by Swiss saxophonist and composer Daniel Schnyder, who has also invited a virtuoso rhythm section from his adoptive home of New York. Schnyder is a juggler of different styles who intuitively combines classical, jazz, and non-Western musical traditions; written and improvised music; and identities as a soloist and a composer. This will certainly be the case in his new work Jazz Symphony, which he is developing in a week-long master class with the musicians of the Worlds Beyond Orchestra, thereby allowing their varied musical backgrounds to blossom. This world premiere will be complemented by original arrangements of jazz classics written by George Gershwin, Duke Ellington, and Horace Silver.
The Jazz Symphony
12.15
Lukaskirche
Worlds Beyond Orchestra
Daniel Schnyder saxophone and conductor
Ken Filiano bass
Michael Wimberly drums
“The Jazz Symphony”
Daniel Schnyder
Mr. M (dedicated to Charles Mingus)
5 min
Jazz Symphony world premiere
25 min
Duke Ellington
In a Sentimental Mood
5 min
George Gershwin
Summertime
5 min
Horace Silver Peace
4 min
Daniel Schnyder
Family Photos (Story of the Blues)
5 min
This concert has no intermission. In collaboration with the Swiss Youth Music Competition
CHF 20/10 (adults/children)
Fri 11.08.
18.30 | Inseli | free admission
A Festival highlight for young and old: enjoy the Opening Concert live on the big screen at Lucerne’s lnseli Park — with a view of Lake Lucerne at evening and the magnificent panorama of Rigi, Bürgenstock, and other mountain peaks. Riccardo Chailly and the Lucerne Festival Orchestra open the summer of musical paradise with Mahler’s Third Symphony.
Credit Suisse
Main Sponsor and Presenting Partner Lakeside Symphony
The Lucerne Festival Orchestra has been thrilling the music world for the last 20 years. From the start, the ensemble’s magnificent performances of Mahler have been a sensation, with the Third Symphony in particular playing a key role. In 2007, under the direction of its founder Claudio Abbado, the orchestra gave two legendary performances of this mighty work, and the Third’s moving finale was also performed in 2014 during a memorial concert for the late maestro, bringing tears to the eyes of many who attended. Mahler’s Third is thus the ideal symphony to ring in the orchestra’s anniversary — and to launch the 2023 Summer of Paradise. For Mahler here presents a creation story of the world itself coming into being. In the beginning, we encounter inorganic nature, rocks, and mountains. Plants, animals, and, ultimately, humanity, are successively added to the picture. Yet our species is not the pinnacle. For Mahler, the highest form of existence is love, which he translates into music with a stirring, hymn-like theme. “What God tells me” was Mahler’s initial title for this final movement: music as a promise of blessing.
Fri 11.08.
Opening
Lucerne Festival Orchestra 1
18.30
KKL Luzern, Concert Hall
Lucerne Festival Orchestra
Women of the Bavarian Radio Choir
Luzerner Kantorei
Riccardo Chailly conductor
Wiebke Lehmkuhl alto
Greeting
Markus Hongler Chairman of the Board
Michael Haefliger Executive and Artistic Director
Welcoming Speech
Elisabeth Baume-Schneider
Swiss Federal Councillor
Gustav Mahler
Symphony No. 3 in D minor 100 min
This concert has no intermission.
CHF 320/270/220/150/80/40
Lakeside Symphony
The Opening Concert projected live on a big screen
18.30 | Inseli
free admission
Kühne-Stiftung
Main Sponsor and Partner
Lucerne Festival Orchestra
Credit Suisse
Main Sponsor and Presenting
Partner Lakeside Symphony
The Portuguese master pianist Maria João Pires actually ended her career in 2018. But every now and then she is drawn back to the stage, and in these rare moments she enchants the audience with her incomparable touch. Especially when it comes to Mozart, whose piano works are probably the greatest interpretive challenge of all. Incidentally, Pires has a special history with Riccardo Chailly and Mozart’s D minor Concerto. In 1999, they performed together in Amsterdam. As soon as Chailly raised his baton and the first bars of K. 466 resounded, Pires realized that she had rehearsed a different concerto. And yet she played the great D minor Concerto from memory and flawlessly, even though she hadn’t performed it for some time. Pires has completely internalized her Mozart, just as Riccardo Chailly has his Brahms. The German composer’s symphonies, which sound melancholy, misty, and late-autumnal under other conductors, gain color, transparency, and momentum with him. A “rarely experienced” Brahms that is “fiery, direct, and full of life,” wrote Die Zeit
Sat
Lucerne Festival Orchestra 2
18.30
KKL Luzern, Concert Hall
Lucerne Festival Orchestra
Riccardo Chailly conductor
Maria João Pires piano
Wolfgang Amadé Mozart
Piano Concerto in D minor, K. 466
31 min
Johannes Brahms
Symphony No. 4 in E minor, Op. 98 40 min
Introduction to the concert
17.30 | KKL Luzern, Auditorium with Susanne Stähr (in German)
CHF 320/270/220/150/80/40
Claudio Abbado
When Claudio Abbado founded the Lucerne Festival Orchestra in 2003, one thing was clear: even symphonic works for a large orchestra should be inspired by the spirit of chamber music. Listening attentively to each other, picking up on each other’s ideas and developing them — this was the model. Which is why chamber concerts with solo players from the orchestra became part of the profile from the very beginning. “Almost everyone from the Festival Orchestra plays in an ensemble,” Abbado liked to observe. “Above all, completely new and sometimes unusually formed ensembles join together in Lucerne every year to develop their own programs and present them in the grand Concert Hall.” This matinee looks back to one of the orchestra’s first-ever chamber concerts, which took place on 16 August 2003. They performed Debussy’s late-period Sonata for Flute, Viola, and Harp; Schoenberg’s late-Romantic string sextet Verklärte Nacht (“Transfigured Night”); and Ravel’s Introduction et Allegro, an exquisite chamber concerto for the double-pedal harp with miniature orchestra. This time, Dvořák’s G major String Quintet, opulently scored with a double bass, adds a Czech musical prelude to the mix. And a lot of good humor.
Sun
Lucerne Festival Orchestra 3
11.00
KKL Luzern, Concert Hall
Soloists of the Lucerne Festival Orchestra
Antonín Dvořák
String Quintet in G major, Op. 77 35 min
Claude Debussy
Sonata for Flute, Viola, and Harp 16 min
Maurice Ravel
Introduction et Allegro for harp, flute, clarinet, and string quartet 11 min
Arnold Schoenberg
Verklärte Nacht, Op. 4 30 min
CHF 90/60/30 LOOK
With the friendly support of Dr. Dolf and Maria Stockhausen
Enno Poppe on Prozession
Introducing Enno Poppe! Combining the roles of composer and conductor, this year’s composer-in-residence will make his first bow to the Festival audience with a brand-new score he has written for the Paris-based Ensemble intercontemporain, one of the world’s finest formations for contemporary music, and with a work particularly close to his heart. Prozession was written during the first COVID lockdown in 2020 in a “creative frenzy,” according to Poppe. Originally planned to last 15 minutes, it became nearly 60 minutes long. “I’d never written like this before, but something happened.” In each of the work’s nine sections, Poppe has two solo instruments intertwine with microtonally tinged melodies. This parade of instrumental duets is underscored by the irregular pulsation of the four percussionists. Beginning quietly and mysteriously, the music develops an enormous power, with the tiniest cells and motifs burgeoning into infinity and delicate arabesques gathering into ecstatic outbursts. The determination with which Poppe observes his musical material grow has a spiritual dimension.
Ensemble intercontemporain
14.30
KKL Luzern, Lucerne Hall
Ensemble intercontemporain
Enno Poppe conductor
Enno Poppe
Blumen for ensemble world premiere commissioned by Lucerne Festival, Ensemble intercontemporain, and Casa da Música, Porto 20 min
Prozession for large ensemble 53 min
This concert has no intermission.
Lahav Shani
2020 marked the beginning of a new era for the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra. After more than 50 years, Zubin Mehta bid adieu to the leadership position and handed on the reins to Lahav Shani. The latter, who was born in 1989, is the orchestra’s first music director to have been born in Israel. Despite his youth, Shani’s association with the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra has lasted half his life. He played double bass there as a 16-year-old, debuted as a pianist two years later with Tchaikovsky’s First Piano Concerto, and gave his first performance conducting these musicians in 2010. “I’ve known many of the orchestra members since I was a kid,” says Shani. “We deal with each other directly; it feels very natural.” Shani is an unconventional maestro and not a tyrant on the podium: he conducts without a baton and views interpretation as a collaborative result. The result is certainly worth listening to. For his first appearance with the orchestra in Lucerne, he has chosen symphonies by Haydn and Brahms. But to start, he will focus on the French Romantic composer Louise Farrenc, an artist rediscovered for the repertoire in recent years.
Sun
Israel Philharmonic Orchestra
18.30
KKL Luzern, Concert Hall
Israel Philharmonic Orchestra
Lahav Shani conductor
Louise Farrenc
Overture No. 2 in E-flat major, Op. 24
7 min
Joseph Haydn
Symphony in D major, Hob. I:104 28 min
Johannes Brahms
Symphony No. 1 in C minor, Op. 68 48 min
Introduction to the concert
17.30 | KKL Luzern, Auditorium with Susanne Stähr (in German)
CHF 240/200/150/100/60/30
With the friendly support of the René und Susanne BraginskyStiftung
Wolfgang Rihm
With the Composer Seminar, Wolfgang Rihm has created a true paradise for young composers that, together with Dieter Ammann, he offers every summer. The participants spend a good two weeks in Lucerne. During the first week, Rihm and Ammann devote a lot of time to discussing their works and their aesthetic convictions and visions with the composers, both in individual lessons and in four public sessions that give the Festival audience illuminating insights into the artist’s workshop. The aim is not to single out the “best” pieces but rather to stimulate a lively exchange between a wide range of different approaches, backgrounds, and stages of development. Some are still searching for their own musical language, while others are almost fully formed. In the second week, these young composers will have an opportunity to rehearse and premiere their scores with the experienced musicians of the International Ensemble Modern Academy — and to face very practical questions.
Mon 14.08.
17.08.
KKL Luzern, Club Room 8
Participants in the Composer Seminar:
Kristupas Bubnelis, José Manuel Castro Brandão, Bo Huang, Sofia Ouyang, Francisco Pais, Alyssa Regent, Lukas Stamm and Abigél Varga
Wolfgang Rihm and Dieter Ammann co-directing teachers
Presentation and discussion of selected works for guests CHF 100/30 (course pass/day pass)
40min Fri 25.08. | 18.20
KKL Luzern, Lucerne Hall
“Classical Music Composed Today”
Composer Seminar Showcase, part 1 see p. 16
Composer Seminar — Closing Concert Sat 26.08. | 14.30
KKL Luzern, Lucerne Hall
International Ensemble Modern Academy (IEMA Ensemble 2022-23)
Composer Seminar Showcase, part 2 see p. 61
It was a perfect moment for the initiated. At the 2022 Summer Festival in Lucerne, Víkingur Ólafsson presented his project involving Mozart and his contemporaries, and the performance was a keyboard highlight. So the pianist from Iceland was immediately invited to return. This time, he will ascend a peak of the keyboard repertoire: Johann Sebastian Bach’s Goldberg Variations, which vary a beatifically simple Aria using every trick in the book. Bach treats this idea as the basis for various canons and bravura pieces and even frames it in a quodlibet that quotes two popular songs of the time before this journey reaches its end and the Aria returns in its original form. “In Bach’s music, there’s nothing to hide behind; everything is out in the open,” Ólafsson remarks. “You should be able to hear three, four, or five different voices simultaneously, while understanding how many liberties you can take. Bach doesn’t tell you what to do. There are only the notes, with no articulation, no dynamic indications, no tempo. You almost have to co-compose the music with Bach.” Which he will proceed to do masterfully.
Recital Víkingur Ólafsson
19.30
KKL Luzern, Concert Hall
Víkingur Ólafsson piano
Johann Sebastian Bach Aria with Diverse Variations (Goldberg Variations), BWV 988 80 min
This concert has no intermission.
CHF 120/100/80/70/50/30
“20 Years of the Lucerne Festival Orchestra”
105
18.00 | KKL Luzern, Auditorium A panel discussion (in German) with Annette zu Castell, Wolfram Christ, Reinhold Friedrich, Michael Haefliger, and Veronika Hagen
Moderator: Susanne Stähr 60 min free admission
Daniel Barenboim
Martha Argerich and Daniel Barenboim are connected by a once-in-alifetime friendship. They both come from Buenos Aires, had the same piano teacher there, and met in 1949 at a private invitation when they were asked to play for the conductor Sergiu Celibidache. She was eight at the time, he seven. “I’ve known few people as long as Martha,” Barenboim explains, recalling how strongly her imagination and dexterity impressed him even then. “Her piano playing is better than mine,” he says with undisguised admiration. Barenboim and Argerich initially pursued their own international solo careers, but for some 25 years now they have regularly performed together. And at their joint concerts, a special intimacy can be felt. “Our relationship is musical, but there is also a human love between us,” as Barenboim puts it. Martha Argerich, who won the renowned International Chopin Piano Competition in 1965, returns to her roots here with Chopin’s First Piano Concerto. And with the Second Symphony of Brahms, Daniel Barenboim will celebrate the rapturous, late-Romantic sound world in which he is completely at home as a conductor.
Tue 15.08.
West-Eastern Divan Orchestra
19.30
KKL Luzern, Concert Hall
West-Eastern Divan Orchestra
Daniel Barenboim conductor
Martha Argerich piano
Frédéric Chopin
Piano Concerto No. 1 in E minor, Op. 11 40 min
Johannes Brahms
Symphony No. 2 in D major, Op. 73 45 min
CHF 220/180/130/90/60/30
Go to the concert before the concert: 40min today! see p. 16
How can wrongs be righted? In the third installment of their Rachmaninoff cycle, Riccardo Chailly and the Lucerne Festival Orchestra will pair two works that initially brought painful failure to their composer. The world premiere of his First Symphony in 1897 turned into a fiasco. It was poorly rehearsed, so the audience heard an amorphous blur of sounds that had little to do with the score. Rachmaninoff suffered agonies during the performance and fell into a serious depression afterwards, which left him unable to compose at all for three years. He fared little better in 1927 with his Fourth Piano Concerto, which also met with rejection. The sensitive Rachmaninoff subsequently reworked the concerto twice, considerably shortening it. But was the original version really so bad? No, according to “artiste étoile” Daniil Trifonov, who calls the Fourth his favorite Rachmaninoff concerto and will make the case for the reviled original version. And the First Symphony, even today a stepchild in the repertoire, will finally be rehabilitated. The most beautiful gift for Rachmaninoff on his 150th birthday!
