Where We Are Going – Our Vision:
We want to be explorers who pursue artistic ideals along our journey, breaking down barriers.
What We Stand for – Our Values:
1. Living for Art and Artists
We are an artistic organization that is structured on artistic values. Music and art are what we love: They are our passion and the hub of our engagement. Our goal is to provide an optimal platform for artists to pursue their creative involvement and work.
2. Snatching the Public away from the Everyday
We understand art to be a liberal and liberating principle. It can release feelings, bring social topics to the fore, and excite conversation, as well as provoke, agitate, confront, entertain, or polarize. We want to engage our public in the artistic experience, encouraging them to become fully immersed in it. To achieve this goal, we also pursue unorthodox strategies and have the courage to take risks.
3. Responsibility, Sustainability, and Foresight
Our festival has a history of 70 years to look back on. To ensure our existence in the future, we continually question our understanding of art and seek out new artistic methods and forms, new vehicles and formats for viable artistic expression. In this way we wish to help fulfill the dreams and desires of artists, of the public, and of our sponsors and patrons, as well as of our own team. Our festival attracts annually over 120,000 visitors. Thus we contribute decisively to the local color and attractiveness of the central Switzerland region, including the Lake Lucerne area as well as Lucerne itself. Our music disseminates not only our own brand when we make tours throughout Europe, the United States, and Asia but also that of the Lucerne region.
4. Obligation to Pursue Quality
We consider the striving for quality to be an obligation for each individual on the team - from the Director to the intern. Our demand for quality pertains not only to musical content but to our handling of artists and media and to each we interface with our public and our sponsors, friends, patrons, and partners.
5. Respect, Fairness, and Openness
Our success is based above all on the extraordinary capacity for achievement that each individual partner of the Lucerne Festival team demonstrates, as well as on their above-average commitment. Mutual respect, fairness in dealing with each other, the ability to cope with conflict, an open-hearted eagerness to engage with the new, and the joy of discovering new horizons in common—all of this is at the heart of our collaborative effort.
What We Do: Our Mission Statement
The programs of the LUCERNE FESTIVAL in Summer, at Easter, and at the Piano offer festival audiences three extraordinary opportunities each year in which to experience music of a singular quality created through the collaboration of world-class orchestras, conductors, and performers. Our philosophy places a high priority on integrating the music of contemporary composers into the programming and on celebrating the creative energy of young artists, as well as on the fruits of artistic exchange. The LUCERNE FESTIVAL ORCHESTRA under the direction of Claudio Abbado and the LUCERNE FESTIVAL ACADEMY under the direction of Pierre Boulez provide a meaningful artistic foundation for that goal, together with partnerships with such world-class orchestras as the Berlin Philharmonic, the Vienna Philharmonic, or the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.
In the next five years, we will strengthen our capacity to produce music theater. The completion of the Salle Modulable project initiated by Festival Director Michael Haefliger—will allow us to emerge as more artistically visionary producers in this realm.
We are oriented toward a public that is regional, national, and international. In addition to individual guests, sponsors, friends, students, and those supported by the KulturLegi system, we count numerous media professionals all over the world among our visitors. Systematic definition and consolidation of our international profile—along with availing ourselves of opportunities in the global marketplace—constitute the core elements of our development strategy.
In addition to our ticket sales, we are supported through the great creative and financial assistance we receive from our sponsors, friends, foundations, and private patrons. In that sense we see ourselves as a self-sustaining partner offering a broad platform for extraordinary performances that are clearly of high value; moreover, we encourage the development of an innovative model of cooperation that keeps a straightforward objective in its sights.
The internet’s capacity for creative interaction, along with similar other new media, has become increasingly significant for our exchange of ideas, communication, and the development of our artistic content.