Orchestra of the LUCERNE FESTIVAL ACADEMY

In 2003, the composer and conductor Pierre Boulez and Festival Executive and Artistic Director Michael Haefliger founded the LUCERNE FESTIVAL ACADEMY: an educational institution for music of the 20th and 21st centuries that is internationally unique. Each summer, highly talented young musicians from all around the world come together here for the opportunity to study in depth and then to perform contemporary scores and classics of modern music. Almost 1,200 graduates have taken part in the Academy over the past fifteen years, many of whom have attended for several summers. The German composer Wolfgang Rihm has been in charge of artistic leadership since 2016, with Matthias Pintscher serving as Principal Conductor. They are supported by internationally acclaimed performers of contemporary music who work as instrumental coaches. The orchestral and ensemble concerts for 2018 focus on the works of Karlheinz Stockhausen, including performances of such pieces as Inori and Gruppen; for the latter, the Academy Orchestra joins forces with the London Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Pintscher, Sir Simon Rattle, and Duncan Ward. They will give the world premiere of Peter Eötvös’s new score Reading Malevich and will also present works by Kurtág, Bella, Zimmermann, Nono, and composer-in-residence Fritz Hauser. The Composer Seminar is being led for the third time this year, in which young composers discuss their works with Wolfgang Rihm, Dieter Ammann, and other guests and rehearse them with selected LUCERNE FESTIVAL ALUMNI. A Conducting Fellowship offers scholarship holders the opportunity to follow along in the Academy’s work. The Orchestra of the LUCERNE FESTIVAL ACADEMY is once again participating this summer in the “Special Event Day” and appears in the “40min” series as well.

July 2018