Lucerne Festival Orchestra 4
19.30
KKL Luzern, Concert Hall
Lucerne Festival Orchestra
Riccardo Chailly conductor
Daniil Trifonov piano
Sergei Rachmaninoff
Piano Concerto No. 4 in G minor, Op. 40
Original version from 1926
34 min
Symphony No. 1 in D minor, Op. 13 43 min
Introduction to the concert
18.30 | KKL Luzern, Auditorium with Susanne Stähr (in German)
CHF 320/270/220/150/80/40
Package Special
The Rachmaninoff 150th Birthday
Package: museum, villa, and concert
More at lucernefestival.ch/rachmaninoff
Kühne-Stiftung
Main Sponsor and Partner
Lucerne Festival Orchestra
The Atenea Quartet, which was founded in Barcelona, has been in existence for just three years, but these four young Spaniards have already caused a sensation at several festivals. In December 2022, they also won the Prix Credit Suisse Jeunes Solistes, which, in addition to a cash prize of CHF 25,000, earned them an appearance at Lucerne Festival. They have named themselves after Athena, the Greek goddess of wisdom and art. The program they have put together for their debut concert is indeed wisely and subtly composed. Three of the beguiling Fantasias by the “Orpheus Britannicus” Henry Purcell, who died all too soon, at age 36, are juxtaposed here with a work by the Catalan composer Raquel García-Tomás. Born in 1984, she has written music, that transforms Claudio Monteverdi’s early Baroque madrigal Sfogava con le stelle. Following this will be the quartet Der Tod und das Mädchen (“Death and the Maiden”) by Franz Schubert, who also famously died at a young age, when he was only 31. Matthias Claudius’s poem of the same name, which provided the impetus for Schubert, soothes our terror of the end: “I am not wild,” Death proclaims: “You shall sleep gently in my arms.”
Debut
Prix Credit Suisse Jeunes Solistes
12.15
Lukaskirche
Atenea Quartet: Gil Sisquella Oncins violin
Jaume Angeles Fité violin
Bernat Santacana Hervada viola
Iago Domínguez Eiras cello
Henry Purcell
from the Fantasias in four parts:
Fantasia in F major, Z 737
Fantasia in E minor, Z 741
Fantasia in D minor, Z 739
12 min
Raquel García-Tomás
… così mostraste a lei i vivi
ardori miei …
9 min
Franz Schubert
String Quartet in D minor, D 810
Death and the Maiden
42 min
This concert has no intermission.
CHF 30
Credit Suisse
Main Sponsor
Ludwig van Beethoven is considered the “titan” of music history. He has been placed on a pedestal, his art transfigured into something sacred. But in the process, people have quickly forgotten how provocative his music originally was for contemporary audiences. The three works performed by Michael Sanderling, Christian Tetzlaff, and the Lucerne Symphony Orchestra embody this overlooked aspect and bring Beethoven’s revolutionary élan to life. The Egmont Overture, with its imposing sarabande rhythm and the jubilation of the “Victory Symphony” that concludes it, is the epitome of his heroic style. The Violin Concerto lasts more than 40 minutes and exceeds conventional bounds right from the start, with a solo part that initially soars in the highest register and an orchestral exposition containing no fewer than five themes (thus violating the rules of the genre). The Seventh Symphony is propelled by the elemental power of rhythm, building to an ecstatic frenzy that caused even such a progressive-minded contemporary as Carl Maria von Weber to doubt whether Beethoven was still in his right mind: he summarily described his colleague as “ripe for the madhouse.”
Thu 17.08.
Lucerne Symphony Orchestra
19.30
KKL Luzern, Concert Hall
Lucerne Symphony Orchestra
Michael Sanderling conductor
Christian Tetzlaff violin
Ludwig van Beethoven
Egmont Overture, Op. 84
9 min
Violin Concerto in D major, Op. 61
41 min
Symphony No. 7 in A major, Op. 92
43 min
CHF 120/100/80/70/50/30
Go to the concert before the concert: 40min today! see p. 16
Artemis Group / Franke Group
Concert Sponsor
Daniil Trifonov refutes all the preconceptions about a keyboard star: he is not content to offer great performances as a solo virtuoso but also plays chamber music with enthusiasm. Which is why as “artiste étoile” he will join forces with soloists from the Lucerne Festival Orchestra to perform two of the most beautiful Romantic piano quintets. Schubert’s Trout Quintet is a subtle contribution to the theme of “Paradise.” For in this work Schubert varies his song Die Forelle (“The Trout”), which initially depicts a natural paradise featuring a clear, babbling brook and the swift-as-an-arrow fish — until a man appears, catches the trout, and puts an end to the idyll. The poet Christian Friedrich Daniel Schubart, who as a resistance fighter struggled against absolutism and was imprisoned for many years, incidentally mirrored his own fate with this work. Trifonov pairs the earworm-filled masterpiece with Brahms’s stirring Piano Quintet, over whose slow movement Schubert’s good spirit shines. But Brahms also unleashes the Romantic demons, leading the finale to a mad dance.
Fri 18.08.
Chamber Music Daniil Trifonov
19.30
KKL Luzern, Concert Hall
Soloists of the Lucerne Festival Orchestra
Daniil Trifonov piano
Johannes Brahms
Piano Quintet in F minor, Op. 34
43 min
Franz Schubert
Quintet in A major for piano, violin, viola, cello, and double bass, D 667 Trout Quintet
39 min
Introduction to the concert
18.30 | KKL Luzern, Auditorium with Susanne Stähr (in German)
CHF 120/90/60
With the friendly support of Dr. Dolf and Maria Stockhausen
Enough of the notion that “classical music is for older people”! When it launched the 40min series ten years ago, Lucerne Festival introduced a young, relaxed event format: a mixture of music and conversation, workshop and concert. These free-admission events allow you to meet Festival stars or newcomers and take a look behind the scenes. All ages are welcome. Children watch from mattresses at the edge of the stage. Spontaneous reactions are welcome. And you don’t have to dress up. No wonder that 40min has become a real success story: classical music for beginners and for anyone who would like to learn more. To mark the anniversary, there will be a “40min Special,” featuring three episodes in a row and hosted by Sarah Willis, who plays horn with the Berlin Philharmonic in her “normal” life. With her Cuban ensemble Sarahbanda, she will be the musical director of the third part. Before that, she will introduce the wind quintet KamBrass, which won the Philip Jones Brass Prize in 2022, and the Lucerne Festival Contemporary Orchestra (LFCO) percussion ensemble will ignite a fireworks display of exciting rhythms.
Sat
40min Special
14.00, 15.00, and 16.00
Europaplatz next to the KKL Luzern
14.00
“Brass for Five” with KamBrass
15.00
“Stroke after Stroke” with the Lucerne Festival Contemporary Orchestra (LFCO) percussion ensemble
16.00
“Greetings from Havana” with Sarah Willis and the Sarahbanda
Sarah Willis Moderator
free admission
Zurich Insurance Company Ltd
Main Sponsor and Partner 40min
The Canadian Yannick Nézet-Séguin is the great feminist among the stars of the podium. At the 2022 Summer Festival in Lucerne, he presented the African American composer Florence Price, conducting her stirring First Symphony; this time he has programmed a work by the French composer Lili Boulanger, who died in 1918 at the age of only 24. This delicate tone painting marks her farewell to the world: for all its beauty, it nevertheless harbors a deep sadness. Anton Bruckner’s works also keep the afterlife in view, with a vision of union with God, although they are of a completely different dimension and sound world than Boulanger’s miniatures. Bruckner himself described his Eighth as a “mystery” — without, however, revealing its secret. “In all Bruckner symphonies there is a religious aspect: a mystical, spiritual moment,” Nézet-Séguin remarks. He also sees nature as a second source of inspiration for the Upper Austrian composer: “The trees, the streams, the flowers, the birds, the sky, the storms — all of this mixes in a very Romantic way with Bruckner’s human doubts and his passions.”
Lucerne Festival Orchestra 5
18.30
KKL Luzern, Concert Hall
Lucerne Festival Orchestra
Yannick Nézet-Séguin conductor
Lili Boulanger
D’un soir triste
12 min
Anton Bruckner
Symphony No. 8 in C minor, WAB 108
Robert Haas edition
88 min
This concert has no intermission.
Introduction to the concert
17.30 | KKL Luzern, Auditorium with Susanne Stähr (in German)
CHF 320/270/220/150/80/40
Patrons’ Concert of the Lucerne Festival Friends
The orchestra sits at the front in classical style, but it pushes out beyond the stage. For it is digitally amplified: electronically defamiliarized, its music resounds from eight loudspeakers distributed throughout the room. It swirls around the audience and jumps from one side of the hall to the other. In Minds in Flux, George Lewis creates a fascinating hybrid soundscape through which he reflects on social change and cultural pluralism and which is therefore — as the title of the work indicates — constantly in motion. This also applies to Spiral by Peter Ruzicka, who celebrates his 75th birthday in July. In the concerto-like competition between four horns and orchestra, the musical motifs “enter a state of circling,” according to Ruzicka. “In the process, they spiral in each case into a higher level of perception.” The program opens with a new work by Lewis’s student Jessie Cox: “Paradise is a garden, that is, a space created by the accumulation of water from the desert. So for me, this piece is about the question of how we can continue to make space for Black lives, for silenced voices, for the unthought, on a planet that becomes a garden for lives of the cosmos.”
Lucerne Festival Academy 1
21.00
KKL Luzern, Lucerne Hall
Lucerne Festival Contemporary Orchestra (LFCO)
Ilan Volkov conductor
Maxime Le Saux live electronics
Jessie Cox
new work for orchestra
world premiere
commissioned by Lucerne Festival, funded by the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation
10 min
Peter Ruzicka
Spiral. Concerto for horn quartet and orchestra
Swiss premiere
23 min
George Lewis
Minds in Flux for Symphonic Orchestra and Interactive Electronics
Swiss premiere 30 min
This concert has no intermission.
20.00 | KKL Luzern, Auditorium
Jessie Cox and Peter Ruzicka in conversation with Mark Sattler (in German)
CHF 50 (open seating)
Daniil Trifonov
Daniil Trifonov roams the vast realm of fantasy in this solo recital. He starts with the dreams and tragedies of childhood, which Tchaikovsky’s Children’s Album depicts with humor and heart in pieces whose topics range from magic to a sick doll. Schumann’s great C major Fantasy traces the composer’s troubled love for the young pianist Clara Wieck, whose father tried to keep them apart. Mozart reveals a completely unpredictable side to his art in his C minor Fantasy, which shifts wildly from one tempo and time signature to the next, pushing to emotional limits. Nocturnal dreams and nightmares resound in Ravel’s Gaspard de la nuit, with which the French composer contributed one of the most difficult works to the solo piano repertoire. With its bubbling trills and tremolos, Scriabin’s Fifth Piano Sonata starts off like a geyser, conjuring the first day of Creation. Which is why he prefaced the work with verses from a poem of his own: “I call you to life, mysterious forces,/Sunk in the dark depths/Of the Creator Spirit.” Trifonov knows how to pull out all the stops, from a simple children’s song to the pinnacle of virtuosity.
Sun 20.08.
Recital Daniil Trifonov
11.00
KKL Luzern, Concert Hall
Daniil Trifonov piano
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
Children’s Album, Op. 39
30 min
Robert Schumann
Fantasy in C major, Op. 17
32 min
Wolfgang Amadé Mozart
Fantasy in C minor, K. 475
13 min
Maurice Ravel
Gaspard de la nuit
23 min
Alexander Scriabin
Piano Sonata No. 5, Op. 53
12 min
CHF 170/150/110/90/60/30
LOOK LISTEN ENJOY see p. 105
With the friendly support of Monique and Dr. Thomas Staehelin-Bonnard
Speicher might well be Enno Poppe’s signature piece: a full-length cycle for large ensemble in which the inexhaustible sonic imagination and stupendous formal awareness of this year’s composer-in-residence are in the foreground. At moments the music has jazz-like syncopations; at others Poppe creates shimmering soundscapes, while specific musicians are frequently given a solo spotlight. At the same time, the music unfolds transparently from a few simple motifs and builds up a precisely planned large-scale form. “In order for a piece to continue on and on and remain interesting, it is important not only to have variety but to be able to recognize something,” says Poppe. That is why more material is not necessary for longer pieces: just give what you have “a closer, more patient” look. And so, with Speicher, he asked himself: “What do ideas achieve when they are stretched for over an hour? At the same time, Speicher ’s plan is hardly to prolong everything, but rather, in order to keep the intensity high, to seek the extremes: extreme condensation, thinning out, acceleration, expansion.”
Lucerne Festival Academy 2
14.30
KKL Luzern, Lucerne Hall
Ensemble of the Lucerne Festival Contemporary Orchestra (LFCO) Enno Poppe conductor
Enno Poppe
Speicher I-VI for large ensemble
70 min
This concert has no intermission.
Introduction (in German) with Enno Poppe at the start of the concert
CHF 50 (open seating)
Is music the true paradise? “Through an aria by Handel, we can all enter another dimension; in short, in those moments I believe in God,” Cecilia Bartoli said in an interview. “Music has the power to go straight to the heart. You don’t need words. That’s why music is so powerful. It’s the most honest way to deliver a message. If people really listened to music, we would probably no longer have war.” With her evening of Handel and Vivaldi, “La Bartoli,” a regular at Lucerne Festival since 1995, is doing her part for a better world. This time she will be accompanied by the multiple award-winning Baroque ensemble Il Pomo d’Oro. But the conductor also deserves special attention: Maxim Emelyanychev, born in 1988, is musically multi-talented: a virtuoso on a wide variety of keyboard instruments, a trained cornetist, and, as a conductor, an emerging star who made his debut with the Berlin Philharmonic in the fall of 2022. The Tagesspiegel praised his “electrifying charisma,” and the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung has marveled at his “impact without egotism.”
