Lucerne Festival | MEMETERIA by Thomas May

August 27, 2015 • 9:21 am Comments Off on A Day for Pierre Boulez

A Day for Pierre Boulez

Pierre Boulez (photo: Georg Anderhub/LUCERNE FESTIVAL)

This past Sunday, Lucerne Festival’s Summer 2015 edition presented an entire “Day for Pierre Boulez” to mark the 90th birthday of one of music’s great revolutionaries (the actual birthday fell on on March 26). Sadly, Boulez was unable to be present in person due to health reasons, but the day argued for his profound enduring influence.

Studded across all of the programmes were eight world premieres from a collection of composers of different vintages and Boulezian inspirations…It was the works written expressly in homage to Boulez that were most revealing of the legacy and challenge he leaves his fellow composers…[T]wo new pieces by György Kurtág and Wolfgang Rihm, both performed with unwavering conviction by the young players of the Academy Orchestra, [were] the most subtle, striking, and moving tributes to Boulez’s life and music…
As the whole Day for Pierre showed, it’s not just the inspiraton of his work as composer, conductor, writer, and teacher: Boulez, it turns out, is an attitude of mind, a way of being in the creative world.

–Tom Service in The Guardian

Every concert was exquisitely curated, and established Boulez in the context of the tradition he founded…
But it was the evening’s programme in Lucerne’s world-renowned concert hall that spoke most loudly of Boulez’s legacy. New works by living masters Wolfgang Rihm and György Kurtág were performed alongside that of young composers by the Lucerne Academy Orchestra…
For the second half, the Academy orchestra donned Boulez T-shirts for the Notations, which, in one form or another, have occupied the composer all his life. The fully orchestrated versions, composed towards the end of the century, were laid bare by the presentation of the original piano pieces of 1945, written when he was just 20. It was a revelation.

–Jonathan McAloon, Telegraph

Here’s a summary of the items that were on the program for this marathon celebration:

13.30, 18.00, and 19.00 | KKL Luzern, Roof Terrace
Chiaki Tsunaba | Justin Frieh
Boulez Dialogue de l’ombre double for Clarinet and Tape

15.15 | Tribute to Boulez 4 | KKL Luzern, Terrace Hall
string quartets of the LUCERNE FESTIVAL ACADEMY
Berg Lyric Suite

16.00 | Tribute to Boulez 5 | KKL Luzern, Terrace Hall
string quartets of the LUCERNE FESTIVAL ACADEMY
Boulez Livre pour Quatuor

18.30 | Introduction to Symphony Concert 10 | KKL Luzern,
Concert Hall
A project in response to Boulez’s Notations with Richard McNicol, and Aleksandar Aces | in cooperation with Klavier-Festival Ruhr

Filed under: Lucerne Festival, modernism, music news, new music, Pierre Boulez

August 15, 2015 • 3:12 am Comments Off on A Sense of “Humor” at the Lucerne Festival

A Sense of “Humor” at the Lucerne Festival

So another Lucerne Festival has begun: this summer featuring programming tied together by the theme of “humor” in all its varieties: not just “buffa” humor, that is, but the weird and unpredictable twists of the so-called humors that were once believed to influence human behavior.

And neatly timed with the opening concert comes the announcement that Riccardo Chailly will take on the position of the late Claudio Abbado as music director of the Lucerne Festival Orchestra.
Says Chailly:

To be responsible for this great artistic project
initiated by Claudio Abbado is not only a privilege but also something that touches me emotionally. Ever since I was 18, when he appointed me to be his assistant at La Scala, Abbado was my model and then my point of reference and lifelong friend, with deep affection up to the very end.

I have collaborated with Michael Haefliger for many years in a spirit of full artistic understanding. I believe that working with him offers a real opportunity to maintain and develop the musical profile of the Orchestra and of the Festival, both in Switzerland and worldwide, as they deserve.”

Congratulations to Maestro Chailly — and to the Lucerne Festival for this terrific win!

Filed under: Lucerne Festival, music news, programming

May 24, 2015 • 9:44 am Comments Off on Congratulations to Lucerne Festival

Congratulations to Lucerne Festival

A nice new feather in Lucerne Festival’s cap:

Classical:NEXT! has awarded its Innovation Award jointly to LF’s Ark Nova and Southbank Centre’s The Rest is Noise Festival.

Rotterdam/Lucerne, 23 May 2015

Today the mobile concert hall project known as LUCERNE FESTIVAL ARK NOVA has received the Innovation Award as part of the international conference Classical:NEXT. An international selection committee comprising music writers and bloggers from a total of 14 countries nominated 21 projects fromaround the world for innovation in the field classical music and for setting trends. Some 2000 participants from the three previous editions of the conference chose the two winning projects via an online vote. Both the ARK NOVA and The Rest is Noise Festival presented by Southbank Centre in London took first prize. Michael Haefliger, the Executive and Artistic Director of LUCERNE FESTIVAL, accepted the honor on Saturday in Rotterdam during the award ceremony.

The LUCERNE FESTIVAL ARK NOVA is the first-ever mobile and inflatable concert hall and was initiated by Michael Haefliger together with the star Japanese architect Arata Isozaki and the British artist Anish Kapoor, as well as the Japanese agency Masahide Kajimoto. The basic idea was to use art with a strong social commitment to bring comfort and hope to people living in the Tōhoku Region while reconstruction continues of the areas affected by the catastrophic earthquake on 11 March 2011. The Ark Nova was implemented for the first time in Matsushima in the fall of 2013. This project has attracted international attention for its spectacular artistic form as well as for its multifaceted programs featuring both international and local musicians. Japanese artists as well as an array of international stars performed here in 2013, and the opening event featured a youth orchestra conducted by Gustavo Dudamel. A total of 10,000 people visited the events held at the Ark Nova in its first year alone. In its second year the Ark Nova was erected in Sendai, Japan, and it proved once again to be extremely successful. An ensemble of soloists from the LUCERNE FESTIVAL ORCHESTRA performed there in the fall of 2013 and again in November 2014. For the fall of 2015 another Ark Nova music festival is planned for the Tōhoku Region in Japan.

The Classical:NEXT Innovation Award was launched to recognize innovative international projects in the field of classical music, as Classical:NEXT’s director Jennifer Dautermann explains:

‘This award aims to give international recognition

to the people who are doing the most to push

things forward with daring yet intelligent, effecti

ve and successful ‘out-of-the-box’ thinking, planning

and action.’

Among those on the nominating selection committee are Alex Ambrose (WQXR, USA), Jessica Duchen (UK), Moritz Eggert (Germany), Rudolph Tang (China), and Luis Suñén (Scherzo,Spain).

Filed under: Lucerne Festival, music news

March 31, 2015 • 12:53 pm Comments Off on Haydn Turns 283

Haydn Turns 283

In honor of Haydn, one of the greatest of the greats, who “may” have been born on this date in 1732, give or take a few days. For its 2015 Summer Festival, which focuses on the theme of “humor” (in the widest possible sense), the Lucerne Festival will open with a program pairing Haydn and Mahler (Bernard Haitink will conduct the Lucerne Festival Orchestra): specifically, Mahler 4 and Haydn’s Symphony in C, (“Il distratto,” aka “Der Zerstreute”), which originated as incidental music for the stage. I’m going to be listening closely to a lot of Haydn in the near future as I prepare program essays for the Festival.

Filed under: anniversary, Haydn, Lucerne Festival

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