Lucerne Festival Orchestra on tour: Travel adventures

It was supposed to be a straight-forward itineray: A quick chartered flight from Paris to Hamburg, arrival at around noon, have a rest at the hotel, rehearsal at the Elbphilharmonie, concert.

But as we all know, life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans.

The musicians of the Lucerne Festival Orchestra were already at the gate, almost ready to board, when orchestra manager Christiane Weber hat to break the bad news: Technical issues had renedered our chartered airplane unable to fly and it had to be replaced. Estimated waiting time: Over five hours. At least the defect had been noticed before the aircraft was in the air...

Lucas Macias Navarro, Dina Heidinger, and Miriam Pastor came up with a specially creative way to pass the time: The three woodwind players of the Lucerne Festival Orchestra formed an impromptu oboe trio and delighted fellow passengers and orchestra members with a little serenade.

Our online community loved the performance too and the video recording of it has been watched over 20'000 times in its first 24 hours on Instagram.

Shortly after 16.00 the time had come at last: the new plane was ready for boarding and the Lucerne Festival Orchestra was finally able to continue the journey to Hamburg.

However, nothing remained of the originally planned relaxed afternoon. Three coaches took the orchestra musicians directly from the airport to the Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg. As the concert was due to start just 50 minutes after arrival, there was no time for a rehearsal.

But the Lucerne Festival Orchestra would not be the Lucerne Festival Orchestra if the musicians did not wow the audience with an unforgettable concert experience even after 11 hours of traveling.

More about the concert in the Elbphilharmonie shortly.