The theme of the 2010 Summer Festival is 'Eros' – and love has inspired the programmes. The main focus of the concerts will fall on famous lovers from music history. Claudio Abbado and the LUCERNE FESTIVAL ORCHESTRA will open with that immortal paean to marital fidelity, Beethoven's Fidelio. Then Esa-Pekka Salonen will conduct Wagner's Tristan und Isolde in a staging by Peter Sellars with videos by Bill Viola. The moving tragedy of Romeo and Juliet will resound in the setting by Sergey Prokofiev, and Pelléas and Mélisande will greet us in works by Fauré and Sibelius. Don Juan is an absolute must, of course, as is his Finnish counterpart, Lemminkäinen. Even incestuous love is represented by Byron's Manfred as set to music by Schumann and Tchaikovsky. We will also hear pieces with secret love messages: musical declarations of love from Robert to Clara Schumann, from Gustav to Alma Mahler, and from Alban Berg to Hanna Fuchs.
Our "artiste étoile" will be the French pianist Hélène Grimaud, who will display every facet of her art in piano concertos and a solo recital. This year our composer-in-residence comes from Switzerland: Dieter Ammann, born in Aarau in 1962. Indeed, the bustling Swiss music scene will be honoured with a total of 25 premières and programmes centring on the theme '(z)eidgenössisCH' – a clever word-play on contemporary music and the Swiss Confederation. The LUCERNE FESTIVAL ORCHESTRA will continue with its Mahler cycle, playing the Ninth under the baton of Claudio Abbado. We also welcome visits from the Cleveland Orchestra with Franz Welser-Möst, the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra with Riccardo Chailly, the Berlin Philharmonic with Simon Rattle, the Amsterdam Concertgebouw with Mariss Jansons and Ton Koopman, the San Francisco Symphony with Michael Tilson Thomas and the Vienna Philharmonic with Nikolaus Harnoncourt and Gustavo Dudamel. Pierre Boulez will rehearse and perform works by Mahler and Stravinsky with his LUCERNE FESTIVAL ACADEMY – a musical declaration of love.