Lucerne Festival Academy invited to Frankfurt

The Lucerne Festival Academy, the Internationale Ensemble Modern Akademie (IEMA) and the Ensemble Modern are working together more closely. To kick off this partnership, Lucerne was intvited to guest in in Frankfurt.

We consider the sustainable promotion of young talents, whom we get to know summer after summer within the framework of our three-week academy, to be a key element of our work. This German-Swiss partnership for the promotion of the young generation of composers was born from this idea.

Every summer, Wolfgang Rihm and Dieter Ammann invite eight composers to Lucerne to the Composer Seminar launched by Rihm in 2015. On 15 February 2022, five of the participants had the chance to present their works again for the first time in the "Happy New Ears" series at the Opera in Frankfurt. Played by the Ensemble Modern, rehearsed by Maayan Franco (he participated in the Conducting Fellowship in Lucerne in 2021) and moderated by Wolfgang Rihm, the audience gained a lively and exciting insight into the work of Senay Uğurlu (*1997, Turkey), Lanqing Ding (*1990, China), Daniil Posazhennikov (*1994, Russia), Guillem Palomar (*1997, Spain) and Tyson Gholston Davis (*2000, USA).

Daniil and Tyson were unfortunately unable to be in Frankfurt due to corona. The conductor Maayan Franco also fell ill shortly before the concert, but was still able to conduct all the rehearsals. Duncan Ward was fortunately able to step in at short notice.

Despite these hurdles, it was a successful evening that was very well received by the audience.

Next, Frankfurt will be our guest in Lucerne: the IEMA ensemble will rehearse and present the new works of the Composer Seminar this summer as part of the Academy. This concert will again be under the direction of our four Conducting Fellowship participants and coached Wolfgang Rihm and Dieter Ammann.