Lucerne Festival in Shanghai and Milan

Following the conclusion of the 2018 Summer Festival, the Lucerne Festival Orchestra will embark on its first residency, from 18 to 22 October, during which it will present five concerts in Shanghai. Four of the concerts will take place at Shanghai Symphony Hall, which was designed by the Japanese architect Arata Isozaki, and there will be an open-air concert as well.

This marks the orchestra’s debut in Shanghai following its tour of Asia last fall with Riccardo Chailly, which took the musicians to the National Centre for the Performing Arts (NCPA) in Beijing. The repertoire for this concert tour includes The Firebird by Igor Stravinsky; Valses nobles et sentimentales, La Valse, the two suites from Daphnis et Chloé, and Boléro by Maurice Ravel; and the Piano Concerto in C minor, K. 491, by W. A. Mozart, with Haochen Zhang as the soloist. Anton Bruckner’s Symphony No. 7 and Richard Wagner’s Overtures to Rienzi and The flying Dutchman are also part of the tour program, and these works will be performed on 14 October, before they depart for Asia, at La Scala in Milan, where Music Director Riccardo Chailly will conduct the Lucerne Festival Orchestra for the first time. Riccardo Chailly has been Artistic Director of the Teatro alla Scala since 2015, and he was an assistant to Claudio Abbado at the beginning of his career.

"We are looking forward to this special guest performance of the Lucerne Festival Orchestra with Riccardo Chailly at La Scala in Milan as the launch for this year's concerts abroad", remarks Michael Haefliger, Executive and Artistic Director of Lucerne Festival. "This major residency in Shanghai is a continuation of our already very rich concert tradition in Asia. Shanghai is the bustling city of China: it is not only an economic center but has also developed into a focal city for music. It is an honor for Lucerne Festival to have a residency here and to contribute to this city. We are very excited!"

The Orchestra's principals in Milan and Shanghai will include the concertmasters Gregory Ahss and Raphael Christ, the violist Wolfram Christ, the cellist Jens Peter Maintz, the flutist Jacques Zoon, the oboist Kai Frömbgen, the clarinetist Alessandro Carbonare, and the bassoonist Guilhaume Santana, as well as the horn player Ivo Gass, the trumpeter Jeroen Berwaerts, the trombonist Jörgen van Rijen, and the timpanist Raymond Curfs. Musicians of the Mahler Chamber Orchestra and the Filarmonica della Scala will again number among the Orchestra's members.

"The Lucerne Festival Orchestra is a powerful beacon of talent and cultural exchange that seeks to build bridges between different nations and people", explains Dr. Rolf Dörig, Chairman of the Adecco Group Foundation. "As a global champion of creating social value through career development, the Adecco Group Foundation is proud to support and sponsor the Festival's residency in Shanghai as we work together to strengthen all aspects of the Swiss-Chinese relationship, from the arts to the economy. We can't wait to showcase one of the best European orchestras, led by Riccardo Chailly, in front of a new audience in China."