Concert Cecilia Bartoli
18.30
KKL Luzern, Concert Hall
Il Pomo d’Oro
Maxim Emelyanychev conductor
Cecilia Bartoli mezzo-soprano
Zefira Valova violin (RV 297)
Miguel Rincón lute (RV 93)
Antonio Vivaldi
Sinfonia from L’Olimpiade, RV 725
“Quell’augellin” from La Silvia, RV 734
“Sovvente il sole” from Andromeda liberata, RV Anh. 117
Largo from the Concerto in D major for lute, two violins, and basso continuo, RV 93
“Sol per te, mio dolce amore” from Orlando furioso, RV 728
Allegro non molto from Winter from The Four Seasons, RV 297
“Gelido in ogni vena” from Farnace, RV 711
George Frideric Handel
Overture and “Augelletti, che cantate” from Rinaldo, HWV 7
“Lascia la spina” from Il trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno, HWV 46a
Overture, Sinfonia “Il Parnaso,” and “V’adoro pupille” from Giulio Cesare in Egitto, HWV 17
Passacaglia from Radamisto, HWV 12
“Mi deride … Desterò dall’empia dite” from Amadigi di Gaula, HWV 11
This concert has no intermission.
CHF 240/200/150/100/60/30
It’s hard to believe that Anne-Sophie Mutter will be celebrating her 60th birthday on 29 June! We will honor this milestone with two performances as we pay tribute to an artist who has an unusually close association with the Festival. In the summer of 1976, at the age of 13, she began her international career here; since then she has performed 46 concerts with us, and she has also been involved behind the scenes as a member of the Foundation Board since 2022. Mutter has much to be proud of. There are, of course, her performances all over the world and with the best in the business. And the 30 or so new works that have been composed for her. And the much-praised recordings. And the many prizes and honors she has received. But the project closest to her heart is the ensemble Mutter’s Virtuosi, in which she brings together scholarship recipients from her foundation, which she established in 2008 to promote top musical talent. She regularly tours internationally with them, presenting her protégés as soloists. As on this evening, which combines Baroque repertoire with the Nonet by André Previn, a piece written for Mutter’s Virtuosi in 2015 that receives its Swiss premiere.
Mon
21.08.
19.30
KKL Luzern, Concert Hall
Mutter’s Virtuosi
Anne-Sophie Mutter violin and direction
Mohamed Hiber violin (first movement from BWV 1043)
Ye-Eun Choi violin (second movement from BWV 1043)
Samuel Nebyu violin (third movement from BWV 1043)
Francesco Maria Veracini
Violin Concerto in D major
6 min
Johann Sebastian Bach
Violin Concerto in A minor, BWV 1041
14 min
André Previn
Nonet for two string quartets and double bass
Swiss premiere
20 min
Johann Sebastian Bach
Brandenburg Concerto No. 3 in G major, BWV 1048
10 min
Concerto in D minor for two violins, BWV 1043
15 min
CHF 240/200/150/100/60/30
Go to the concert before the concert: 40min today! see p. 16
“Where other young pianists play very well, Dmytro Choni’s playing already possesses real greatness and ingenious breath,” the classical music portal Pizzicato wrote about the musician’s debut CD, praising his artful phrasing and the fine sensitivity of his performances. The Ukrainian, who was born in 1993, has also made a splash in competitions: he won the 2018 “Paloma O’Shea” competition in Santander and was awarded the bronze medal at the 2022 Van Cliburn International Piano Competition; in 2017 he received the Benedetti Michelangeli Prize in Italy, and, in 2019, he won the “Prix du Piano Bern” in Switzerland. Choni, who studied in his hometown of Kiev and in Graz, designs his programs with subtlety. He begins his Lucerne debut concert with Prokofiev’s cheeky Sarcasms and concludes it with the American Lowell Liebermann’s suite Gargoyles, which seems like a contemporary response to the young Prokofiev’s bad-boy style. In between, he will evoke three sublime soundscapes by Debussy, bring to life the visions of light in Scriabin’s Fourth Piano Sonata, and pay tribute to his compatriot Valentin Silvestrov with the dreamy Bagatelles, Op. 1.
Debut Dmytro Choni
12.15 Lukaskirche
Dmytro Choni piano
Sergei Prokofiev
Sarcasms, Op. 17
12 min
Claude Debussy
Les collines d’Anacapri from Préludes pour piano, vol. 1
3 min
Et la lune descend sur le temple qui fut from Images pour piano, vol. 2
6 min
L’Isle joyeuse
6 min
Alexander Scriabin
Piano Sonata No. 4 in F-sharp major, Op. 30
8 min
Valentin Silvestrov
Bagatelles for piano, Op. 1
11 min
Lowell Liebermann
Gargoyles, Op. 29
10 min
This concert has no intermission.
CHF 30
Music & Lunch
Enjoy a fine set menu following the concert
More at lucernefestival.ch/lunchtime-concerts
Wagner’s Das Rheingold starts off with an E-flat major chord stretched over a heavenly four minutes and 136 measures. The musical flow surges up and down in broken triads. Almost nothing happens harmonically or melodically; only the instrumental colors change, and the Rhinemaidens then join in singing a childlike lullaby: “Weia! Waga! Woge, du Welle, walle zur Wiege!” Wagner depicts the purest natural paradise, but the Fall is approaching — in the form of the Nibelung Alberich, who steals the Rhinegold and in the process robs this pristine world of its natural resources. The whole thing, as we know, ends badly, in the fourth part of the Nibelungen tetralogy, with the burning Valhalla, the castle of the gods, and the downfall of the existing social order. Das Rheingold can be interpreted as a visionary eco-thriller that denounces the exploitation of nature, along with all its consequences. Kent Nagano’s interpretation, however, also endows the work a freshly explosive musical power. He will give an historically informed presentation of the score — one based on a well-founded reconstruction of instrumental, vocal, linguistic, and stage practices from Wagner’s time which has been compiled by renowned experts. Das Rheingold will be performed using a period approach that is likely how Wagner himself heard it.
Das Rheingold
19.30
KKL Luzern, Concert Hall
Dresdner Festspielorchester
Concerto Köln
Kent Nagano conductor
Simon Bailey Wotan
Dominik Köninger Donner
Mauro Peter Loge
Tansel Akzeybek Froh
NN Fricka
NN Freia
Gerhild Romberger Erda
Daniel Schmutzhard Alberich
Thomas Ebenstein Mime
NN Fasolt
Dimitry Ivashchenko Fafner
Ania Vegry Woglinde
Ida Aldrian Wellgunde
Eva Vogel Flosshilde
Richard Wagner
Das Rheingold
Prelude to the stage festival play Der Ring des Nibelungen concert performance with German surtitles
135 min
This performance has no intermission.
In cooperation with the Dresden Music Festival as part of the “Wagner Readings” project
Introduction to the concert
18.30 | KKL Luzern, Auditorium with Susanne Stähr (in German)
CHF 240/200/150/100/60/30
This concert is made possible by Regula Gerber
The Mahler Chamber Orchestra has designed a highly Romantic program for this concert. With Robert Schumann, it takes a look into the torn soul of Byron’s hero Manfred, who wanders restlessly through the Swiss Alps in search of redemption. Then comes Schumann’s enchanting Piano Concerto. “Artiste étoile” Daniil Trifonov is equally at home in the work’s virtuoso passages, which require “paws” (that is, power and authority), as in the dreamy Intermezzo and the playful but pianistically intricate Finale. And with the Third, Brahms wrote a symphony that oscillates between melancholy and serenity, light and shadow, emanating a paradisiacal aura. The composer’s longtime friend Clara Schumann felt here “as if spun into all the bliss of nature.” The conductor Daniel Harding, who has a second job flying passenger planes for Air France, will go all out in his interpretation: “As a pilot, I do my utmost to avoid any risk. But as a musician, I have to dare something, because that’s the only way to create beauty.”
Wed 23.08. SYMPHONY
Mahler Chamber Orchestra
19.30
KKL Luzern, Concert Hall
Mahler Chamber Orchestra
Daniel Harding conductor
Daniil Trifonov piano
Robert Schumann
Manfred Overture, Op. 115
13 min
Piano Concerto in A minor, Op. 54
34 min
Johannes Brahms
Symphony No. 3 in F major, Op. 90
38 min
CHF 200/170/130/90/60/30
Go to the concert before the concert: 40min today! see p. 16
Zurich Insurance Company Ltd
Main Sponsor
A solo career as a violist? To date, only a hand-picked group has succeeded in achieving international fame with this instrument. The Briton Timothy Ridout, who was born in 1995, has joined this small group of the chosen few at a rapid clip. He won the Cecil Aronowitz and Lionel Tertis competitions, was named a BBC New Generation Artist, and has since performed not only at the BBC Proms but also with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe, the Philharmonia Orchestra, the Tonhalle Orchestra Zurich, and the Tokyo Metropolitan Orchestra. His Lucerne Festival debut was actually planned for 2020 but fell victim to the coronavirus pandemic. Now, finally, the concert can take place, and in the process, Ridout will tread unusual repertoire paths. He is premiering a new work by Icelander Kristín Þóra Haraldsdóttir and reviving Clara Schumann’s Romances, Op. 22, which had been utterly forgotten for almost 100 years. And with César Franck’s A major Sonata, which is usually heard in the versions for violin or cello, he will claim a true repertoire classic for the viola.
Debut Timothy Ridout
12.15
Lukaskirche
Timothy Ridout viola
Jonathan Ware piano
Clara Schumann
Three Romances, Op. 22 arranged for viola by Timothy Ridout
12 min
Kristín Þóra Haraldsdóttir
new work for viola and piano
world premiere commissioned by the I&I Foundation
8 min
César Franck
Violin Sonata in A major arranged for viola by Timothy Ridout
30 min
This concert has no intermission.
CHF 30
Enjoy a fine set menu following the concert
More at lucernefestival.ch/lunchtime-concerts
The Süddeutsche Zeitung on Klaus Mäkelä
It means something when orchestral musicians rhapsodize outright about a conductor. Klaus Mäkelä, the 27-year-old Finnish maestro who was trained by the great conducting pedagogue Jorma Panula, is one such case, and he has astonished the music world. He is already music director of the Orchestre de Paris and the Oslo Philharmonic, with which he is now making his debut in Lucerne; and the renowned Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra in Amsterdam has also signed him as its future principal conductor. Mäkelä conducts with burning intensity; he “impresses with a calm restlessness and a determination to the uttermost,” as the Süddeutsche Zeitung has written. This is to the benefit of Mahler’s Fourth Symphony, which he has chosen to correspond with this summer’s theme. The finale takes us right into Paradise, which turns out to be a land of milk and honey and features all kinds of biblical figures. In the second part, Mäkelä pays homage to his home country with Sibelius’s Seventh, but he will put it in a new context, letting it emerge seamlessly from the Liebestod Wagner composed for Isolde.
Thu 24.08.
Oslo Philharmonic 1
19.30
KKL Luzern, Concert Hall
Oslo Philharmonic
Klaus Mäkelä conductor
Johanna Wallroth soprano
Gustav Mahler
Symphony No. 4 in G major
58 min
Richard Wagner
Prelude and Liebestod from Tristan und Isolde
18 min
Jean Sibelius
Symphony No. 7 in C major, Op. 105
23 min
Introduction to the concert
18.30 | KKL Luzern, Auditorium with Susanne Stähr (in German)
CHF 240/200/150/100/60/30
Nestlé S.A.
Concert Sponsor
Klaus Mäkelä
Alexander Scriabin had special ideas about what it would be like to arrive in Paradise. He dreamed of the “Last Day, when I will be absorbed by millions of butterflies in a final dance.” A glimpse of this is conveyed by his large-scale Poème de l’extase, through which Scriabin hoped to induce an ecstatic state for his audience. So prepare yourself to be blown away by this second concert with the Oslo Philharmonic and its charismatic music director Klaus Mäkelä! But the evening will already start with a hint of ecstasy by a Russian composer. Tchaikovsky’s orchestral fantasy The Tempest, loosely based on Shakespeare’s romance, impressively unleashes the forces of nature and lets the passions surge. And when the Chinese star pianist Yuja Wang enters the scene to perform both of Maurice Ravel’s piano concertos, you can be sure there will be no limits to the sense of collective release. Whether you prefer Yuja Wang’s take on the jazz-tinged Concerto for the Left Hand or her approach to the folklore-inspired one in G (for both hands) is a matter of personal taste. In any case, keyboard magic is guaranteed.
Fri
19.30
SYMPHONY
KKL Luzern, Concert Hall
Oslo Philharmonic
Klaus Mäkelä conductor
Yuja Wang piano
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
The Tempest, Op. 18
22 min
Maurice Ravel
Piano Concerto in D major for the Left Hand
18 min
Piano Concerto in G
21 min
Alexander Scriabin
Le Poème de l’extase, Op. 54
22 min
CHF 240/200/150/100/60/30
Go to the concert before the concert: 40min today! see p. 16
Dr. Christoph M. Müller and Sibylla M. Müller
For composer-in-residence Enno Poppe, Mathias Spahlinger’s monumental orchestral work passage/paysage from 1990 is the Rite of Spring of his generation: “a piece that suspended previous laws, replacing them with something we could not yet understand.” Using a very expansive orchestra (the score is 120 cm high), Spahlinger unfolds a 45-minute stream of sound that is perpetually in flux, from the two strokes of chords reminiscent of Beethoven’s Eroica at the beginning to the final orgy of pizzicato strings. “There are no transitions from one solid state to another solid state,” Spahlinger explains. “Each of the states, no matter where you stop it, is already changing.” But since a great effort is required to perform it, not least because of the enormous demands it makes on the musicians, this groundbreaking work hardly stands a chance in the normal classical music world. Just the right thing for the Lucerne Festival Contemporary Orchestra (LFCO), our orchestra of excellence for contemporary music, which will also give the world premieres of two new scores by young composers.
Sat 26.08.
