Looking Ahead to Lucerne Festival in 2024
Focusing on the theme of “Curiosity,” the 2024 Summer Festival (13 August to 15 September) will celebrate the 20th anniversary of the Lucerne Festival Academy. Lisa Batiashvili and Sheku Kanneh-Mason will be featured as “artistes étoiles,” and Lisa Streich and Beat Furrer will be the composers-in-residence.
The music of Ludwig van Beethoven will be the focus of the Spring Festival (22 to 24 March), with Riccardo Chailly and Pablo Heras-Casado conducting the Lucerne Festival Orchestra.
Among the guests Igor Levit has invited to the Piano Fest (9 to 12 May) are the Berliner Barock Solisten, Lukas Sternath, Johanna Summer, and the rapper and songwriter Danger Dan.
New works and modes of presentation: with this summer’s theme of “Curiosity,” Lucerne Festival will explore the “craving for the new” — which is what the German word for curiosity, Neugier, literally means. Exemplifying such “curiosity” par excellence is the Lucerne Festival Academy, which celebrates its 20th anniversary. Every summer, the Academy brings together some 100 young instrumentalists, conductors, and composers to engage with the new, with contemporary music. The Swedish composer Lisa Streich and the Swiss-Austrian composer Beat Furrer will have a prominent presence as composers-in-residence. As “artistes étoiles,” the Georgian-German violinist Lisa Batiashvili and the British cellist Sheku Kanneh-Mason will showcase their versatile talents in a variety of concert formats. Music Director Riccardo Chailly will conduct the Lucerne Festival Orchestra in two evenings: Mahler’s Seventh Symphony for the opening concert and an all-Rachmaninoff program. Guest conductors Yannick Nézet-Séguin and, for the first time, Klaus Mäkelä, will lead the Lucerne Festival Orchestra on two additional evenings. The closing concert on 15 September will present Arnold Schoenberg’s monumental Gurre-Lieder in a performance by the NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra under Alan Gilbert.
Homage to Beethoven: the Lucerne Festival Orchestra Residency at the 2024 Spring Festival
At the Spring Festival, which will likewise take place at the KKL Lucerne, from 22 to 24 March 2024, the Lucerne Festival Orchestra will devote two orchestral concerts to the music of Ludwig van Beethoven; in addition, soloists from the Lucerne Festival Orchestra will perform an evening of chamber music featuring works by Mozart, Dvořák, and Tchaikovsky. Music Director Riccardo Chailly and Pablo Heras-Casado will each conduct one concert of repertoire including Beethoven’s First, Second, and Seventh Symphonies as well as his Violin Concerto, with the Swedish violinist Daniel Lozakovich as the soloist. Bucherer 1888 is the new Main Sponsor of the Spring Festival.
From Bach to Danger Dan: The 2024 Piano Fest
For this second annual edition of the new Piano Fest, which Igor Levit curates for Lucerne Festival, the acclaimed pianist once again plans to bridge the gap between classical music and other musical genres by inviting a remarkable variety of artistic figures he esteems highly to the KKL Luzern from 9 to 12 May 2024. Levit himself will perform a solo program and will additionally appear together with his master student Lukas Sternath and the Berliner Barock Solisten. The rapper and songwriter Danger Dan will present his program Das ist alles von der Kunstfreiheit gedeckt (“That Is All Covered by Artistic Freedom”), while the jazz pianist Johanna Summer will return to give a solo recital juxtaposing classical music and jazz improvisation. To conclude this four-day festival, most of the artists will join together for a finale performance, in which Igor Levit, Johanna Summer, Lukas Sternath, and members of the Berliner Barock Solisten will share the stage.
Advance sales: For the Summer Festival, advance online sales starts start on 19 March 2024 at 12.00 pm Swiss time; subscriptions can be purchased starting now. For all Piano Fest as well as Spring Festival concerts, advance sales begin on 14 November 2023 at 12.00 pm Swiss time. The detailed program is now available on the Festival’s website.