The acclaimed Rachmaninoff cycle that Riccardo Chailly and the Lucerne Festival Orchestra have been developing since 2019 comes to its culmination this evening. Chailly’s vision has been not only to present the celebrated warhorses — the Second and Third Piano Concertos and the Second Symphony — but also to champion rarely heard treasures. One such rarity is the early opera Aleko, which Rachmaninoff wrote as a 19-year-old student. From it, Chailly has assembled a suite of four symphonic movements that reveal the young composer’s extraordinary gifts. Pure sonic magic also awaits in the five Études-Tableaux, originally written for piano and for Rachmaninoff’s own virtuosic performances. But when his Italian colleague Ottorino Respighi asked permission to orchestrate them, Rachmaninoff agreed with enthusiasm. His openness to new ideas is evident as well in the Fourth Piano Concerto, whose sound world at times even brushes up on jazz. The Austrian pianist Lukas Sternath, born in 2001 and a multiple prizewinner who studied with Igor Levit, will be the soloist. And so, perfectly in keeping with this year’s Festival theme, we also encounter Rachmaninoff’s own “American Dream.”