Lucerne Festival Academy 3
11.00
KKL Luzern, Concert Hall
Lucerne Festival Contemporary Orchestra (LFCO)
Jack Sheen conductor (Moliner)
Rita Castro Blanco conductor (Sardaryan)
Enno Poppe conductor (Spahlinger)
David Moliner
Estructura IV “Dämonische Iris” for orchestra
“Roche Young Commissions” world premiere
19 min
Hovik Sardaryan
Ikone for orchestra
“Roche Young Commissions” world premiere
17 min
Mathias Spahlinger
passage/paysage
Swiss premiere
45 min
CHF 120/90/60
Roche
Main Sponsor and Partner
Lucerne Festival Academy
“Sometimes I think I sense a deep desire for an individual statement. Very few actually want to do something typically ‘contemporary’”: this is how Wolfgang Rihm perceives the young generation of composers whom he regularly encounters as a teacher, whether as a professor in Karlsruhe or in his Composer Seminar in Lucerne. He therefore advises everyone “to articulate their ideas as unambiguously as possible. Which means as little as possible: ‘That’s how you do it today!’” And that’s why, in the closing concert of this year’s Composer Seminar, you won’t hear a “Rihmian school” but will encounter the diversity of contemporary composing, under the expert guidance of Wolfgang Rihm and Dieter Ammann, who will lead us through the program as moderators and commentators. You will also get to know the young conductors from the Lucerne Festival Academy’s Contemporary-Conducting Program, with whom the young composers were able to intensively rehearse their works over the course of a week.
Sat 26.08.
Composer Seminar — Closing Concert
14.30
KKL Luzern, Lucerne Hall
International Ensemble Modern Academy (IEMA Ensemble 2022-23)
Participants in the Contemporary-Conducting Program
Wolfgang Rihm and Dieter Ammann moderators
Composer Seminar Showcase, part 2 world premieres 90 min
Wolfgang Rihm and Dieter Ammann will introduce the composers and their works during the concert.
This concert has no intermission.
CHF 50 (open seating)
Composer Seminar
Mon 14.08. – Thu 17.08. see p. 40
40min
Fri 25.08. | 18.20
KKL Luzern, Lucerne Hall
“Classical Music Composed Today” Composer Seminar Showcase, part 1 see p. 16
With the friendly support of the Aventis Foundation
A concert where you don’t know exactly what program you’re going to hear resembles a kind of “blind date,” with all of its uncertainties. But not when Sir András Schiff invites you. For this pianist guarantees the highest artistic quality. He carefully selects the works he performs, making them light up and plumbing them to their innermost depths. Sir András already delighted his Lucerne audience with this concept last summer — all the more so because he took to the microphone between performances to present the works with expertise as well as humor, in German and in English. With the astonishing effect that Bach, Beethoven, et al. were suddenly illuminated in a completely different way, while the audience acquired a special feeling for the sublime finesse of Schiff’s interpretation. No question: this experiment demanded a sequel! In addition to Bach and Beethoven, this time András Schiff will also focus on Mendelssohn, Schumann, and Brahms, opening the door to the enchanting world of the Romantic piano repertoire.
Sir András Schiff piano works by Johann Sebastian Bach, Ludwig van Beethoven, Robert Schumann, Felix Mendelssohn, and Johannes Brahms
Sir András Schiff will decide on the spur of the moment which compositions he will perform and will explain his choices during the concert.
CHF 170/150/110/90/60/30
The Russian war of aggression against Ukraine has changed the world — there is talk everywhere of an historical “turning point.” But it is not only politics that has reacted; much has also changed in classical music. For example, through the founding of the Ukrainian Freedom Orchestra, which is made up of refugee musicians and Ukrainian members of European orchestras. Under the direction of its Ukrainian-Canadian music director Keri-Lynn Wilson, this orchestra immediately caused a sensation on its world tour: “Highly impressive and deeply moving,” wrote The Guardian in its review of the London performance. Now the “UFO” (the ensemble’s acronym) is landing in Lucerne as well. With the overture to Verdi’s La forza del destino, it will recall the devastation of war. Beethoven’s Eroica stands for the heroic deeds of the Ukrainians and honors the dead with the “Marcia funebre.” And the soloist is the Ukrainian violin virtuoso Valeriy Sokolov, who gave a brilliant debut concert at Lucerne Festival in 2017: he will play the Second Violin Concerto by the contemporary Ukrainian composer Yevhen Stankovych.
Ukrainian Freedom Orchestra
11.00
KKL Luzern, Concert Hall
Ukrainian Freedom Orchestra
Keri-Lynn Wilson conductor
Valeriy Sokolov violin
Giuseppe Verdi
Overture to La forza del destino
7 min
Yevhen Stankovych
Violin Concerto No. 2
26 min
Ludwig van Beethoven
Symphony No. 3 in E-flat major, Op. 55 Sinfonia eroica
50 min
This concert has no intermission.
CHF 120/90/60
LOOK LISTEN ENJOY see p. 105
The trumpet player Aaron Akugbo, who was born in 1998 to a Scottish-Nigerian family, has rapidly become a welcome artist at Lucerne Festival. He first appeared here in 2021 with his fabulous ensemble Connaught Brass, with whom he has won the Philip Jones Brass Ensemble Award. In 2022, at his solo Debut concert, he thrilled audiences not only as a virtuoso in command of an exciting musicality but also as an affable host who established an intimate atmosphere similar to a private concert. And now, in the summer of 2023, Akugbo returns for a date with the Festival Strings Lucerne in which he will perform the French composer Robert Planel’s Trumpet Concerto — a work that is as elegant as it is entertaining. Following this, Daniel Dodds and his ensemble will venture a bold ascent from hell to heaven. Starting with a foray into the “house of the devil,” as Luigi Boccherini depicted his dark, tempestuous symphony La casa del diavolo, they will ultimately turn their backs on the demonic forces as they knock on the gates of Paradise with Bach’s so-called “deathbed chorale,” Vor deinen Thron tret’ ich hiermit
14.30
KKL Luzern, Concert Hall
Festival Strings Lucerne
Daniel Dodds violin and musical direction
Aaron Akugbo trumpet
Antonín Dvořák
Andante in F minor from the String Quartet, Op. 9
arranged by Martin Braun for string orchestra
Swiss premiere
8 min
Robert Planel
Concerto for trumpet and string orchestra
15 min
Luigi Boccherini
Symphony in D minor, G 506
La casa del diavolo
19 min
Johann Sebastian Bach
Choral arrangement of Vor deinen
Thron tret’ ich hiermit BWV 668 arranged for string orchestra by Felix Oberborbeck
5 min
This concert has no intermission.
Tickets for CHF 10 will be available on August 14 and from August 16 to 25 (from 9.00 to 11.00 and from 14.00 to 16.00) exclusively at the reception desk at the Stadthaus Luzern (Hirschengraben 17) — cash only.
Consecration for the Parish Fair
17.00 | Jesuitenkirche
soloists, vocal ensemble, and orchestra of the Collegium
Musicum Luzern | Pascal Mayer
This concert gives you a chance to experience not only the wonderful musicians of the Lucerne Festival Contemporary Orchestra (LFCO) in smaller ensembles but also the four young conductors who are completing our Contemporary-Conducting Program this summer. Over the course of three weeks, they will follow the Lucerne Festival Academy’s work, have an opportunity to exchange ideas with all of the guest conductors, and gain important experience on the podium — with a program whose diversity underscores that “new music” is not a monolith. The Havana-born American composer Tania León takes us back to the paradise of her childhood, reviving the wild sounds of carnival in Cuba. The Italian Clara Iannotta was for her part inspired by Dorothy Molloy’s moving poems about her cancer. The delicate miniatures of the Chinese-American composer Lei Liang are reminiscent of haikus, while influences of jazz and blues can be detected in the work of the Afro-American Jalalu-Kalvert Nelson, who now lives in Biel: Jim Is Still Crowing addresses the latent continuing aftermath of the racist Jim Crow laws that were in effect until the 1960s — especially in the current dispute about restrictions on voting rights — and thus characterizes the U.S. as a “false paradise.”
Lucerne Festival Academy 5
16.00
KKL Luzern, Lucerne Hall
Ensemble of the Lucerne Festival Contemporary Orchestra (LFCO)
Participants in the ContemporaryConducting Program conductors
Jalalu-Kalvert Nelson trumpet
Tania León
Indígena for ensemble
8 min
Clara Iannotta
Intent on Resurrection — Spring or Some Such Thing for 17 musicians
Swiss premiere
14 min
Lei Liang
Bamboo Lights for chamber orchestra
European premiere
12 min
Jalalu-Kalvert Nelson
Jim Is Still Crowing for trumpet and ensemble
Swiss premiere
26 min
This concert has no intermission.
CHF 50 (open seating)
Gustav Mahler’s Seventh Symphony poses a riddle: How could this austere and brooding man end the work with a finale that is so ostentatiously cheerful and jubilant? Was he trying to make fun of us? Or did he fall prey to a childishly naïve need for the better world, for paradise? The first three movements of the Seventh explore nocturnal regions: dark Mahlerian marches, soldiers patrolling in the dark, demons and ghosts maliciously snickering. But in the fourth movement things takes a surprising turn with a lovely serenade, “Andante amoroso,” featuring gentle accompaniment by harp, mandolin, and guitar. And then comes the notorious finale, with its opening outburst of splendor and glory from the timpani, jubilant chorales, and bell ringing — along with echoes of the Prelude to Wagner’s Die Meistersinger, which Iván Fischer fittingly conducts to open the concert: what a déjà vu! Whatever Mahler wanted to say with this music, the Seventh is a captivating listening adventure — especially when played by a Mahler orchestra of as high a caliber as the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra.
Sun 27.08.
Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra
19.30
KKL Luzern, Concert Hall
Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra
Iván Fischer conductor
Richard Wagner
Prelude to the opera
Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg
10 min
Gustav Mahler
Symphony No. 7 in E minor
77 min
This concert has no intermission.
CHF 320/270/220/150/80/40
The program that Andris Nelsons and his Boston Symphony Orchestra have devised for the first of their two performances in Lucerne seems like a paradisiacal “One World Vision.” They open the evening with Four Black American Dances by the American Carlos Simon (born in 1986), whose Requiem for the Enslaved was nominated for Best Contemporary Composition at this year’s Grammy Awards. They will also take us on a trip to Egypt, where the Frenchman Camille Saint-Saëns was inspired to write his Fifth Piano Concerto by a Nubian love song he encountered on a boat trip along the Nile. Not to mention that he also used Arabic scales and East Asian pentatonic scales in this work. To top it off, Nelsons & Co. will stop off at a fair in St. Petersburg, where Stravinsky’s Petrushka, the Russian version of the puppet Punch, challenges his rival to a duel as they fight over a beautiful ballerina. Black and white, East and West, folklore and modern collage techniques: all of this gets a say in this concert, with each piece complementing the others very well. Just as it should be in real life.
Mon 28.08.
Boston Symphony Orchestra 1
19.30
KKL Luzern, Concert Hall
Boston Symphony Orchestra
Andris Nelsons conductor
Jean-Yves Thibaudet piano
Carlos Simon
Four Black American Dances
Swiss premiere
14 min
Camille Saint-Saëns
Piano Concerto No. 5 in F major, Op. 103 Egyptian Concerto
27 min
Igor Stravinsky Petrushka
35 min
CHF 290/240/190/130/70/40
The Adecco Group
Isata Kanneh-Mason
This is not her first appearance at Lucerne Festival: Isata KannehMason was already introduced here in the summer of 2018, when she appeared as the piano partner of her younger brother, the cellist Sheku Kanneh-Mason. But her career has since developed so rapidly that she has long deserved to be in the spotlight with her own Debut concert. Born in 1996, the British pianist thrilled audiences in Europe’s most prestigious concert halls in 2021-22 as a “Rising Star” of the European Concert Hall Organisation. In the 2022-23 season, she is artist-in-residence with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and will perform with the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the Hollywood Bowl. Her very first CD, Romance, an album dedicated to Clara Schumann, reached number one on the British classical music charts. She received the Opus Klassik Best Young Artist Award (piano) in 2020, and in 2021 she garnered the Leonard Bernstein Award. With her Lucerne program, Isata Kanneh-Mason will prove that she is more than a distinguished virtuosa: the Haydn selection requires a sensitive interpreter, and to play the Schumann and Chopin calls for the loftiest musical poetry.
Tue 29.08.
Debut Isata Kanneh-Mason
12.15 Lukaskirche
Isata Kanneh-Mason piano
Joseph Haydn
Piano Sonata in C major, Hob. XVI:50
17 min
Robert Schumann
Scenes from Childhood, Op. 15
19 min
Frédéric Chopin
Piano Sonata No. 3 in B minor, Op. 58
28 min
This concert has no intermission.
CHF 30
Music & Lunch
Enjoy a fine set menu following the concert
More at lucernefestival.ch/lunchtime-concerts
Debut in the Schoolhouse
On 30 August Isata KannehMason will also perform for school classes.
Anne-Sophie Mutter has premiered 31 works to date, many by the greats of the contemporary music scene: Sofia Gubaidulina, Witold Lutosławski, Wolfgang Rihm, and most recently, at Lucerne’s 2022 Summer Festival, Thomas Adès. It may come as a surprise at first glance that the grand master of film music, John Williams, who has won five Academy Awards and 25 Grammy Awards, has also written a violin concerto for her. Anne-Sophie Mutter loves his music “because he builds bridges” and “brings so much joy to the concert hall. He is a wonderful composer, no matter what style he writes in. We must be grateful for perhaps the last great figure we have left.” She premiered the work in 2021 with the Boston Symphony Orchestra under Williams’s baton and will now present it with the same orchestra in Lucerne, this time with Andris Nelsons on the podium. After intermission, Nelsons will take a look into the afterlife with Strauss’s Death and Transfiguration: Is paradise awaiting us there? He will lead another apocalyptic fantasy with Ravel’s La Valse, a dance on the volcano’s edge that brings the good old Viennese waltz to a frenetic climax, imploding it at the end.
