Lucerne Festival Contemporary Orchestra (LFCO)

The Lucerne Festival Contemporary Orchestra — LFCO for short — which was launched in 2021, is Lucerne Festival’s orchestra of excellence for new and contemporary music. As a counterpart to the Lucerne Festival Orchestra, it focuses on 20th- and 21st-century scores, from modern classics to commissioned works that are premiered in Lucerne. For example, it has premiered Rebecca Saunders’s piano concerto to an utterance and Thomas Adès’s Air (with Anne-Sophie Mutter as the soloist). The members of the LFCO have all benefited from their training at the Lucerne Festival Academy, which was initiated by Pierre Boulez and is now directed by Wolfgang Rihm. Thanks to its close ties to the Academy and its network, the LFCO is able to play a trailblazing role in the interpretation of contemporary music and the development of forward-looking concert formats. Through its projects, the orchestra utilizes the possibilities of new technologies; interdisciplinary works give rise to innovative listening and concert events. The LFCO can be heard at the Summer Festival in Lucerne, and the musicians also organize their own festival dedicated to contemporary music every November: Lucerne Festival Forward. Recent invitations have taken the LFCO to the “Visions” Festival at the Hamburg Elbphilharmonie, Musikfest Berlin, the Donaueschinger Musiktage, the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, and the Mizmorim Chamber Music Festival. The LFCO has worked with Sylvain Cambreling, Heinz Holliger, Patricia Kopatchinskaja, Susanna Mälkki, Enno Poppe, Tyshawn Sorey, and Ilan Volkov, among others, and has participated in productions at the Luzerner Theater.

The Lucerne Festival Contemporary Orchestra (LFCO) performed here for the first time in the summer of 2021. 

July 2024