“This orchestra wants to progress and grow,” says Michael Sanderling, who has helmed the Lucerne Symphony Orchestra as Chief Conductor since 2021 — and is doing his part to make this wish a reality. The Frankfurter Allgemeine, for example, considers the recording of all four Brahms symphonies that they released in 2023 as their inaugural CD project together to be “extremely successful,” pointing out that “it is rare for a recording to show not just emotional warmth and sympathy but also alertness to the compositional how and why.” Sanderling and his musicians are now continuing this recipe for success with Schubert’s Eighth Symphony, known as the “Great” C major Symphony, of whose “heavenly lengths” Robert Schumann enthused. Opening the program will be an international star from Switzerland. Pianist Francesco Piemontesi, who was born in Locarno in 1983 and has performed with the Berlin and Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestras, the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, and the Cleveland Orchestra, will play Beethoven’s heroic Concerto in E-flat major. He, too, has big plans: “I want to encourage the audience to share in the profundity of this music,” says Piemontesi.