Boston Symphony Orchestra 2
19.30
KKL Luzern, Concert Hall
Boston Symphony Orchestra
Andris Nelsons conductor
Anne-Sophie Mutter violin
John Williams
Violin Concerto No. 2
Swiss premiere
36 min
Richard Strauss
Death and Transfiguration, Op. 24
26 min
Maurice Ravel
La Valse
13 min
CHF 290/240/190/130/70/40
Go to the concert before the concert: 40min today! see p. 16
This is a birthday concert: 150 years ago, on 19 March 1873, Max Reger was born. In the 1920s, he was still the most frequently performed contemporary composer in the German-speaking world, but with the triumph of Modernism, his work somewhat fell out of view. That has to change, say the Berlin Philharmonic and Kirill Petrenko, and to mark the anniversary they will perform Reger’s Mozart Variations, which show what a master craftsman this composer was, as well as how audacious he could be, since in this work the theme he chose to vary comes from the Piano Sonata in A major, K. 331, where his great idol Mozart himself had varied the same theme. With an orchestra as excellent as the Berlin Philharmonic, this performance promises to be a remarkable musical experience. Ditto when it comes to Richard Strauss’s Ein Heldenleben, a work scored for an enormous orchestra, in which the composer elevates himself to heroic status and incorporates quotations from his earlier tone poems. He also portrays his wife Pauline and mocks his adversaries from the music critic profession. At the end, he flees the world and, who knows, perhaps even reaches Paradise …
Berlin Philharmonic 1
19.30
KKL Luzern, Concert Hall
Berlin Philharmonic Kirill Petrenko conductor
Max Reger
Variations and Fugue on a Theme by Mozart, Op. 132
32 min
Richard Strauss
Ein Heldenleben, Op. 40
48 min
CHF 320/270/220/150/80/40
Go to the concert before the concert: 40min today! see p. 16
He was considered a kind of child prodigy: the baritone Äneas Humm, born in 1995 to a Swiss-Hungarian family of artists, made his operatic debut at the age of 18. But he remained undazzled by early fame, preferring instead to move to New York to continue his studies with Edith Wiens at the Juilliard School; he also worked with the pianist Hartmut Höll on his lieder interpretations. Those efforts paid off: in 2022, Humm received the Opus Klassik Young Artist of the Year award for his lieder album Embrace; he was invited by German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier to give a concert at Bellevue Palace to open the Beethoven Year; and in the fall of 2023 he returns as a guest artist to the Gran Teatre del Liceu in Barcelona to appear in John Adams’s new opera, Antony and Cleopatra For his debut at Lucerne Festival, Äneas Humm has come up with a program that is as varied as it is original, presenting depictions of the most diverse varieties of paradise involving spirituality, the experience of nature, the bliss of love and intoxication, and covering a wide range of repertoire, from Franz Schubert through Alma Mahler and Henri Duparc to the Russian Nikolai Medtner.
Thu 31.08.
Debut Äneas Humm
12.15
Lukaskirche
Äneas Humm baritone
Renate Rohlfing piano
“Exploring Paradise”
Nikolai Medtner
Vor einer heiligen Pforte, Op. 3, no. 1 | Ich überlebte mein
Verlangen, Op. 3, no. 2 |
Wandrers Nachtlied, Op. 15, no. 1 7 min
Alma Mahler
Bei dir ist es traut | Laue Sommernacht | Ansturm | 5 min
Henri Duparc
Extase | Phydilé | 8 min
Othmar Schoeck
Abendlandschaft, Op. 20, no. 10 |
Frühlingsblick, Op. 5, no. 3 |
Nachklang, Op. 30, no. 7 6 min
Richard Strauss
Die Verschwiegenen, Op. 10, no. 6 | Wie sollten wir geheim sie halten, Op. 19, no. 4 | Cäcilie, Op. 27, no. 2 10 min
Franz Schubert
Der Traum, D 213 | Wandrers
Nachtlied, D 768 | Das Lied im Grünen, D 917 | Im Abendrot, D 799 12 min
Elnaz Seyedi new work
world premiere | commissioned by the I&I Foundation 10 min
This concert has no intermission. CHF
Arnold Schoenberg was a great admirer of Johannes Brahms and, contrary to the generally widespread view of the time, did not consider the music of this North German composer to be at all backward-looking or conservative. On Brahms’s 100th birthday in 1933, he even gave a famous lecture for which he used the provocative title Brahms, the Progressive. In this concert, Kirill Petrenko and the Berlin Philharmonic will prove just how much Schoenberg benefited from Brahms by pairing two sets of variations by both composers. The effect is startling: the same techniques appear in different harmonic guises. And even though Schoenberg’s Op. 31 Orchestral Variations are based entirely on the logic of twelve-tone theory rather than a Romantic tonal language, they possess an astonishing expressive power and emotional range that is hardly less than that of Brahms. We should bid adieu to clichés in any case. The same applies to Ludwig van Beethoven, whose humorous and concise Eighth Symphony undercuts common assumptions about an “heroic titan.” Just go, listen, and smile — because the music itself usually knows better.
Thu 31.08.
Berlin Philharmonic 2
19.30
KKL Luzern, Concert Hall
Berlin Philharmonic Kirill Petrenko conductor
Johannes Brahms
Variations on a Theme by Joseph Haydn in B-flat major, Op. 56a
19 min
Arnold Schoenberg
Variations for Orchestra, Op. 31
22 min
Ludwig van Beethoven
Symphony No. 8 in F major, Op. 93
26 min
Introduction to the concert
18.30 | KKL Luzern, Auditorium with Susanne Stähr (in German)
CHF 320/270/220/150/80/40
On 31 August at 10:00, the Brass Ensemble of the Berlin Philharmonic will give a special concert for Lucerne school classes at the KKL Luzern, moderated by Sarah Willis.
registration: schulen@lucernefestival.ch
Zurich Insurance Company Ltd
Main Sponsor
“Mahler documents his crises in his symphonies, while Bruckner overcomes them,” remarks Herbert Blomstedt, who celebrates his 96th birthday this summer and is able to empathize with the music of this Austrian mystic perhaps more than anyone else. Even while working on his Seventh Symphony, abysses opened up before Bruckner. During its composition, he received news of the death of his great idol, Richard Wagner. So he integrated Wagner tubas into the symphony: low horn instruments that had been used in the Ring cycle. And he designed the slow movement as poignant funeral music, which then builds up into a tremendous climax. Heaven and earth begin to tremble, with the result that yo already feel yourself very close to Paradise. “Bruckner wrote highly emotional music; the sound is enormously sensual,” finds Blomstedt. “At the same time, this is highly intelligent music in which, in a sense, several theories of relativity are hidden. Bruckner’s works are supported by a towering intellect, but — and this is so wonderful about him — when necessary, he is also capable of expressing himself very simply.”
Fri
Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra
19.30
KKL Luzern, Concert Hall
Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra
Herbert Blomstedt conductor
Anton Bruckner
Symphony No. 7 in E major, WAB 107
70 min
This concert has no intermission.
Introduction to the concert
18.30 | KKL Luzern, Auditorium with Susanne Stähr (in German)
CHF 290/240/190/130/70/40
KPMG AG
Concert Sponsor
The Neue Zürcher Zeitung on Mao Fujita at the 2022 Summer Festival
“Mao, followed by what?” No, the answer is not Zedong, nor does the trail lead to China, but to Japan, where pianist Mao Fujita was born in 1998. When he took to the stage in August 2022 to perform Rachmaninoff’s Second Piano Concerto with Riccardo Chailly and the Lucerne Festival Orchestra, he was still an unknown for most in the audience. But 45 minutes later, people were on the edge of their seats: Mao Fujita had made a brilliant debut, playing a Rachmaninoff the likes of which had never been heard before. Rather than a key banger who emphasizes volume and virile potency, he showed himself to be a poet, caressing the keys and shedding completely new light on Rachmaninoff’s most famous concerto, which we thought we already knew so well. All of a sudden, it sounded almost like Schumann. And Mao Fujita has even more to offer. In the fall, he released a complete recording of the Mozart piano sonatas characterized by subtle phrasing, wit, and thrilling joie de vivre. Now we can look forward to his first solo recital at the Festival — and to seeing how he approaches Chopin and Liszt.
Recital Mao Fujita
16.00
KKL Luzern, Concert Hall
Mao Fujita piano
Frédéric Chopin
Polonaise in C-sharp minor, Op. 26, no. 1
8 min
Polonaise in E-flat minor, Op. 26, no. 2
9 min
Polonaise in A major, Op. 40, no. 1
6 min
Polonaise in C minor, Op. 40, no. 2
8 min
Polonaise-Fantaisie in A-flat major, Op. 61
14 min
Franz Liszt
Piano Sonata in B minor, S 178
32 min
This concert has no intermission.
CHF 120/90/60
The Lucerne Festival Contemporary Orchestra (LFCO) will escort us to three very different sonic worlds during its final performance of this summer. In 1913, Igor Stravinsky’s ballet Le Sacre du printemps triggered one of the biggest scandal premieres in music history. But audiences soon became hooked on this sweeping melange of archaic melodies, brutal sonic clashes, and rhythmic eruptions. Composer-in-residence Enno Poppe similarly breaks with the conventions of orchestral sound. In Fett, he concentrates entirely on iridescently shimmering “chord towers” that grow increasingly “adipose.” “There are agglomerations of chords comprising 25, 30, or even 40 voices, which are moreover microtonal. Actually, there is no normal chord whatsoever in this work. It’s made up only of chords that knock your socks off harmonically.” And at the end of the program, in Šu, Unsuk Chin refreshes the traditional instrumental concerto by juxtaposing the orchestra with the sheng, the Chinese mouth organ, which is over 3,000 years old. She was inspired by sheng virtuoso Wu Wei, who will also perform the solo part in Lucerne.
Lucerne Festival Academy 4
19.30
KKL Luzern, Concert Hall
Lucerne Festival Contemporary Orchestra (LFCO)
Susanna Mälkki conductor
Wu Wei sheng
Enno Poppe
Fett for orchestra
Swiss premiere
25 min
Unsuk Chin
Šu for sheng and orchestra
Swiss premiere
21 min
Igor Stravinsky
Le Sacre du printemps
35 min
Introduction to the concert
18.30 | KKL Luzern, Auditorium with Mark Sattler (in German)
CHF 120/100/80/70/50/30
LOOK LISTEN ENJOY see p. 105
One of the most prominent figures of the Lucerne Festival Orchestra, the violist Wolfram Christ has shaped the orchestra’s profile since its founding in 2003, both as principal and as a passionate chamber musician. But with this matinee concert Christ concludes his career as a soloist — a career that has taken him all around the world for more than 40 years. To mark this occasion, Academy Director Wolfgang Rihm and his most famous student, Jörg Widmann, have composed two new solo works for him: a farewell that at the same time makes a statement for the future. Christ will also demonstrate his versatility when he takes up the baton to conduct Schubert’s animated Third Symphony and Mozart’s heavenly Clarinet Concerto, with Sabine Meyer, who was also a founding member of the Lucerne Festival Orchestra, as soloist. She will perform the concerto, as Mozart intended, on the basset clarinet, which has a more-extended low register. “A pianist would never play on a piano where the lower octave is missing and everything has to be shifted to the middle register,” she says, explaining her choice.
Mozart & More
11.00
Orchestra di Padova e del Veneto
Wolfram Christ viola and musical direction
Sabine Meyer basset clarinet
Jörg Widmann
new work for viola and chamber orchestra
world premiere
commissioned by Lucerne Festival 10 min
Wolfgang Amadé Mozart
Clarinet Concerto in A major, K. 622 27 min
Wolfgang Rihm
new work for viola and chamber orchestra
world premiere
commissioned by Lucerne Festival 10 min
Franz Schubert
Symphony No. 3 in D major, D 200 23 min
CHF 120/90/60 LOOK LISTEN
see p. 105
After falling from the circus big top during an acrobatic music act, the two cellists of DuoCalva find themselves in heaven. They now wear angel wings on their backs, and their musical wingspan has likewise grown. Plus, in heaven they get to personally become acquainted with all of the famous composers who died long ago and whose music they have been playing for many years: Handel and Bach, Mozart and Beethoven, and also Scott Joplin. The celebrity chef Gioachino Rossini will serve the duo heavenly delicacies, and another truly heavenly treat will be contributed by the pianist, singer, and composer Maria Theresia von Paradis, a contemporary of the Viennese classics. And because heaven is known to be full of violins, the celebrated violin virtuoso Niccolò Paganini is of course on the scene — but he threatens to lose his way on the Highway to Hell. A humorous walk through music history for young Festival guests.
Family Concert — Cello Comedy
14.00 and 15.30
KKL Luzern, Lucerne Hall
DuoCalva: Daniel Schaerer and Alain Schudel cello and comedy performance
Dominique Müller stage director Charles Lewinsky dramaturgy
Marek Beles videos
“Im Himmel” (“In Heaven”)
An entertainment that takes you to paradise, featuring music by composers from George Frideric Handel, Wolfgang
Amadé Mozart, and Ludwig van Beethoven to Scott Joplin in German 50 min
For ages 8 and up
This concert has no intermission.
CHF 20/10 (adults/children)
Additional performances for school classes
Mon 04.09. | 9.00 and 10.30
KKL Luzern, Lucerne Hall registration: schulen@lucernefestival.ch
With the friendly support of the Arthur Waser Foundation
We all grew up with the notion of Paradise. It includes the story of Adam and Eve, who bit into the apple of knowledge and thus were plunged into temporality and the human condition of work and death. But it also involves our own biography, since childhood is considered to be that time of life in which we take stock of the greatness and vastness of the world free of care. The fact that we do not remember it clearly testifies to the magic of this beginning. Almost every religion and every culture knows the longing for Paradise. Music and art and literature have enhanced it with the power of myth and aesthetic perception. With the loss of belief in transcendence, the idea passed on into the philosophy of history. Now it was up to progress to teach how to create Paradise on earth. This is the soil on which the flowers of totalitarian evil flourished. But liberal society is also rooted in the promise of being able to achieve prosperity and balance. What remains if this utopia has come to an end in our time?
NZZ Podium
15.00
KKL Luzern, Auditorium
Round table discussion (in German) with Katharina Hacker writer
Armin Nassehi sociologist
Wolfgang Rihm composer and Artistic Director of the Lucerne Festival Academy
Moderator: Martin Meyer Director of the NZZ Podium
“Paradise: Where No One Has Been Before”
90 min
CHF 30/10 (discount)
What a paradise humanity has been given! Well aware of this. Joseph Haydn dramatized it in a magnificent way in his oratorio The Seasons. In spring, nature blossoms; summer brings heat to the land, which is released in a crashing thunderstorm. Fall is the time for harvesting, hunting, and celebrating, while fog, frost, and snow rule the world in winter. That’s how it used to be in the good old days. But how long will this repeated pattern remain for us to experience in times of climate change? For Giovanni Antonini, Haydn’s musical setting of this idyll conjures other timely images: melting glaciers, dried-up rivers, withered gardens, and ruined harvests. Antonini is a grand master of Haydn interpretation. His recording of all 104 Haydn symphonies is scheduled to be available for the composer’s 300th birthday in 2032. Incidentally, the name of his the name of his ensemble, Il Giardino Armonico, also fits the paradise theme perfectly: “It means something like ‘Good Garden,’” Antonini explains. “Original instruments almost automatically bring about a blossoming of the flowers in this garden and allow for a splendid balance of sound.”
