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About
The summer of 2003 saw the birth of the LUCERNE FESTIVAL ORCHESTRA, which was founded by the Italian conductor Claudio Abbado and the Festival’s Executive and Artistic Director Michael Haefliger. They established a link with the legendary “elite orchestra” for which Arturo Toscanini assembled acclaimed virtuosos of his time to create a magnificent ensemble, introducing it in a “Concert de Gala” in 1938, the year of the Festival’s founding. Abbado served as Music Director of the LUCERNE FESTIVAL ORCHESTRA up until his death in January 2014.
Riccardo Chailly, who was appointed as his successor, has since extended his contract until 2023. The orchestra comprises internationally acclaimed principals, chamber musicians, and music teachers, as well as members of the Mahler Chamber Orchestra and the Filarmonica della Scala. At the 2019 Summer Festival, Chailly is conducting them in three different programs that feature works by Rachmaninoff, Tchaikovsky, and Mahler; the Canadian Yannick Nézet-Séguin conducts a fourth appearance by the orchestra, with music by Beethoven and Shostakovich. Many of the LUCERNE FESTIVAL ORCHESTRA’s performances over the last decade have been broadcast on television and then released on DVD or CD; these have garnered such awards as the Diapason d’or, the BBC Music Magazine Award, and the International Classical Music Award. Their most-recent release is a live DVD recording of last year’s all-Ravel program, which appeared in April 2019, a CD of orchestral works by Richard Strauss will come out in autumn. The LUCERNE FESTIVAL ORCHESTRA has previously toured to many of the musical metropolises in Europe, as well as to New York, Tokyo, and Beijing. In the fall of 2019, the musicians will undertake their second residency in Shanghai, with additional concerts planned in Shenzhen, Beijing, and Milan.
The LUCERNE FESTIVAL ORCHESTRA has played annually at LUCERNE FESTIVAL ever since its first performances in the summer of 2003.