2024 Summer Festival
On 13 August 2024, the Summer Festival in Lucerne, Switzerland’s largest classical music festival, kicks off with a focus on the theme of “Curiosity.” A total of 115 events will be presented at the KKL Lucerne and other venues over the course of 33 days. In addition to 32 symphony concerts featuring the world’s most-renowned orchestras, the program includes solo concerts, chamber music, family concerts, and 42 free events. Emerging young stars as well as the most sought-after artists in the industry will appear, including Daniel Barenboim, Anne-Sophie Mutter, Andris Nelsons, Anna Prohaska, Kirill Petrenko, Sir András Schiff, Christian Thielemann, Daniil Trifonov, and many others.
The poster images announcing the summer theme of “Curiosity” are inspired by lottery scratch cards where you scratch off the coating, prompted by curiosity to discover what lies hidden underneath. The Festival’s focus on “Curiosity” refers to contemporary music, an important focus of the Summer Festival owing to the 20th anniversary of the Lucerne Festival Academy. Founded in 2004 by Pierre Boulez and Festival Executive and Artistic Director Michael Haefliger, this master school for new music remains internationally unique today and has an extensive global network comprising more than 1,500 graduates. “Hunger for the new” – which is what the German word for “curiosity” (“Neugier”) literally means – will likewise be reflected in the world premieres of 20 new works to be presented this summer by the Lucerne Festival Contemporary Orchestra (LFCO), the Festival’s in-house ensemble devoted to new music. But “Curiosity” in the 2024 Summer Festival also refers more broadly to the desire to learn and to develop and is therefore reflected in the information-rich enhancements of the programming for all age groups, including introductions, post-concert talks, and moderated concert formats.