Sun
The Seasons
18.30
KKL Luzern, Concert Hall
Il Giardino Armonico
NFM Choir
Giovanni Antonini conductor
Anett Fritsch soprano
Maximilian Schmitt tenor
Florian Boesch baritone
Joseph Haydn
The Seasons
Oratorio in four parts, Hob. XXI:3 130 min (plus intermission)
Introduction to the concert
17.30 | KKL Luzern, Auditorium with Susanne Stähr (in German)
CHF 220/180/130/90/60/30
William Christie
In the west of France, in the department of Vendée, William Christie has created his private Arcadia. In 1985, he acquired a country house with a Baroque garden there, which he then brought back to life. It is also where, for more than 20 years, he has presided over his vocal academy “Le Jardin des Voix," from which such international stars as the countertenors Christophe Dumaux and Xavier Sabata, the soprano Sonya Yoncheva, and the mezzo-sopranos Lea Desandre and Eva Zaïcik have emerged. Each year’s class prepares a semistaged production which is then presented on tour. These performances — the most recent was at Lucerne Festival in 2021 with Handel’s Partenope — are magical moments in which song, dance, theater, poetry, and historically informed interpretation combine to create a total work of art. For the 2023 “Summer of Paradise,” the “Jardin des Voix” will present Henry Purcell’s The Fairy Queen: a Baroque musical work filled with lively dancing, loosely based on Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. But unlike Shakespeare, the work ends in the Garden of Eden, where we even meet Adam and Eve in person …
The Fairy Queen
19.30
KKL Luzern, Concert Hall
Les Arts Florissants
William Christie conductor
Mourad Merzouki stage direction and choreography
Soloists from the 2023
“Jardin des Voix”:
Paulina Francisco sopranos
Giorgia Burashko, Rebecca
Leggett, and Juliette Mey
mezzo-sopranos
Ilja Aksionov and Rodrigo
Carreto tenors
Hugo Herman-Wilson baritone
Benjamin Schilperoort bass-baritone
Henry Purcell
The Fairy Queen, Z 629
Semi-opera in five acts
semi-staged performance with German surtitles ca. 125 min (incl. intermission)
Introduction to the concert
18.30 | KKL Luzern, Auditorium with Susanne Stähr (in German)
CHF 220/180/130/90/60/30
Dr. Christoph M. Müller and Sibylla M. Müller
Main Sponsor
Born in London in 1997, the hornist Ben Goldscheider has long been known to more than new music specialists. Trained by Radek Baborák at the Barenboim-Said Academy, he was one of the “Rising Stars” of the European Concert Hall Organisation in 2021-22, when he was introduced in the great concert venues across the continent. He has performed Ethel Smyth’s Concerto for violin and horn at the BBC Proms and has appeared as a soloist with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, the Mozarteum Orchestra Salzburg, the Royal Philharmonic, the London Mozart Players, and the Tapiola Sinfonietta. Not to mention that he is also a member of the Boulez Ensemble and principal horn of the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra and plays chamber music with Daniel Barenboim, Martha Argerich, Sergei Babayan, and Julian Prégardien. What sets Goldscheider apart from many others is his hunger for the unknown. He is passionate about new music and has already commissioned quite a few works, including Mark Simpson’s Nachtstück, with which he gives a contemporary response to Robert Schumann at his debut recital in Lucerne. “We have to open up to contemporary music,” remarks Goldscheider. “Otherwise, this art form will die."
Debut Ben Goldscheider
12.15
Lukaskirche
Ben Goldscheider horn
Richard Uttley piano
Jörg Widmann
Air for solo horn
9 min
Ludwig van Beethoven
Horn Sonata in F major, Op. 17
17 min
Sara Cubarsi
new work for horn and piano
world premiere commissioned by the I&I Foundation
10 min
Robert Schumann
Adagio and Allegro in A-flat major for horn and piano, Op. 70
8 min
Mark Simpson
Nachtstück for horn and piano
9 min
This concert has no intermission.
CHF 30
Music & Lunch
Enjoy a fine set menu following the concert
More at lucernefestival.ch/lunchtime-concerts
Debut in the Schoolhouse
On 4 September Ben Goldscheider and Richard Uttley will also perform for school classes.
There are piano concertos that even the greatest keyboard stars prefer to steer clear of. Brahms’s Concerto in B-flat major, the dreaded Second, might be such a case: beautiful, no question, but incredibly difficult to play! Igor Levit, however, is not afraid and rises to the challenge. And with the Vienna Philharmonic, he will have one of the finest orchestras in the world by his side. Jakub Hrůša stepped in at the last minute to lead the Lucerne Festival Orchestra in the summer of 2022, triumphantly taking on Riccardo Chailly’s Mahler evening without rehearsal. This time, he can prepare at greater leisure and has been allowed to choose the program himself. Which is why, in the second part, he will conduct Dvořák’s Eighth, his favorite of the nine symphonies by the Czech composer. It was written in idyllic Vysoká, where Dvořák spent summers in his country house enjoying the blessings of nature, as the birdcalls he incorporated into the work indicate. But Hrůša describes another reference to Paradise. It is a bit, he says, “like looking at the night sky. You’re fascinated by infinity without ever really being able to fully grasp and understand it.”
Tue
Vienna Philharmonic 1
19.30
KKL Luzern, Concert Hall
Vienna Philharmonic Jakub Hrůša conductor
Igor Levit piano
Johannes Brahms
Piano Concerto No. 2 in B-flat major, Op. 83
46 min
Antonín Dvořák Symphony No. 8 in G major, Op. 88
38 min
CHF 320/270/220/150/80/40
Go to the concert before the concert: 40min today! see p. 16
Credit Suisse
Main Sponsor
Jakub Hrůša comes from Brno, the same city where Leoš Janáček spent most of his life. Perhaps this is why he feels so close to Janáček’s music, which reflects the rhythms of the Czech language and the magic of Moravia’s nature. Take the opera The Cunning Little Vixen, for example. It tells the story of a clever little fox who is caught by a forester, frees herself, starts a fox family, and is shot by a poacher at the bitter end. Hrůša has compiled a “Grand Suite” from the opera that tells the whole story without words or song: a declaration of love for this ravishing work. Hrůša will also be completely in his element in Bedřich Smetana’s most famous piece, the indelible Vltava, guiding us through its paradisiacal Bohemian landscapes. The Vienna Philharmonic will then put all its virtuosity on display in Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Symphonic Dances, the finale of which features a quotation from the liturgical “Dies irae”: hell or paradise — that is the question here. Rachmaninoff answers it with a paraphrase of the “Hallelujah” from his All-Night Vigil. And we may hope.
Wed 06.09.
Vienna Philharmonic 2
19.30
KKL Luzern, Concert Hall
Vienna Philharmonic Jakub Hrůša conductor
Leoš Janáček
Grand Suite from the opera
The Cunning Little Vixen compiled and arranged by Jakub Hrůša 30 min
Bedřich Smetana
Vltava
13 min
Sergei Rachmaninoff
Symphonic Dances, Op. 45 36 min
Introduction to the concert
18.30 | KKL Luzern, Auditorium with Susanne Stähr (in German)
CHF 320/270/220/150/80/40
Credit Suisse
“Diversity” lives! The theme of the 2022 Summer Festival continues to resonate in 2023. For example, with the Isidore String Quartet. Although it comprises “only” men, two of them are people of color. The ensemble formed in 2019 in the melting pot of New York and won the prestigious Banff International String Quartet Competition in 2022. Its director Barry Shiffman afterward remarked: “The Isidore String Quartet immediately captured the hearts of the judges and the audience. It has a strong personal voice and vision.” Part of the prize is that the winners get to tour the world. These four gentlemen feel particularly influenced by the storied Juilliard Quartet and named themselves after one of its former violinists, Isidore Cohen. Or, alternatively, after the Orthodox monk Isidore, who is said to have invented vodka ... Whatever the case, the Isidore String Quartet’s aim is to treat the well-known repertoire as if it were new, and new music as if it were well-known. What results will be presented by the quartet on its debut program in Lucerne, when Haydn and Mendelssohn enter into a dialogue with a world premiere by the Armenian composer Arman Gushchyan.
Debut Isidore String Quartet
12.15
Lukaskirche
Isidore String Quartet: Phoenix Avalon and Adrian Steele violin
Devin Moore viola
Joshua McClendon cello
Joseph Haydn
String Quartet in C major, Hob. III:32
23 min
Arman Gushchyan
new work for string quartet
world premiere
commissioned by the I&I Foundation
8 min
Felix Mendelssohn
String Quartet in E-flat major, Op. 44, no. 3
33 min
This concert has no intermission.
CHF 30
Music & Lunch
Enjoy a fine set menu following the concert
More at lucernefestival.ch/lunchtime-concerts
Debut in the Schoolhouse
On 8 September the Isidore String Quartet will also perform for school classes.
African polyrhythms and medieval vocal polyphony, Eastern European folk music and the exotic sounds of the ocarina or lotus flute: in his late-period Violin Concerto, György Ligeti succeeded in creating a wonderful synthesis of the old and the new, the familiar and the foreign, which gathers up everything that fascinated and influenced him during his life as a composer. Just the right work, then, to celebrate Ligeti’s 100th birthday, particularly since Isabelle Faust will play the solo part. In the first half of the concert, FrançoisXavier Roth and his famed ensemble Les Siècles present works by composer-in-residence Enno Poppe. In Öl (“Oil”), Poppe has slowly flowing melodic lines merge languidly into one another. In the vocal cycle Augen (“Eyes”), he colors poems by Else Lasker-Schüler using the favorite instruments of the Second Viennese School: “A rush of celesta, glockenspiel, harp, guitar, mandolin, and English horn,” wrote the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung after the world premiere last year. “A sensual orchestral garden in orientalizing splendor.”
räsonanz — Donor Concert
19.30
KKL Luzern, Concert Hall
Les Siècles
François-Xavier Roth conductor
Sarah Maria Sun soprano
Isabelle Faust violin
Enno Poppe
Öl for ensemble
35 min
Augen. 25 songs for soprano and chamber orchestra
Swiss premiere
20 min
György Ligeti
Violin Concerto
26 min
Introduction (in German) with Enno Poppe at the start of the concert
CHF 120/100/80/70/50/30
Go to the concert before the concert: 40min today! see p. 16
Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation
Partner räsonanz — Donor Concert
... and you will find a report from somewhere in the world of someone being imprisoned, tortured, or executed because his opinions or religion are unacceptable to his government.” These words come from Peter Benenson, who founded Amnesty International. He wrote them in 1961, but they might as well be from this year. For even in 2023, freedom of expression is still being severely restricted in many countries. In Iran, peaceful demonstrators are shot or sentenced to death. The human rights of women are trampled on there, as they are in Afghanistan and many other countries. In Ukraine, civilians are attacked — a clear violation of international law. Discrimination, torture, unjust imprisonment: all of this continues to happen every day, 60 years after Amnesty was founded. So a paradise for human rights is far from imminent. On the contrary: the commitment to them is more urgent than ever.
Fri 08.09.
Amnesty International Panel Discussion
18.00
KKL Luzern, Auditorium
Panel discussion with
Alexandra Karle Director of Amnesty International Switzerland
Balthasar Glättli member of the Zurich National Council and President
GRÜNE Switzerland
Christina Daletska singer, human rights activist, ambassador of Amnesty International Switzerland
Matthias Michel Council of States Zug, FDP
Olivia Röllin Moderation
in German 60 min
CHF 20/10 (adults/children)
“No Paradise without Human Rights”
The commitment to fight climate change is high on Vladimir Jurowski’s agenda. He has already presented special programs on this topic with his orchestras. And he tries to set an example in his everyday life as well. That’s why he has relinquished responsibility at Glyndebourne and the Enescu Festival, as well as at the Moscow State Academic Orchestra, and is concentrating entirely on his two German positions as principal conductor: at the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra and the Bavarian Staatsoper. “I want to reduce my personal carbon footprint,” Jurowski says. “Since 2017, I have only been traveling by train within Europe.” A trip to Lucerne with the Bavarian State Orchestra, which celebrates its 500th birthday in October 2023, fits the bill perfectly. And with Bruckner’s Fourth Symphony, the so-called Romantic, Jurowski has also chosen a work that celebrates nature: horn calls resound, forest idylls are conjured, and in the midst of it all the song of the great tit bird, termed “Zizipe” by the composer, makes an appearance. But the first part, presenting Schumann’s Piano Concerto in a performance by the American keyboard titan Yefim Bronfman, will already be highly Romantic: this, too, is a natural phenomenon.
Fri 08.09.
Bavarian State Orchestra
19.30
KKL Luzern, Concert Hall
Bavarian State Orchestra
Vladimir Jurowski conductor
Yefim Bronfman piano
Richard Wagner
Prelude to Tristan und Isolde
11 min
Robert Schumann
Piano Concerto in A minor, Op. 54 34 min
Anton Bruckner
Symphony No. 4 in E-flat major, WAB 104 Romantic 68 min
CHF 240/200/150/100/60/30
LOOK LISTEN ENJOY see p. 105
Main Sponsor
The Fago siblings have been missing for years. The famous bassoon quartet has disappeared from the face of the earth. Only the little devil Lucius knows where the musicians are to be found, because he has to guard them in hell. That’s where Guardian Angel Angela arrives one day. If she succeeds in freeing the four, she will finally get the wings she has longed for! But it’s not so easy: Devil Lucius blocks Angela’s way with many tricky tasks that she must solve. Will Angela, with the support of the young audience, succeed in freeing the Fago siblings and lead them back to the light of day? The Devil with the Golden Curls offers everything that makes children’s hearts beat faster: suspense, wit, and lots of lively music by Jacques Offenbach and Gioachino Rossini, among others, which Andreas N. Tarkmann has masterfully arranged for the unusual quartet of players. A hell of a fun time for little festivalgoers!
