CD: Boulez conducts the Lucerne Festival Academy

Orchestra of the Lucerne Festival Academy | Pierre Boulez

Anton Webern
Passacaglia, Op. 1
Variations for Orchestra, Op. 30
Igor Stravinsky
Le Chant du Rossignol
Gustav Mahler
Symphony No. 6 in A minor

In 2004, Pierre Boulez and Lucerne Festival’s Executive and Artistic Director Michael Haefliger jointly established the Lucerne Festival Academy to allow more than 100 highly talented young musicians to focus on the music of the 20th and 21st centuries each summer. Six years later, Boulez released a double CD with the Lucerne Festival Academy Orchestra, which was recorded live during rehearsals and concerts in Lucerne. It combines music by two classic Modernists with one of their precursors. In addition to Igor Stravinsky’s Le Chant du Rossignol and Anton Webern’s Variations for Orchestra, Op. 30, the album includes the latter’s Passacaglia, Op. 1, which is still firmly rooted in the sound world of late Romanticism, along with Gustav Mahler’s Sixth Symphony.