LFCO on tour: Concert at Elbphilharmonie

What a fantastic culmination of an intense and busy week in Hamburg: On 3 Feburar 2023, the Lucerne Festival Contemporary Orchestra (LFCO) got to perform at the Elbphilharmonie Hamburg as part of the festival "Elbphilharmonie Visions".

The concert was conducted by Sylvain Cambreling, who had already been at the head of the LFCO at the 2022 Summer Festival in Lucerne and later at the Kölner Philharmonie.

The piano concerto "to an utterance" by the British composer Rebecca Saunders opened the concert program. The composition was written in the series of the "Roche Commissions" for Lucerne Festival and premiered in Lucerne in 2021. Rebecca Saunders has enjoyed a close friendship and working relationship with pianist Nicolas Hodges for some twenty years. Saunders wrote the solo part of her piano concerto especially for Hodges, who took on the demanding part with bravura both at the Lucerne premiere and at the concert in the Elbphilharmonie.

With "to an utterance" Rebecca Saunders is nominated in the category Large-Scale Composition at the Royal Philharmonic Society Awards, which will be presented on 1 March in London.

At a brief intermission, a conversation between Barbara Lebitsch (Director of Artistic Planning at Elbphilharmonie Hamburg), Rebecca Saunders, and Dieter Ammann enriched the musical experience.

The second item on the program consisted of the orchestral triptych "Core" – "Turn" – "Boost" by Swiss composer Dieter Ammann. The three works were composed over a period of ten years and fuse completely different influences into a compelling tonal language with a great density of event and coloristic finesse.. As part of an anniversary concert celebrating Dieter Ammann's 60th birthday, the Lucerne Festival Contemporary Orchestra (LFCO) under the direction of Sylvain Cambreling has already performed "Core" – "Turn" – "Boost" at the Lucerne Festival Summer Festival 2022 and at a subsequent guest performance at the Kölner Philharmonie.

A Live-Talk between Rebecca Saunders and the pianist and Youtuber Nahre Sol concluded the concert (Nicolas Hodges also joined the round briefly as a surprise guest). The two women discussed the nature and mystery of contemporary music.
The conversation was recorded and is available as a free stream on the Elbphilharmonie website: Watch here.