Family Concert — Music Theater
10.00 and 14.00
KKL Luzern, Lucerne Hall
Ensemble Prisma:
Bernhard Wesenick, Felicia
Dietrich, and Fabian Kunkel bassoon
Jörg Wehner double bassoon
Jörg Schade Devil Lucius
Christiane Schoon Guardian Angel
Angela
“The Devil with the Golden Curls” Music theater work for two actors and bassoon quartet by Jörg
Schade, Franz-Georg Stähling, and Andreas N. Tarkmann in German Swiss premiere
50 min
For ages 6 and up
This concert has no intermission.
CHF 20/10 (adults/children)
Additional performances for school classes
Fri 08.09. | 9.00 and 10.30
KKL Luzern, Lucerne Hall registration: schulen@lucernefestival.ch
With the friendly support of the Arthur Waser Foundation
Back to the future: in Enno Poppe’s Rundfunk, the sounds of Hammond organ, Minimoog, and Yamaha DX-7 celebrate a happy reign. For Poppe takes us back to the sixties and seventies, when the studios of the state broadcasting stations were a paradise for sonic tinkerers who invented electronic music here: “Without radio, new music would not exist in its present form,” this year’s Lucerne composer-in-residence asserts. But because nothing ages faster than technology, these once-so-innovative sound worlds have long since burned out and are hardly available today. Poppe reproduces them using nine synthesizers, but without having in mind a mere backward-looking homage. Rather, he is concerned with unused potential: there are “so many wonderful old pieces and old synthesizers with great sounds,” yet “people often only scratched the surface and then didn’t continue working on them, but hurried on to invent new instruments. I think the sounds alone can add up to a lot more than what was done with them back then.”
Portrait Enno Poppe
11.00
Hochschule Luzern — Musik, Kriens
Salquin Hall
Ensemble Helix
Gilles Grimaître and Talvi Hunt
rehearsal conductors
Enno Poppe
Rundfunk for nine synthesizers
Swiss premiere
60 min
In collaboration with the Hochschule Luzern — Musik’s Studio for Contemporary Music
CHF 50 (open seating)
With Richard Strauss’s Alpine Symphony, Christian Thielemann explores the paradise-like world of the high mountains. You can hear exactly what is happening in this large-scale tone poem. When the hiking group enters the forest, the horns resound. When they pass a waterfall, the violins bounce with gentle spiccato notes and the harps make the drops glisten. On the mountain pasture, the bells of the herd ring, and a thundersheet and wind machine are deployed for thunder- and windstorms. Strauss pulls out all the stops when it comes to the art of orchestration by deploying a huge apparatus, and Thielemann knows exactly how to stage this: “tempting prey” for him, he once observed. Especially when conducting his Sächsische Staatskapelle Dresden, a Strauss orchestra of the first rank: it gave the work its world premiere in 1915, and the Alpine Symphony is dedicated to this ensemble. The first part of the evening will put musical craftsmanship on display when Antoine Tamestit performs Hindemith’s Schwanendreher Concerto. “A minstrel visits a happy company of people and plays serious and joyful songs, ending with a dance,” as Hindemith explained.
Sächsische Staatskapelle
Dresden
18.30
KKL Luzern, Concert Hall
Sächsische Staatskapelle
Dresden
Christian Thielemann conductor
Antoine Tamestit viola
Paul Hindemith
Der Schwanendreher
(“The Swan Turner”)
Concerto based on old folk songs for viola and small orchestra
27 min
Richard Strauss
An Alpine Symphony, Op. 64
54 min
Introduction to the concert
17.30 | KKL Luzern, Auditorium with Malte Lohmann (in German)
CHF 290/240/190/130/70/40
When two people find true love, heaven seems within reach. At least that is what happens to Dido and Aeneas in Henry Purcell’s Baroque opera of the same name. Dido, the powerful ruler of Carthage, loves the Trojan prince Aeneas, who has been shipwrecked on Carthage’s coast. He, too, falls in love with Dido. But a powerful sorceress gets in the way of Dido’s happiness and drives the lovers apart with all her might. Aeneas is called back to duty and must leave Dido. She goes honorably to her death: “Remember me, but ah! forget my fate,” are her last words. In his splendid opera, intimate and at the same time Baroque, Henry Purcell distills to its essence the story of how love between two people blossoms and fades. This production, staged by the young Austrian director Marlene Fuchsberger, can be experienced for just a short time at the Luzerner Theater. The company’s set designer Valentin Köhler is building a house inside the house for Dido and Aeneas and for the theater production of the Oresteia: these will be shown in parallel, thus creating a special spatial experience.
Sat 09.09.
Dido and Aeneas
21.00
Luzerner Theater
Luzerner Theater Opera Ensemble
Luzerner Theater Chorus
Lucerne Symphony Orchestra
Jonathan Bloxham conductor
Magdalena Fuchsberger stage director
Valentin Köhler sets
Marie Sturminger costumes
Talisa Walser dramaturgy
Henry Purcell
Dido and Aeneas, Z 626
Opera in three acts
Libretto by Nahum Tate in English with German supertitles
Coproduction of the Luzerner Theater with Lucerne Festival
Tickets available starting 1 June exclusively from the Luzerner Theater: t +41 (0)41 228 14 14 | kasse@luzernertheater.ch
During the season break from 3 July to 15 August, the theater box office will be closed but tickets will be available online at luzernertheater.ch.
Additional performances until 29 September 2023
Information at luzernertheater.ch
With the friendly support of the Arthur Waser Foundation
The 2023 Summer Festival begins with Gustav Mahler and also closes with this composer — and with Mahler’s great lifelong theme: namely, the question of what happens to us after death. “Is there a continuation for us?” he wanted to know. With his Second Symphony, the so-called Resurrection Symphony, he provided the reassuring answer. The work begins with a funeral service as mourners are gathered at the “coffin of a loved one” and bid farewell. This is followed in the ensuing movements by a kind of flashback that reviews the protagonist’s past life, with its experiences of happiness, absurdities, hopes, wishes, dreams. In the finale, however, Mahler adds a chorus and an off-stage orchestra, foreshadows the Last Judgment with all its terrors, and at last concludes with the words “Auferstehn, ja auferstehn wirst du!” (“Rise again! Yes, you will rise again!”) to open the way to Paradise. “The glory of God appears there!” is how Mahler described the effect. “And behold, there is no judgment. There are no sinners, no righteous. None is great, none small. There is no punishment and no reward. An overwhelming feeling of love illuminates our being. We know and are.”
Munich Philharmonic 18.30
KKL Luzern, Concert Hall
Munich Philharmonic
Munich Philharmonic Choir
Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla conductor
Talise Trevigne soprano
Okka von der Damerau mezzo-soprano
Gustav Mahler
Symphony No. 2 in C minor Resurrection
88 min
This concert has no intermission.
CHF 290/240/190/130/70/40
Themed Worship Service
10.00 | Matthäuskirche
Ecumenical service on the Festival theme of “Paradise” with Andreas Rosar (theologian with the Peterskapelle Luzern) as well as Aline Kellenberger and Marcel Köppli (ministers with the city church Matthäus Luzern). Musical direction: Vincenzo
Allevato
MUSIC AND LUNCH FOR 2 x 30 CHF
Attend our “Debut” series presenting young artists and enjoy the daily menu including a soft drink/mineral water and coffee at Bellini Locanda Ticinese after the concert.
Debut Dmytro Choni
Debut Timothy Ridout
Debut Isata Kanneh-Mason
Debut Äneas Humm
Debut Ben Goldscheider
Debut Isidore String Quartet
lucernefestival.ch/lunchconcerts
© Priska Ketterer/Lucerne FestivalGreat 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 AG — Chocolate Partner
Egon Zehnder
KKL Luzern — Event Partner
Luzern Tourismus
Mandarin Oriental Palace — Official Hotel Partner
MetaDesign — Partner in Communication
myclimate
NZZ — Media Partner
Radio SRF Kultur — Media Partner
Ringier AG — Media Partner
Vitra — Furniture Partner
Grants and Subsidies
Kanton Luzern
Stadt Luzern
Many thanks also go to the Lucerne Festival Friends and all those supporters who do not wish to be mentioned by name.
Lucerne Festival is a member of
Concert Sponsors
Artemis Group / Franke Group
KPMG AG
Nestlé S.A.
The Adecco Group
Viking
Co-Sponsors
B. Braun Medical AG
Bucherer AG
La Mobilière
Glencore International AG
Schindler Aufzüge AG
Swiss Life
Swiss Re
Zuger Kantonalbank
Patrons
Dr. Hans-Dieter Cleven
Regula Gerber
Family Goer
Berthold Herrmann and Mariann Grawe-Gerber
Carla Schwöbel-Braun
Monique and Dr. Thomas
Staehelin-Bonnard
Dr. Dolf and Maria Stockhausen
Arthur Waser Foundation
Aventis Foundation
Bernard van Leer Foundation Luzern
Credit Suisse Foundation
Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation
Fritz-Gerber-Stiftung
für begabte junge Menschen
Geert und Lore BlankenSchlemper-Stiftung
Hilti Foundation
Josef Müller Stiftung Muri
Landis & Gyr Foundation
Pro Helvetia, Arts Council of Switzerland
René und Susanne Braginsky Stiftung
Stiftung Melinda Esterházy de Galantha Zürich
Strebi-Stiftung Luzern
Walter Haefner Stiftung
The Kühne Foundation was established in 1976 in Switzerland by the Kühne family. As its president, Prof. Dr. h.c. Klaus-Michael Kühne has significantly expanded the Foundation’s initiatives and programs, fulfilling his socio-political responsibility as an entrepreneur and donor. The Kühne Foundation has been supporting Lucerne Festival as a main sponsor since 2020.
First and foremost, the non-profit Kühne Foundation supports education and training as well as research and science in the fields of transport and logistics. The Kühne Logistics University, which it founded in 2010, has developed into an internationally renowned training ground for executives and is distinguished by its pioneering research and practice-oriented teaching. The Kühne Foundation also makes significant contributions in the field of humanitarian logistics: its HELP organization advises
Riccardo Chailly
| Klaus-Michael and Christine Kühne | Michael Haefliger (f.l.t.r.)
and trains international aid organizations and government agencies, thus helping to significantly improve the effectiveness and efficiency of logistics processes in international emergency aid.
The Kühne Foundation is also funding medical projects on a large scale. In Davos, Switzerland, it maintains a Medicine Campus with extensive research programs in allergology and cardiology.
With its new focus on the issue of climate, which is currently still in the conception phase, the Foundation is turning its attention to climate change. This is unquestionably one of the key challenges of the coming decades. The Foundation is developing concepts in the field of “green logistics” and projects intended to contribute to a green transformation that is both efficient and growth-promoting.
Classical music projects are the main focus of the Kühne Foundation’s cultural funding activities. It supports a number of renowned festivals as well as leading opera houses and concert halls in Europe.
The Kühne Foundation has been closely associated with Lucerne Festival for many years. It has served as one of its sponsors since 2008 and has been committed as a main sponsor since 2020. The Kühne Foundation is a partner of the Lucerne Festival Orchestra, which is celebrating its 20th anniversary in 2023. The orchestra, led by Music Director Riccardo Chailly and featuring internationally renowned artists, enriches Lucerne every summer with outstanding musical experiences.
Are you a lover of classical music who is excited by outstanding performances — and would you like to become better acquainted with the artists? Then Lucerne Festival Friends is the right place for you!
Through our personal commitment and annual donations, we make a significant contribution to the financial security and sustainability of Lucerne Festival. We of course support the Lucerne Festival Orchestra, which is celebrating its 20th birthday this summer. We are moreover committed to the continuing development of the Festival, including initiatives to support young talent within the framework of our Lucerne Festival Academy. In this way we help establish a foundation for the musical life of tomorrow.
As a Friend or Young Friend of Lucerne Festival, you can enhance your concert experience through visits to rehearsals, encounters with the performers, and special introductory offers. You have exclusive access to the Friends Lounge during the Summer Festival, belong to a network of music enthusiasts, and regularly go on cultural and musical trips together.
Artist talk: Augustin Hadelich and Susanne StährWe extend special thanks to all Friends who support us with their patronage: Regula Gerber | Oswald J. Grübel | Berthold Herrmann and Mariann Grawe-Gerber | Dr. Christoph M. Müller and Sibylla M. Müller | Carla Schwöbel-Braun | Monique and Dr. Thomas Staehelin-Bonnard | Dr. Dolf and Maria Stockhausen
... as well as to our “Friends Gold”: Thomas Abegg | E. I. Ascher Esq. Trust | Baloise Holding AG | Regula Bibus-Waser | Dr. Christian Casal and Katja Biella Casal | Yann and Sabine Guyonvarc’h | Dr. Otto and Michaela Happel | André and Rosalie Hoffmann | Dr. Rudolf W. Hug | Dr. Klaus Jenny | Bruce and Suzie Kovner | Luzerner Kantonalbank AG | Makoto Nakao | Dr. Lutz and Christiane Peters | Project Villa Serdang | Margrit Wullschleger-Schmidlin
Have we piqued your interest? Please contact us for more information at
Foundation Lucerne Festival Friends
Isabelle Köhler, Relationship Manager
Hirschmattstrasse 13 | CH–6002 Luzern
t +41 41 226 44 52 | i.koehler@lucernefestival.ch
lucernefestival.ch/en/friends
JOIN
CHF 200/100 (students)
Online ticket sales begin on 28 March 2023, 12.00 noon (Swiss Time)
You can order concert tickets online at lucernefestival.ch and print them out directly (Print@Home) or download them to your smartphone.
Mail sales begin on 29 March 2023
Telephone sales begin on 29 March 2023
Mon – Fri from 10.00 to 12.00 noon (Swiss Time) and from 29 to 31 March between 14.00 and 16.00 as well
Telephone hours during the Summer Festival:
Mon – Sun from 10.00 to 12.00 and from 14.00 to 16.00
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 8 August to 10 September 2023, from 2.00 p.m. until the evening concert starts.
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.
Purchased tickets cannot be returned or exchanged. There is no entitlement to return purchased tickets as a result of changes in programming or performers.
