Los Angeles Philharmonic

The Los Angeles Philharmonic was founded in 1919 by the entrepreneur, multi-millionaire, and music enthusiast William Andrews Clark, Jr., who appointed Walter Henry Rothwell, an earlier assistant of Gustav Mahler, as its first music director. Since then, ten other internationally acclaimed conductors have served in that capacity, among them Otto Klemperer (1933–39), Zubin Mehta (1962–78), Carlo Maria Giulini (1978–84), André Previn (1985–89), and Esa-Pekka Salonen (1992–2009), who currently continues to act as Conductor Laureate. Since fall 2009 the young Venezuelan maestro Gustavo Dudamel has helmed the orchestra. Each season the Los Angeles Philharmonic performs nearly 300 concerts, which take place at its two venues: Walt Disney Concert Hall, a spectacular building that was designed by Frank Gehry and opened in 2003, and the Hollywood Bowl. Annually some one million listeners attend these events, which also include an extensive program supporting young audiences. Thus the Los Angeles Philharmonic has its own youth orchestra, the YOLA, and collaborates with the Longy School of Music and with Bard College in New York. Through the LA Phil Live initiative, each season several concerts are broadcast live to more than 450 cinemas throughout the United States and Canada; there are in addition regular radio broadcasts across various stations. The Philharmonic’s repertoire includes not only the music of past eras but also that of modern and contemporary composers, as shown by the engagement of John Adams, who presently holds the Creative Chair. In the spring of 2013 the Los Angeles Philharmonic is performing Adams’s new work The Gospel According to the Other Mary on tour in London, Paris, New York, and Lucerne. The orchestra’s discography has garnered numerous awards, including a recent Grammy Award for the recording of the Brahms Fourth under Dudamel.

LUCERNE FESTIVAL (IMF) debut on 5 September 1974, with Zubin Mehta conducting works by Schoenberg, Elgar, and Beethoven.

February 2013