Pulse 2027

Over a long holiday weekend in May, Víkingur Ólafsson, the star pianist from Iceland, hosts Lucerne Festival Pulse. “The pulse is an unmistakable sign of life and the foundation of music itself. Like the pulse of the human heart, the musical pulse beats evenly yet is never static. It is not mechanical but allows for interpretative freedom. It responds to our emotions and experiences, its pace ever changing, yet it sustains equilibrium, ensuring that the lifeblood of the music reaches all its extremities.”

At the heart of it all is the piano: Víkingur Ólafsson performs solo and with orchestra, plays chamber music, and explores connections with other art forms. But Pulse is more than a piano festival. In its inaugural edition in 2026, Ólafsson’s program stretched from Johann Sebastian Bach to the present day: collaborating with light artist Olafur Eliasson, he transformed Bach’s Goldberg Variations into a synesthetic experience at the Piuskirche in Meggen. He teamed up with the Danish String Quartet and the Mahler Chamber Orchestra, and he even set 100 metronomes ticking in György Ligeti’s Poème symphonique. The program also included Patricia Kopatchinskaja in Alban Berg’s deeply moving Violin Concerto, Elim Chan conducting Brahms’s Fourth Symphony, and Thomas Adès presenting his short oratorio America – A Prophecy.

The program for Pulse 2027 will be announced at the end of November.