For up-to-date section and seating availability, please visit lucernefestival.ch starting on 28 March 2023 at 12.00 (Swiss time). Lucerne Festival reserves the right to change certain sections or the seating plan.
Please send the voucher along with your written order to the Sales & Visitor Services for processing. If the voucher does not cover the entire amount, we will also require your credit card details for the remaining amount. The combination of a voucher with an invoice is not possible.
The General Terms & Conditions may be found at lucernefestival.ch/en/agb.
Discounts for Students and KulturLegi Holders
Special offers for events that are not sold out will be available at the 2023 Summer Festival for grade school, university, and vocational students as well as members of the JTC up to the age of 29 and Kultur-Legi holders.
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 to 4 and is available online. The selected events for which this offer is available are highlighted in the program section by a pink circle. We will be publishing a list of more concerts beginning with the launch of the Festival, which you can find at lucernefestival.ch/ look-listen-enjoy.
WhatsApp-News for Students
For which concerts are discounted tickets available? 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.
Looking to get insights into the world of classical music? Or to share ideas with other music lovers? Students (high school, university, vocational school) and JTC members up to the age of 29 can attend a concert in this series for only CHF 25 — and afterward enjoy an aperitif with members of the orchestra as well as a backstage tour of the KKL Luzern.
Fri 19.08. 18.30 | KKL Luzern, Lucerne Festival Orchestra
Concert Hall
Yannick Nézet-Séguin conductor
Works by Lili Boulanger and Anton Bruckner
lucernefestival.ch/young&classic
Discover classical music — at Lucerne Festival © Peter Fischli/Lucerne FestivalThe main concert hall of the KKL Luzern has six wheelchair spaces with a good view of the stage, which are available on special terms. Wheelchair spaces are also available at the other event locations. The Festival cannot ensure that accompanying persons will receive a seat in the same price category or near the wheelchair space. Our staff members from Visitor Services are happy to advise when you are ordering tickets. Wheelchair spaces cannot be purchased online. 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.
The main KKL Concert Hall opens 30 minutes before the beginning of the concert. 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. For the sake of the musicians and the audience, latecomers will not be admitted until intermission or at the discretion of the Concert Hall staff. In certain instances concerts will have no intermission and allow no latecomers. If the concert is missed on account of tardy arrival, tickets will not be refunded.
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.
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.
The use of the cloakroom in the KKL Luzern is free of charge. Handbags 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.
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.) This special ticket must be purchased before beginning your trip: either at a Swiss Rail ticket counter, by calling the SBB Contact Center at 0848 44 66 88 (CHF 0.08/minute in the Swiss telephone network), or online at sbb.ch/lucernefestival.
Arrival by 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.
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, Arth-Goldau, and Sarnen.
Would you like to learn more about Lucerne and its surrounding area? Are you in need of accommodation?
General 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
Dreilindenstr.
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
MK Matthäuskirche (Church of St. Matthew), Hertensteinstrasse 30, Luzern
Hertensteinstr.
Löwengraben
Hirschengraben
Sempacherstr.
Official Hotel Partner: Mandarin Oriental Palace
Central Luzern
De la Paix
Des Alpes
Drei Könige
ibis Styles Luzern City
Schlüssel
The Lubo
Thorenberg
Tourist Hotel
Arcade, Sins
Balm, Meggen
Bellevue, Pilatus Kulm
Holiday Inn Express, Luzern-Kriens
Holiday Inn Express
Luzern-Neuenkirch
Lux, Emmenbrücke
Taverne 1879, Bürgenstock
êê (Superior)
Stern Luzern
ibis Luzern Kriens
Chärnsmatt, Rothenburg
ê (Superior)
Ibis Budget Luzern City
Swiss Lodge
BnB Haus im Löchli
Hammer, Eigenthal
Jugendherberge Luzern
Pickwick
The Bed + Breakfast
Sonnenberg, Kriens
Gasthaus Kreuz, Meggen
Swiss-Chalet B&B, Merlischachen
H 041 210 50 60 info@hotel-central-luzern.com
H 041 418 80 00 info@de-la-paix.ch
H 041 417 20 60 info@desalpes-luzern.ch
H 041 248 04 80 hotel@drei-koenige.ch
H 041 418 48 48 H8549@accor.com
H 041 210 10 61 welcome@schluessel-luzern.ch
H 079 770 22 88 Info@the-lubo.ch
G 041 250 52 00 info@thorenberg.ch
H 041 410 24 74 info@thetouristhotel.ch
H 041 789 78 78 info@hotel-arcade.ch
H 041 377 11 35 info@balm.ch
H 041 329 12 12 hotels@pilatus.ch
H 041 545 69 00 info@hiex-luzern.ch
H 041 288 28 28 info@expressluzern.com
H 041 289 40 50 office@hotel-lux.ch
H 041 612 60 00 information@ burgenstockresort.com
H 041 227 50 60 info@sternluzern.ch
H 041 349 49 49 h2982@accor.com
H 041 280 34 34 info@chaernsmatt.ch
H 041 367 80 00 H6782@accor.com
H 041 250 90 73 bnb_loechli@bluewin.ch
H 041 497 52 05 info@hotel-hammer.ch
H 041 420 88 00 luzern@youthhostel.ch
H 041 410 59 27 welcome@hotelpickwick.ch
H 041 310 15 14 info@theBandB.ch
H 041 320 66 44 info@hotelsonnenberg.ch
H 041 377 11 14 info@kreuz-meggen.ch
H 041 854 54 54 info@swiss-chalet.ch
Alpha 041 240 42 80 info@hotelalpha.ch
Alpina Luzern 041 210 00 77 info@alpina-luzern.ch
Altstadt Hotel Le Stelle 041 412 22 20 info@lestelle.ch
Altstadt Hotel Magic 041 417 12 20 mail@magic-hotel.ch
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
êêê (Superior)
Waldstätterhof H 041 227 12 71 info@hotel-waldstaetterhof.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
êêê
Altstadt Hotel Krone H 041 419 44 00 info@krone-luzern.ch
Ambassador H 041 418 81 00 hotel@ambassador.ch
Anker H 041 220 88 00 anker@remimag.ch
Boutique Hotel
Weisses Kreuz H 041 418 82 20 contact@altstadthotelluzern.ch
Anstatthotel Business
Apartments 041 755 00 03 mail@anstatthotel.ch
Appartements Hofquartier 041 410 43 47 info@appartements-luzern.ch
Beau Séjour Luzern AG 041 410 16 81 info@beausejourlucerne.ch
B & B Bettstatt Neustadt 041 210 43 09 info@bettstatt.ch
HITrental AG 041 311 29 29 info@hitrental.com
Hotel Linde Luzern 041 410 31 93
Lucerne Business
Apartments Braui 079 663 89 20 mail@lucernebusinessapartments.ch
Luzernerhof 041 418 47 47 hotel@luzernerhof.ch
Richemont 041 375 85 80 gastronomie@richemont.swiss
RomeroHaus 041 249 39 29 romerohaus@igarbeit.ch
Schwendelberg 041 340 35 40 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
With an atmospheric overnight stay in the first building in the park, close to the KKL part of top festival enjoyment. BTW … and orders for aperitifs or tasty Ticino-style dishes in the Bellini Locanda Ticinese taken up until 11 p.m.
Stay where queens, writers and music legends have stayed.
101 rooms full of history at the best location in the city of lights.
A
Exquisite culinary delights and an impressive view of Lake Lucerne.
restaurant with atmosphere. Have a feast, savour your choice, and enjoy yourself.
A gourmet restaurant with atmosphere. Have a feast, savour your choice, and enjoy yourself.
your choice, and enjoy yourself.
Equally praised for its phenomenal acoustics and its unique architecture, the KKL Luzern Concert Hall is where most Lucerne Festival concerts take place. The “Salle Blanche,” which was designed by Jean Nouvel together with the acoustician Russell Johnson, will celebrate its 25th anniversary in 2023!
It was 25 years ago that the Concert Hall opened its doors, bringing a unique acoustic experience to Lucerne. In addition to its idyllic location right on Lake Lucerne and its view of the mountains and the city, the KKL Luzern impresses visitors through its architecture and its versatility. The building is divided into three wings that are lined up like ships in a shipyard.
From classical music to rock, from formal dances to comedy shows, from Ray Charles to Billie Eilish: a wide variety of artists has already performed at the KKL Luzern. The varied offerings are complemented by unique menu options in the Lucide restaurant, which has been awarded a Michelin star and 16 GaultMillau points. French flair awaits guests at Le Piaf, and the Seebar invites visitors to enjoy a cozy aperitif on the shores of Lake Lucerne.
KKL Luzern Europaplatz 1 | CH–6005 Luzern t +41 (0)41 226 70 70 info@kkl-luzern.ch | kkl-luzern.chvaduzclassic.li
stadthausstrasse
The most popular opera
Before, during, and after the festivals we inspire our audience online with videos, podcasts, blogs, playlists, concert streams, and much more.
The Festival City Lucerne delights throughout the year: classical music, blues, rock, comics and enthralling sport events.
World Band Festival Lucerne
23 September – 1 October 2023
www.worldbandfestival.ch
SwissCityMarathon – Lucerne
29 October 2023
www.swisscitymarathon.ch
Lucerne Blues Festival
11 – 19 November 2023
www.bluesfestival.ch
Lucerne Festival | Forward 17 – 19 November 2023
www.lucernefestival.ch
Lilu Light Festival Lucerne 11 – 21 January 2024
www.lichtfestivalluzern.ch
Piano Festival
«Le Piano Symphonique» 16 – 21 January 2024
www.sinfonieorchester.ch
Fumetto Comic Festival Lucerne 16 – 24 March 2024
www.fumetto.ch
Spring Festival
22 – 24 April 2024
www.lucernefestival.ch
Piano Fest 9 – 12 May 2024
www.lucernefestival.ch
Lucerne Regatta
24 – 26 May 2024
www.lucerneregatta.com
Spitzen Leichtathletik Luzern
July 2024
www.spitzenleichtathletik.ch
Lucerne Festival | Summer
13 August – 15 September 2024
www.lucernefestival.ch
USE YOUR CONCERT TICKET FOR MUSEUM VISITS
Your concert ticket also entitles you to a 50% discount at the Rosengart Collection, free guided tours at the Hans Erni Museum, or a visit to the special program at the Richard Wagner Museum.
Details on how to register at lucernefestival.ch/museums
lucernefestival.ch/museums
p. 1: Daniel auf der Mauer/Lucerne Festival – p. 7, 37, 40, 48, and 75: Peter Fischli/ Lucerne Festival – p. 9, 17, 35, 42, 43, 66, 72, 98, 99, and 115: Priska Ketterer/Lucerne Festival – p. 11, 46, and 50: Dario Acosta – p. 13, 38, and 89: Ricordi/Harald Hoffmann –p. 15, 18, 61, 83, and 100: Patrick Hürlimann/Lucerne Festival – p. 31: Monika Rittershaus –p. 32: Kimberly M. Wang Eardog Productions – p. 33: Daniel Black – p. 36: Felix Broede/ Deutsche Grammophon – p. 39, 58, and 67: Marco Borggreve – p. 41: Ari Magg – p. 44: May Zircus – p. 45: Giorgia Bertazzi – p. 47, 51, 59, 73, and 82: Manuela Jans/Lucerne Festival – p. 49: James Mollison – p. 52: Christian Schuller/Decca – p. 53: Ansgar Klostermann – p. 54: Lisa-Marie Mazzucco – p. 55: Heike Fischer – p. 56: William Beaucardet –p. 57, 81, and 91: Kaupo Kikkas – p. 60: Nik Hunger – p. 62: Nadja Sjöström – p. 63: Olivia Kahler – p. 64: Olivia da Costa – p. 65: Simone Haug – p. 68: Robin Clewley – p. 69: The Japan Art Association/The Sankei Shimbun (2019) – p. 70: Stephan Rabold – p. 71: Maurice Haas – p. 74: Dovile Sermokas©Sony Music Entertainement – p. 76: scholzshootspeople –p. 77: Marek Beles – p. 78: wikimedia.org – p. 79: Kemal Mehmet Girgin – p. 80: Vincent Pontet – p. 84: Charles Chessler – p. 85: Felix Broede – p. 86: AI-Hannibal Hanschke – p. 87: Wilfried Hösl – p. 88: Salgado – p. 90: Matthias Creutziger – p. 92: Astrid Ackermannp. 101: Chris Lee
Conductor:
Gianandrea Noseda
Stage Director: Andreas Homoki
DAS RHEINGOLD 3O Apr 2O22
DIE WALKÜRE 18 Sep 2O22
SIEGFRIED 5 Mar 2O23
GÖTTERDÄMMERUNG 5 Nov 2O23
DER RING as cycle season 23/24
Supported by Freunde der Oper Zürich
Lucerne Festival
Hirschmattstrasse 13 | P.O. Box | CH–6002 Luzern
t +41 (0)41 226 44 00 info@lucernefestival.ch | lucernefestival.ch
Sales & Visitor Services
Lucerne Festival | P.O. Box | CH–6002 Luzern
t +41 (0)41 226 44 00 | ticketbox@lucernefestival.ch | lucernefestival.ch
Publisher Foundation Lucerne Festival
Executive and Artistic Director Michael Haefliger
Editing and Content Susanne Stähr, Malte Lohmann
English Language Editor and Translator Thomas May
Proofreading Antje Reineke
Corporate Design Concept MetaDesign Zürich
Layout and Execution Denise Fankhauser
Advertising Mariagrazia Panzarella
Printing Engelberger Druck AG, Stans
This program was published in March 2023 and is subject to alteration without prior notice.
Printed prices are subject to correction.
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This printed material has been prepared using a sustainable and carbon-neutral process according to the guidelines of FSC and Climate Partner.
The Fontenay is a reflection of modern Hamburg – an homage to the Hanseatic city. Located on the tranquil banks of Alster Lake, you will find the perfect balance between nature and urbanity at The Fontenay – a city resort in the heart of Hamburg. The fascinating, sculpture-like architecture mirrors the fluid lines of the lake and lush parkland. Lakeside luxury in its most beautiful form. And for all culture enthusiasts: It is not far to the Elbphilharmonie, the State Opera and numerous museums and galleries.
