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Your donation supports groundbreaking projects and areas of programming that are essential for the Festival – from the Lucerne Festival Orchestra to the Festival's own Academy and our young orchestra for contemporary music.

What a success story! In the nearly 20 years of its existence, more than 1,300 young musical talents from all over the world have graduated from the Lucerne Festival Academy, benefitting from this unique network for new music. Guided by a teaching faculty of leading performers of contemporary music and through close exchange with renowned composers, conductors, and soloists, the participants focus over a three-week period on the music of the 20th and 21st centuries. Through the Composer Seminar and the Conducting Fellowship, the Academy also offers young composers and conductors a unique training platform.

Founded in 2004 by Pierre Boulez and Michael Haefliger, the Lucerne Festival Academy is now directed by Wolfgang Rihm.

Every year, 120 participants are selected from some 600 applications. Participation in the Academy is free of charge for the selected musicians. These scholarships are financed by committed sponsors and patrons.

• promoting highly talented young musicians
• well-grounded training in an area of music that is still neglected in education and in the classical concert industry
• new compositions and their performance
• encounters, exchange, and networking among young musicians from all over the world, based on shared humanistic values
• access to a master school that is unlike any other around the world, regardless of the financial background of the participants

Take the best soloists, chamber musicians, music professors, and members of top European orchestras and bring them together to form a luxuriousorchestra: Arturo Toscanini realized this idea in the summer of 1938 with his legendary “elite orchestra” — the birth of Lucerne Festival. In 2003, Claudio Abbado and Michael Haefliger took this idea up again to found the Lucerne Festival Orchestra. It was intended to be an “orchestra of friends.” and its performances inspired an enthusiastic response right from the outset. Since 2016, Riccardo Chailly has been the Music Director of this unique orchestra, which performs in the first weeks of the Summer Festival, presents a three-day music festival in the spring, and can also be heard in many European countries, in the USA, and in Asia during its international tours.

• the Festival’s own world-class orchestra
• a unique orchestra that makes music free of routine
• magnificent performances at the Lucerne Festival Orchestra’s two annual residencies
• a musical beacon with international appeal

Focused on the present: "Making contemporary music happen" is the motto of the Lucerne Festival Contemporary Orchestra (LFCO for short), which sees itself as an orchestra of excellence devoted to the music of the 20th and 21st centuries. It plays a pioneering role in the performance of contemporary music through innovative formats that make new kinds of musical and performance experiences possible. And it does so not only at the Summer Festival and in international guest performances, but also at its own festival in the fall: Lucerne Festival Forward. The LFCO benefits from the deeply grounded training that all of its musicians have received at the Lucerne Festival Academy and seeks exchange and cooperation with other players on the global new music scene.

• an outstanding international orchestra for contemporary music
• promoting the new generation of musicians
• fresh inspiration for up-to-date musical creativity and its appreciation
• the development of innovative forms of performance and such interdisciplinary projects as Lucerne Festival Forward
• international guest performances by the Lucerne Festival Contemporary Orchestra (LFCO) and cooperation with other cultural organizations

Are you interested in other ways of support or would you like to make a contribution to the development of new projects? Please feel free to contact us!