Lucerne Festival Orchestra | Riccardo Chailly | Mao Fujita
Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873–1943)
Piano Concerto No. 2 in C minor, Op. 18
Symphony No. 2 in E minor, Op. 27
(Recorded live in Lucerne, August 2022)
Sergei Rachmaninoff was a resident of Lucerne – for a time, at least, in the 1930s, following his emigration from Russia; he even had a villa built in Hertenstein right on Lake Lucerne. To celebrate the composer in Lucerne is therefore an affair of the heart for Riccardo Chailly. For this second part of their Rachmaninoff cycle, Chailly and the Lucerne Festival Orchestra focused on the Second Symphony and the Second Piano Concerto, the most popular of Rachmaninoff’s four concertos for the instrument. The young Japanese pianist Mao Fujita, who won the Silver Medal at the famous Moscow Tchaikovsky Competition 2019, thrilled the audience with his performance as the soloist.